On Art Appreciation

Credit, Credulity & Credentials

Note: If you came here because of this article from The Noticer, I want to clarify that this is not a review of the right wing indie film Once Upon a Time in Minnesota. I rather used the controversy about it on Twitter as a conversation starter for some things I deem important.

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I recently had an argument on Twitter with some American right-wing influencers. I regret this little online drama and wish to turn it into something constructive. In fact, I will use io sketch out some thoughts that I wanted to express anyway some day. I think there is a lesson for all of us in this discussion, even though it went quite a bit in the wrong direction.

It all started when I stumbled upon a tweet by an indie film-maker I hadn’t heard of before announcing the YouTube premiere of his new 50-minute film while advertising it to several well-known accounts in the Twitter right-wing bubble. He said it was inspired by the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, but also by his Scandinavian heritage and the history of his home state in America.

Elsewhere, he had some interesting things to say about art vs propaganda. Quote:

ART VS PROPAGANDA

I find stories made by activists for the purpose of propagandizing to be weak, dull and devoid of creativity. My modus operandi is to simply tell engaging tales that draw from White/European history, mythology and folklore. I have no interest in hitting my viewers over the head with a mEsSAgE. My films are White solidarity in praxis: media made by our people, for our people, putting us back at the center of our own stories.

That’s an excellent approach, in fact probably the only sound one to get anywhere artistically. Even if you have strong political convictions (of whatever persuasion) and feel inclined to make art, you have to care more about art than about politics. Most right-wing projects start the other way around. First they think of what they want to achieve in “metapolitics”, then they think of a vehicle. First, there should be the irrepressible drive to create, either to paint, film, write, perform, make music or whatever medium appeals to you.

There is certainly nothing wrong about messages in movies or even propaganda per se (though it tends to be shallow by its very nature). Messages and certain ideas about the world we live in can be found basically in every movie we see. But we do get annoyed when the message is too simple or banal or naive, too crudely stated or too prominent. We certainly do want movies not just to tell us stories but also to criticise some things while emphasising, affirming, even celebrating others, through the means of telling a story, through grand emotions and spellbinding optics.

The message-driven approach can work within narrow, ideologically committed circles. That was the case with “RAC” music, with the downside that its appeal was limited to fringe subcultural and ideological niches that were rather appalling not only to normies but also to other people within the right-wing spectrum. Ideally, at least according to old school metapolitical theory, you should aim to reach beyond the choir you are preaching to, gain respect and recognition also outside the niche, and maybe create sympathy or at least acceptance for your “message” and underlying political ideas (which, again, should not be your primary motivation).

Sometimes art and propaganda can align harmoniously on a golden spot and bring forth masterpieces. So Mick Jagger can watch Triumph of the Will a dozen times and hang out with Leni Riefenstahl without becoming a Nazi, while generations of cinephiles worshipped Battleship Potemkin religiously without becoming commies (that particular film however was far from being harmless - like no other it made Soviet communism look cool, exciting and acceptable to large parts of the Western intelligentsia). Ideology is not necessarily opposed to or an enemy of art. You always have to ask: What does it enable the artist to do? And what does it prevent or even block him from doing or recognising?

Currently I am working on a rather voluminous book on movies “seen from the right”, in which I will discuss about 100 movies that I think are relevant to and resonating with right-wing issues. It will include a discussion of the topics of nation, religion, myth, dystopia, multiculturalism, social criticism etc.

The range of the films I chose is very broad: from mainstream classics to obscure fringe stuff, from American blockbusters to European arthouse, from the silent era to present day Netflix material. In this book I will also address the question of “right-wing art” in general as well as the practical problems that come with indie/guerilla/no budget film-making. And so I am also eager to include unknown films by indie film-makers.

So my initial reaction to the film announcement was curiosity and also a “professional” interest.

Now comes the part where I have to be unpleasantly honest. Though I started watching the film with an open, benevolent mind and rather small expectations, I was not only disappointed, but rather shocked by what I saw. Aesthetically it seemed closer to evangelical Christian entertainment than to Tarantino (I have recently binge-watched parts of the hugely successful but atrocious God’s Not Dead series to educate myself).

About 30 minutes in I gave up because nothing, absolutely nothing, in it seemed to work. I privately sent the link to a few friends who had the same reaction.

I don’t want to focus on this movie too much, because I want to make a more general point. Suffice it to say that its biggest problem is its cast, seemingly consisting of amateur actors or non-actors (who may be friends or family) with little charisma, chemistry or screen experience. They are made to carry scenes that are clearly beyond their scope. As a compensation these scenes are often drowned in thick layers of emotional or ominous music that tries to fill the gap and bears little connection to what is going on.

Casting is an extremely crucial thing in film-making; it can do or undo a film in spectacular ways. If you use amateur or non-actors you need to adapt your script to what they are able to do, and some things can only be done with actors who can really pull off what you wrote and make your written characters come to life. At best, you can make them “play themselves” in a “neorealist” fashion, but even that is more difficult than some may imagine. (In a movie, it takes a lot of artifice to create a sense of authenticity.)

This poses a huge problem for indie film-makers who explicitly posit themselves on the right side of the political spectrum. The majority of the art world, especially in show business and performing arts, is politically liberal. Even in Hollywood, right-leaning A-list actors such as Mel Gibson or James Woods are in the minority and do have a hard time because of that.

Actors are usually very zeitgeist conforming people, which comes with their job: They need the approval of the audience, and they can’t afford a bad reputation (unless they settle for becoming another Klaus Kinski). Anyone today who openly aligns with dissident or right-wing politics (especially pro-white) faces the danger of getting smeared, doxxed, fired and maligned. If you want to pursue a serious acting career it is very risky to associate with right-wing people. To a lesser extent the same is true for people who work in the crew: Professionals who participate in right-wing/dissident projects may also face the danger of being exposed and not finding work in the industry again.

One could imagine an utopian future where pro-white infrastructures and sub-cultures are large enough to approach the scope of the Christian evangelist milieus, so actors can appear freely in movies associated with the political right. It may not bring forth a new Mel Gibson, but maybe at least a pro-white Kevin Sorbo, who is a decent actor committed to his religious cause.

Now I need to sum up the internet drama that unfolded when I voiced criticism of that film. Some of you will get angry for what I say here, but this is what I thought and felt.

In the past I have sometimes been asked by people who I personally like or whose activism I respect to review or promote some thing they did: a book, a video or a project. If it wasn’t good I would tell them privately why I didn’t want to support it and what I thought was wrong with it.

I remember a young, intelligent painter who was hyped in the German New Right scene many years ago who sent me an art book he had published, asking me to promote it. He had copied his whole nude body, piece by piece, on a Xerox copy machine, in black and white, including his you-know-what. I failed to see the point of this and told him I can’t possibly support this.

Now, I certainly did realise that the indie film-maker in question is an ambitious idealist whose political views I probably, roughly share (I just got glimpses) and who seems to have lots of correct ideas. So my first impulse was to not say anything at all about his film. I don’t think my voice matters much in the right-wing Anglosphere anyway. But I have to confess I was not just disappointed, but also a bit angry at this film.

Next, I saw people recommending it by saying: “Support right-wing art!” I was a bit baffled by this and replied by stating “this film is shockingly bad”, which seemed like a clear-cut, self-evident, non-controversial fact to me. I thought it was unwise, even “bad optics”, to promote it just for ideological reasons.

The next day, I saw a lengthy tweet by a musician in our sphere, someone who headed a RAC band in the early 1990s and is now running an “Evolian” Neofolk project. This is significant because back then his band was one of the few of its kind that was able to reach out beyond its niche, simply because the music was appealing and unusual for the genre, adding Goth, Metal and symphonic influences. At least it worked for me who am into totally different music and on a different spot of the right-wing spectrum. I was into stuff like Death in June, which is a fringe band as well, but which appeals to a wider spectrum of people than, say, Skrewdriver (I knew an actual German commie being crazy about it).

What this musician wrote about the movie baffled me. He praised every aspect of it - camera work, pacing, dialogue, directing - and said he was blown away by how fantastic it is. I felt exactly the opposite. His appraisal seemed to me not just wrong, but downright insane, absurdly exaggerated. It smelled a bit like “the Emperor’s new clothes” to me.

It would have been different if he had pointed out some concrete things or scenes in the film that he really liked or thought were good, but talking about a film in a general fashion as if it’s the second coming of Stanley Kubrick when it’s not can be severely self-defeating. It just reeks of boosterism for ideological reasons: an artist is over-praised and hyped simply because he is “ourguy”, and overly-generous standards are applied because of group solidarity.

And I think this is just as wrong-headed as creating art for the “purpose of propagandizing”. In fact, it is basically the same thing.

Reading these tweets, I couldn’t hold back any more and publicly disagreed with the musician in a rather harsh way. He replied to me, now putting emphasis on the film-maker’s laudable effort rather than on its end result. I replied saying that I don’t think we will help “right-wing art” by pretending it is good if it is actually bad.

Other people then joined the fray, really angry at me and sometimes viciously attacking me on a personal level. I was rebuked for criticising the film-maker who had put a lot of effort and money into the film and risked a lot by putting it “out there”. Some said I should do it better myself before I dare to open my mouth, or that I should show my own old student’s films for comparison, which is just silly. I was accused of being uncaring, callous, ruthless. I was beseeched to nurture and encourage talent rather than tear people down.

Now that the smoke clouds have evaporated, I want to make clear that I can completely understand these concerns. In fact, I share them myself. The “movement” is full of people who tear each other down for petty reasons, but I’m not one of them, and I don’t want to come across as such.

I also know from my own (rather limited) experience and through friendship with quite a few artists that any artist who puts himself “out there” is very vulnerable to criticism. Ages ago, at film school, I dabbled in low budget film-making as well, so I know how insanely difficult film-making is. But sometimes some things need to be said.

I remember that students at film school would be pussy-footing around a lot when the weekly batch of student films was screened for critical examination. Miserable, dull, pretentious, bland or mean-spirited films (there were of course fresh, inspired and charming ones too), made for mere practising purposes, would be treated and discussed like unfathomable mysteries, often by the same people who would ridicule and dismiss John Ford or Hitchcock at first sight. They were humble towards their peer group, but snobbish towards the great old masters.

The reason was their fear of being exposed at the frontline some day as well, when it would be their turn to be mercilessly shot at. Usually students freshly arriving were very arrogant, and rather humbled a year later.

Occasionally somebody would call out the bullshit and start an aggressive argument, which was refreshing and cleaned the air. It didn’t matter so much whether they were being brutally unfair or brutally honest; passionate arguments and controversy about films gave you a sense that these things mattered, that there was a meaning in what the aspiring film-makers showed on screen and how they chose to do it. Lively, unfiltered arguments and discussions were important for progress, stimulation and healthy competition.

If you haven’t had first-hand experience of film-making (and even participating in a small amateur film can teach you a lot), I recommend watching one of the countless films about film-making, both documentaries and features, both about masterpieces and about disasters. American Movie (1999) is a (fantastic) documentary about a failed small indie film, while Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014) is about a failed huge Hollywood film.

Watch Overnight (2003) about the story behind The Boondock Saints to learn how a director’s megalomania makes him meteorically rise and then equally quickly fall, crash and burn. Or watch Hearts of Darkness (1991), about the utter madness behind Apocalypse Now, one of the greatest films ever made. Or watch semi-fictional, affectionate films about “bad” yet dedicated film-makers like Ed Wood (1995) or The Disaster Artist (2017) about Tommy Wiseau and the making of The Room, or classics like La Nuit américaine (1972) and Living in Oblivion (1995).

Sometimes you’ll find some of the nicest people you have ever met making bad and weak movies, and sometimes (rather often I’m afraid) terrible characters who create exciting masterpieces. Film is like a dangerous, tyrannical demon that devours those in its service, and you have to become a bit demonic (obsessed, megalomaniacal and ruthless) yourself to engage with it.

So yes, there are human beings behind both good and bad movies, and both good and bad movies can cost blood, sweat, tears and money on a huge scale, and both good and bad movies “take guts” to offer to the public.

But the public always was and always will be merciless. What counts will always and forever be not the effort, but the result of it.

And even then, the result can be received very differently by different people. (As a film-maker you also have to ask yourself what kind of audience or public you want to please or get approval from.) Films that bombed at the box office become beloved classics many years later (think of Citizen Kane, Blade Runner, Vertigo); films panned by the critics regularly become enormous commercial successes (think of almost any movie from the recent Marvel franchise), but are also forgotten soon.

So, in my opinion, the “effort” behind a film matters less than some people tend to think.

I also think it is a mistake to cut too much slack just because somebody is a “novice”. It is a hard truth that talent is given and not something gained through effort. Hard work and growing experience can improve a given talent (sometimes dramatically) and make the best of it, but only within its given limits (and very often talent declines with age some day).

Usually, real talent shows itself already in very early efforts, even if they are awkward and amateurish. A research into any great director’s first steps will show that this is true. Take a look at early films of Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Gaspar Noé, Lars von Trier or Robert Eggers. Even Kubrick’s debut Fear and Desire, which he disavowed later, betrays considerable talent. So does Tarantino’s unfinished short My Best Friend’s Birthday. He is already recognisably there, just not yet hatched from his egg.

So let me make this clear: I see this is as a rather impersonal thing. When I criticised the indie film, it wasn’t my intention to “demoralise” anybody or shit on people just to “feel smug”, as somebody put it. If I have offended anybody, I’m sincerely sorry for that. I don’t want film-makers on our side to fail, I sympathise with their efforts and want them to pursue their dreams, but I also warn them to be cautious not to chase a mirage like so many before them who were drawn to this business and drowned by it.

Further, my reaction wasn’t aimed directly at the film-maker, but primarily at the wildly exaggerated praise from the musician. I guess my response was polemical and exaggerated as well to match his. Because this is the point where things start to passionately matter to me.

“Looking for the good” in a piece of work is one thing. Out-of-proportion praise-bombing for ideological reasons is another. Mere good intentions are not enough. You cannot meme yourself or anybody else into making a good film. This kind of promotion lowers the standards, and if a film-maker can improve, baseless flattery won’t help but rather make him delusional about what he can and should do or not. I’m concerned about aesthetic blindness and delusions induced by ideological partisanship. I think this is a real threat to the possibility of something good happening within right-wing cultural (or subcultural) spheres.

I wish more than anyone else a flourishing of “right-wing art” and artists, and especially films. One of the reasons so little happens in this respect seems to be that most right-wingers care more about history, politics, biology, philosophy and such, less about the arts. I perceive a serious lack of artistic literacy in the right-wing sphere, with a few outstanding examples.

I guess this is why some in the bubble are getting so excited about AI right now, because it can easily produce fancy pictures of blonde maidens in cornfields or generic heroic figures in shining armour waving flags. All of this is rightly called “slop”. It may be used for propaganda purposes or “content” illustration, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with art or “aesthetics”, as the enthusiasts often call it.

Some people who joined the Twitter argument agreed with me. Here is what my friend “Great Rebellion” (who is a programmer of retro computer games) said:

The tendency to pretend art made by “our guys” is great for ideological reasons when it’s really absolutely not is a big problem and only makes sure the standards remain low. Things can only improve if we start to be honest about that.

And here is what another guy said, replying to the previous:

I hate how seemingly people are scared to properly and harshly criticize art. As an artist, when I show my work, what I really want to hear is what people hate about it. That’s the signal that allows me to improve.

And finally Kerwin Fjøl , defending Yours Truly:

People are dragging this post for not being supportive enough, but yeah, I watched like a third of this thing and it’s indeed quite bad. It’s comparable to those Christian videos on the YouTube channel EncourageTV but less competently made. This kind of thing needs to be avoided.

So I guess the conflict is really a conflict of values. To some it mattered more to be socially supportive of an artist “on our side” in the making, to me the actual result and the way it was promoted mattered more. I realise I was too confrontational in the spat, and once people get upset they stop listening and interpret everything you say in bad faith.

The escalating dynamics of the debate however brought forth other, more general questions. I guess everybody who is passionate about art has been there before (especially when young and strident).

Some were upset with me for having the audacity to pass such harsh judgment on the film. How can I be so sure that it is a bad movie? One person framed this as arrogance-ignorance and asked what “credentials” I have that I would dare to judge someone’s talent. My answer:

I don’t need “credentials” to make an assessment of talent, and neither do you or anyone else. You just have to open your eyes, and gather some viewing experience. If you disagree with my assessment, I can’t force you to see what I see. (…)

If you want to know why “I feel confident”, it comes from a lot of viewing experience, some practical experience and friendship with artists. That doesn’t mean I’m always right or that you are obliged to take my word. You have to decide whether I’m making sense or not.

The question at stake here is whether an objective statement about a piece of art can be made at all - or even if there are any clear criteria to objectively declare what is art and what isn’t, or, on another level, what is “high” and what is “low” art - or, even more generally, what is truly good, true and beautiful, if you happen to care about these things.

Jonathan Bowden, ever the elitist, used to say that art is “mercilessly hierarchical”. That sounds good and edgy in theory, and you might agree if you dread to sink into the dull swamp of subjectivism and relativism where everything is just a matter of “taste” and everything lies in the eye of no matter which beholder. I doubt that any lover of the arts ever thought or felt like that, even if it seems true on some level. We want our art to be distinct, to excel, and we don’t want it placed on equal footing with art we think is inferior (for whatever reasons; those can be very subtle).

However, when it comes to the arts, things become notoriously very complex, and you will often find even people who know a lot about it or who are skilful artists themselves getting into astonishing, vast disagreement with each other.

Sometimes it would be so very nice and satisfying to have infallible authorities at hand to confirm once and for all that our opinions are the correct ones - just like in the famous “wish fulfilment” scene from Annie Hall, when Woody Allen miraculously produces Marshall McLuhan out of nowhere to utterly destroy some annoying wannabe intellectual in a cinema queue behind him. Next, the Allen character breaks the fourth wall, telling the audience that such things unfortunately only happen in the movies.

But in real life, who shall be the judge? There is no God or Pope of the Arts to tell us which of us is right or wrong and why. And it is certainly true that many of our assessments are very subjective. But if we give up making passionate judgements and subscribe to a lame relativism and “art egalitarianism”, it becomes boring, because then any opinion is as good (or bad) as any other and any work of art equal to any other. That is to take all tension and meaning out of art. Without standards, there can be no criticism. But standards shift and might not be shared or acknowledged by everybody, including other critics. When criticising art, you have to act “as if” your critique is objective, even though you know it’s not really. This is a paradox that cannot be solved, only endured.

To sort this problem out thoroughly is beyond the scope of this essay, but let me outline a few things. Everybody seems to know what beauty and truth are and has feelings about those notions, but both evade a clear definition. Truth in an artistic context is not necessarily factual truth, but the truth of just one way among others of looking at things. That is why artists speak of “poetic” truth or “ecstatic” truth, as Werner Herzog once put it.

Beauty can take many forms, and sometimes one can find beauty in ugly and terrifying things because they make us understand aspects of the truth (Rilke, speaking of angels, wrote that “beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure”.) Beauty sometimes is just the moment of seeing something extraordinarily well, “truthfully” expressed, in ways we have never seen before.

Truth is not some thing you just find, own and put in your pocket for good. Truth is an ongoing, never-ending process. It must be lived and experienced, step by step in order to be discovered and understood. It is a matter of stages, as Kierkegaard put it.

And I think the same principle applies to aesthetic experience and understanding. If you want to learn something about literature, read many different books from different epochs and countries. If you want to learn about movies, watch many different movies. If you want to learn about music, listen to lots of different music. The more you do that, the more you will enjoy the art you are studying and the more confident you will become in your judgment. But you do need a talent for that as well, and you will only be able to operate within the potential given to you.

At some point you will learn to discern between craftmanship and ingenious inspiration, between form and content, and then about the relationship between these two. You may learn to appreciate “mere” artistry and craftmanship, but - depending on which stage in your life you are and what your soul craves, needs or abhors - you may be wildly antipathetic to the content it expresses, or you may find that you are facing a perfectly made empty shell. You may also realise that a form can create a content that can only be expressed through this particular form.

You may fully understand a composer’s genius, but still feel revolted, even threatened by what his music expresses, and this can have highly intricate reasons (think of Nietzsche’s enmity towards his once-idol Wagner in his later years). You may intellectually “get” why Stanley Kubrick is such a revered film-maker, but you may still not like or enjoy his work, maybe because you find it cold and cynical. You may understand that Bach wrote much more complex music than Bananarama, yet still enjoy the latter far more. Sometimes you will open a book that dislikes and rejects you immediately, and will only accept you years later when you have matured and are ready for it.

Sometimes you have to dig yourself into a major piece of art (say, the Divine Comedy, Goethe’s Faust or a Shakespeare play) in order to understand what makes it great, and that can be demanding, hard work until you get to the pay-off. Sometimes you’ll rewatch a film that delighted you in your childhood, and as an adult you realise how cheesy and badly made it is. Nonetheless you enjoy watching it, because it gives you a cozy sense of nostalgia. Sometimes you prefer watching a mediocre but entertaining trifle to a harrowing, uncomfortable masterpiece with subtitles. Sometimes a piece of art succeeds perfectly, but only on a small scale, and sometimes it succeeds only partially or even fails, but on an epic, nonetheless impressive scale.

What I want to say is that the ways of talking about the merits and shortcomings of a piece of art (or just entertainment) are endless, but it can be done without either appealing to authority (your own or somebody else’s) or a fruitless relativism.

I was told that my criticism of the indie film wasn’t “constructive”. My bad, and I hope I have somewhat made up for this neglect with this essay. But I also must say that those who promoted the film didn’t give me the impression that they actually liked it, and an idea what exactly it was they enjoyed.

And so I hereby advocate not only constructive criticism, but also constructive praise.