The Culture War and its Effect on Art

Intro

I am South African, and I have never been to America before despite having the desire to do so. But America is impossible to ignore on the grand stage. How can one do such a thing? America’s cultural influence in the world is unparalleled due to a majority of big studios, writers, and artists producing within the country. There have been some concerns about how things have been going. You cannot go anywhere online without dozens and dozens of people complaining about the decline of the West, how the thing is problematic, or how woke everything is.

As a creative, I want to talk about the discourse between an ever-widening gap between the two political camps. How that has been affecting the arts, the culture, and the failure of the West has been humanizing the gays. I will also be talking about concerns I have for the arts going forward. Cause, America affects the cultures and politics of many countries across the globe, and I have to make sure that I at least give some thought to my concerns.

I will not spare either side of this problem, cause I am a firm believer that ideologues harm the arts. When a person isn’t interested in making art as opposed to pushing their politics, they are merely failed politicians or shitty writers.

Let's get going then!

Defining woke for this article

Woke is a nebulous eldritch thing that haunts and destroys societies. Ask a dozen people what they think woke is and the answers will vary from things they don’t like, to leftist propaganda to political shoehorning into places where it isn’t wanted to a lecture. All of these are both valid and invalid. Made meaningless by the broad spectrum of things that are considered woke.

I would personally like to define this meaningless term when it manifests in the arts as “The intent of lecturing/preaching at the expense of the quality or consumer enjoyment of the product.” I think this is a good definition, as we have concrete limits as to what woke is and it isn’t conveniently exclusive to a certain group’s political enemies. Both lefties and righties can be woke as both are perfectly capable of shoving their politics into their art with all the grace of a car crash.

I hope that this is sufficient and now we can continue with the rest of the article and why ideologues are bad at making art.

The Left is Bad at Art

The creative industry is dominated by left-leaning people, not surprising as they are the only political group that doesn’t actively discourage their base from entering the arts. The problem is, while there are certainly a lot of good talented people within the creative industry, especially in the indie circuit. There are a lot of loud-mouthed self-satisfied idiots who are not interested in stories as they are preaching or fulfilling certain criteria that a chart says will maximize sales. These smug people act less like artists trying to explore the human condition or just entertain but rather like political commentators.

While I cannot stress enough that exploring politics within fiction is good, you can’t have the characters rant about whatever problem society is facing. I get that in comics this was a common occurrence, but do we really need Superman to lecture us about being American? Haven’t comics evolved to explain the importance of anti-segregation since Watchman? I personally don’t buy the excuse of comics preaching to us because it was built on that foundation. Sometimes mediums evolve past their original writing standards.

Being grateful for the fact people actually want to read your work is a concept that seems to have slipped many a creator’s mind. A mixture of arrogance and superiority over the ideological opponent is very strong in many a creator, from Patrick Rothfuss to Kelly Sue DeConnick all think that they can insult their user base and demean their detectors, especially if detractors think your work is substandard. Patrick Rothfuss in particular has used the 2016 election as an excuse to not write his long overdue book.

I know that this was/is an important message but writing has improved.

If you want to be a political commentator or a politician, just do that. Or if you want to talk about politics, be entertaining and be skilled. People don’t want to be preached to, they want to be entertained and maybe learn something about themselves or the world. Read how Huxley and Orwell shaped their exposition. Learn from your elders before you can evolve in the establishment. I should also give some credit to Martin for incorporating one of the best metaphors for Climate change in a non-preachy way, a rarity in media.

The culture war’s effect on art and by extension, the left, allows for an environment where shallow meaningless posturing, hostile creatives that think their audience will smile and give them money in spite of insulting them and preaching as opposed to exploring. It is all about being the first (minority here) in a major role as opposed to writing a story about a character who happens to be (minority here). You don’t build empathy or humanity for a minority by trotting them out like a prized pony, only to hide them when China or Saudi Arabia comes knocking. We know you are just there for the money, we know you only want to feel superior to those you deem your enemies. And quite frankly it is not pleasant to look at.

It was only ever about money.

The Right is Bad at Art

I am not sure exactly when this trend happened, as we used to have a fairly decent number of right-wing (or at least libertarian) artists. These would include Frank Herbert to Robert E Heinland, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. But now, we only have a smattering of small indie authors that maybe have some influence like Shad Brooks. You won’t find any major right-wing creatives alive in the book world and the few left in the film industry are dying out.

At some point in the 1980s or 1990s, the right as a collective abandoned the creative arts, I am not sure why, it might have been because of the growing anti-establishment or the encouragement of trades as opposed to artistic pursuits. But now, the right as a collective doesn’t create, they complain. You will hear them complaining over and over and over again about how woke art is on their little political talk shows. So many talk shows complaining about the state of the arts and the world.

The right doesn’t seem capable of creating anything meaningful and seems to deliberately discourage their base from creating anything. They are partly responsible, not that they would admit that, for the massive ideological imbalance in the arts. They have allowed the monster that they keep complaining about in their videos. They have enabled the terribly shallow representation of gays in the media because there is no competition for depiction within the arts. It’s not too late however, The Daily Wire for example is producing and distributing movies and Shad Brooks has produced a book.

While this is good news for the diversity of thought, I am concerned that if the right actually does something and starts encouraging creativity we might just see a deluge of Silence of the Lambs rip-offs and other political issues shoved into the art, just becoming the thing they complain about.

In the unlikely event that people give a damn about what I say, I would like to give the following advice. Stop complaining about how woke things are, if you really care about the fate of the West and art, get in the trenches and compete with the people you think are destroying culture. If the free market is real then people will flock to you as opposed to the woke thing. Be Shad Brooks, self-publish, and get your audience to read a book. Fight, create something better than your competitors and maybe, you will do something more than just complain endlessly.

Don’t be afraid of being political, but be good with it. Mimic Orwell and Huxley, not DC and Marvel. And expect to get backlash, don’t think your worldview is perfect, and be humble cause nobody likes a braggart.

The culture war enables and incentivizes the right to not actively engage with the opponent. People love to hear negativity and all you have to do when it comes to commentary on art is just cry about how things are woke. Why should you want to repair that? You are losing your income so there is no reason to fix the status quo. I reject this, as it devolves any legit criticism of lousy writing or preachiness into, “There is a (minority here) and I don’t like it!” It’s an exercise in tedium for me and mindless two minutes of hate of the fans, who get their latest shot of whining against their ideological foe.

Conclusion

The Culture War pits two ideological groups against one another forever. It twists people into becoming enemies and ruins intelligent criticisms, turning the conversation into whining about the problematic thing or why this thing is woke. The Culture War ruins art by making any and every creation into a potential battleground for the future of the West or whatever. The Culture War is an exercise in useless polarisation, a force that produces worse products, stifles creativity, and rots the brain.

There are many heads on this Hydra, and I have only brought attention to one. Honestly, the rest are out of the scope of this article or this blog. However, this post has been great for expressing my annoyance with Americans and their approach to art and art criticism. I know not everyone will agree with me on this blog post, but I would love to hear your thoughts on this. In the meantime, let's keep making and consuming great art from diverse people!

Cheers for reading.

Please consider reading Black Masquerade: and Where Dreams are Lost both of which are 0.99$ each for Pride month at selected retailers.

Acknowledgments

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