Art and ideology at the movies
Ever since Marx's polemics against the young Hegelians in 1845-46, later published as The German Ideology, we can no longer dissociate art from ideology. In fact, we can no longer think about anything without thinking ideology. Marx’s concept, and its entanglement with alienation and fetishism in the development of his loose theory of illusion, became an unavoidable furniture, perhaps to the point of inconvenience, in the living room of modern thought. It’s just there and one cannot think around it if one’s to have a decent, consequential thought.
However, every great concept or theory already in itself contains in potentia its own vulgate. And so, for instance, Kant’s categorical imperative became Eichmann’s “I was just following orders” pretext; Nietzsche’s übermensch musings turned into cheap nazi propaganda for the “master race”. And Marx’s theory, including its insights on ideology, turned into the Marxist vulgate: pamphletary pseudo-scientific schemes for the emancipation of the working class, bankrolled mostly by the Soviet State.
We all know the drill: ideology as the superstructure of society, the products of its conscience, such as art, law, religion and so on, founded ultimately on a material infrastructure: the mode of production and its relations, i.e., the way a given society organizes, produces, and reproduces its means of life and their conditions. In our case: the institutions, ideals, values, and norms of bourgeois society based on the exploitation of labor by the capitalists. Yada yada yada. A cliché, not without merit, not without truth, like all clichés, and precisely for that it has penetrated quite successfully that same superstructure it so loudly condemns, especially the art department in the edifice of ideology.
With this in mind, artists, not unlike self-proclaimed prophets, have often attempted to demolish that edifice from within: to use their art to criticize the society which allows for it. Rarely has this approach worked. Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels (1941) concerns precisely this predicament: can art be self-consciously political without also being tiresome?
There’s two ways to read the film. First, it could be read like a glorification of comedy as the humanist common ground between all our differences, the great relief of suffering, or, perhaps, the “opium of the people”…. Second, it could be read as a strategic piece, as it were: how to best handle the intrinsic relation between art and ideology, how to escape reducing the former to the latter, while realizing there’s no way of entirely dissociating them. The second reading is stronger and much more interesting.
In the first reading we have a simplistic disjunction: the artist is either an ideologue and a propagandist for the society which pays him, providing escapism; or he is a revolutionary social critic, defying conventions and norms, at odds with the powers that be. The brilliance of Sullivan’s Travels is in jumbling this crude distinction.
Sullivan (Joel McCrea) is a director of comedies during the Great Depression, thriving in so-called called escapist pictures: screwball comedies, musicals, and so on, like Lubitsch, or Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. His social conscience, however, impels him to want to direct a “commentary on modern conditions”, a social drama of “stark realism”, a “canvas” for the world’s suffering. Corpses are piling up everywhere, he says, and his film would be a “sociological medium” for these harsh realities. Of course, as everybody tells him, that’s a terrible idea. But he can’t see why. Neither can many artists. Given the state of the world – death and suffering – art should tell it like it is. What’s wrong with that?
It turns out plenty. When art tries to simply refrain from politics and social issues, it is ideology. And when it is self-conscious of its political message, tackling “real issues”, then it is… bad ideology. There is no way out of ideology, but there are good and interesting ideological pieces, and bad and monotonous ones. And usually when artists attempt a clear-cut social critique we get bad ideology, a pretentious reiteration of moralistic common-places. Sullivan, in his Odysseus-like ventures into the underworld of American society, learns just that: stop worrying and love ideology. A naïve approach to society is more likely to contain a powerful critique of it than a conscious one.
The artist is not a prophet, and art will not replace religion, something habitually neglected ever since romanticism glamourized the idiosyncrasies of creative minds. Preston Sturges reminds us in his film, which he also wrote, that, yes, the world is nasty, but the artist’s job is not to lecture others from his privileged position, nor to harangue the audience on morality and suffering, or produce political pamphlets in order to enlighten blind consciences. Given that the world is inarguably horrible, the artist’s job is, as it were, to take a sad song and make it better. Make the best illusionary reality instead of hopelessly trying to unveil the “real” reality. Illude, lie, enchant. Like a magician.
Today, the film can be read as an attack on the likes of Spike Lee, for instance, with his cheap swagger passing as style, and other directors of “urgent” films (whenever anything is called “urgent” one should either throw it away or shelve it). They thrive, these types, within acceptable subversions, while speaking like aesthetic Leninists, parading in Cannes and Hollywood Boulevard, advertising radical chic pieces. Frank Capra was, back in Sturges’ day, the one to make social dramas with political messages. And, not surprisingly, his films were the hallmark of American ideology and propaganda in his time. His were “urgent” critiques as well, tolerated and hailed by the industry, now mostly outdated and cheesy.
Better to make good comedies "with a little sex in it" than wearisome "sociological" dramas tackling “political issues”, which intend to instruct, but are actually the true infantry of ideology. These are the works which pretend to be revolutionary, subversive and critical, but operate only within the limits of the established order's permissible subversions. The acceptable critiques.
True artistic immersion in the social problems of the day? More like bourgeois guilt. That self-pleasing mania of dealing with "real issues" like poverty, racism and so on. To be socially conscious, politically involved–– “engaged” as Sartre would have it. Shouldn't the artist use his art to awaken the people? To criticize injustices and stir moral indignation? Shouldn't art try to change the world and not merely interpret it, as Marx said of philosophy? Sullivan's Travels examines all this with finesse: endeavoring consciously in these tasks works against their very purpose. There’s potentially more subversion in a good laughter than in repetitious tirades on the “modern conditions”.
An aesthetic education of man? Easy does it, artist: make 'em laugh, first, then we talk. This is Sturges’ answer in Sullivan’s Travels to the always high-minded, and usually misguided, orientation of artists in times of crisis, which are all the times. Less is more. When it comes to attacking the current manners of domination and suffering, to exposing the harsh realities of poverty and oppression (yada yada yada…)––– then saying all of it is already saying too much.
A good artist, unlike an activist, flourishes in subtlety. A damn good comedy, hard enough to make, turns out to be quite something already, much wider in scope than the sheer politics of the day.
