Comments on On Art and Democracy

Seems to me the mixture of art and politics is more about having more politics and less about having more art.

"Art and politics cannot be separated."

This calls for a slapfight between Mudede and Jen Graves.

But Regina is all about her opinion being the only one in this town to matter pertaining to art.
Maybe she's a wee bit threatened?

Regina's point is that you try to get around the "problem with criticism in all its forms" by characterizing your opinions as statements of truth, as if that's all it takes. It's a linguistic tic and nothing more, and it doesn't do your writing any favours.

Oh oh.

I just had an epiphany reading Mudede, not about art but about the meaning and value of opinions and the very category of "opinions" in politics.

Get back to the cleavage shots. This thinking is tiring.

is your defense meant to be ironic?

hackett: "He plucks a premise from the air and defends it into life"

charles: "art and politics cannot be sepblah blah blah wealth blah blah opinion blah some pompous quote blah blah blah is my point"

i mean really, is it?

Charles, I was with you on your earlier post today. But know you've lost me again.

Dude, the biggest problem with chaz's writing is he just makes stupid assertions with no backing. He thinks his opinion is fact for the basis of his own arguments.

every idea he has ever put forward requires you to believe the assumptions he makes, which is terrible because the assumptions he makes arent rooted in any commonly accepted facts or truths.

for instance in this post he basically says, arts and politics can't be seperate and then extrapolated on that without justifying it or explaining it.

any time someone uses "must" "can not" "we" it shoots out a warning shot that what is about to follow is crap.

@7, make that "now" instead of "know."

know would also work though.

I would love for Charles to write a post in E-Prime. What would happen if he couldn't use various forms of 'to be' for a day?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime

I bet it would put his criticism into a completely different light.

And in case you didn't want to go to the Wikipedia link, I give you this choice quote that illustrates what I was trying to get at:

Some regard E-Prime as a variant of the English language, while others consider it a mental discipline to filter their own speech and translate the speech of others. For example, the sentence "the movie was good" can become "I liked the movie" using the rules of E-Prime, which communicates the subjective nature of the speaker's experience, rather than directly imparting a state of goodness to the movie. Using E-Prime makes it harder for a writer or reader to confuse statements of opinion with statements of fact.

art is only about truth in that it is basically a lie, an illusion, framing for effect, and an idealized reflection of Psyche in a way to satisfy our Narcissus eyes...

but screw all that; my Armani suit is ready for pick-up from the cleaners, and theres an anti-IMF rally I'm running late for.

even from the post:

art and politics can't be seperated (assumption)
opinions are bad in politics (assumption)
therefore opinions are bad in evaluating art (assumptive conclusion)

so chaz needs two assumptions to create a 3rd conclusive assumption. What kind of bullshit flim flam is that?

Bellevue Ave, I think you've hit the nail on the head. Flim flam.

At this moment in time the only option for the masses to regain majority control of politics is through art. The masses have been entirely marginalized and art has been massively commercialized. The last options available to the underground are gorrilla art, writing, film and media - up through the masses as an educational operation up through the establishment and elite. Everything else has failed.

I think it's hilarious that Regina Hackett is trying to pretend that she's a serious critic here. Oh man...

Art is subjective. It can't be separated form politics if you decide it can't.

Your viewpoint is self-fulfilling, Mudede. If you choose to analyze art in that context, then you will forever view it in that light, thus reinforcing your original assumption.

Try looking away from the mirror from time to time, you may see something more interesting than your own reflection.

Mudede wants art criticism to be empowering in some way, not merely idle (and ignorable) chatter. Just as he wants political speech to have some political effect.


What's ironic is that Mudede himself is in a position of power (sort of like Bush) where he can ignore all the criticism that comes his way and continue to pluck premises out of the air without really defending them. Every time he posts something a barrage of comments fly up taking him to task for bullshitting, but nothing ever happens. His writing never changes.


A friend of mine is sure that this is all a joke. He thinks that the editors at the Stranger let Mudede keep going because it's funny to see people worked into a froth over his quasi-philosophical undefended banter. Maybe my friend is right and the joke is on us.