Art as an Agent for Political Change: Critique of Alain de Botton.

Anna do booked on what to organize
religions do they group together they form institutions and that has all sorts of advantages first of all scale might the Catholic Church pulled in 97 billion dollars last year according to The Wall Street Journal now religions have a much saner attitude to art they have no trouble telling us what art is about essentially it's propaganda Rembrandt is a propagandist in the in the Christian view now the word propaganda sets off alarm bells we think of Hitler we think of Stalin don't necessarily propaganda is a manner of being didactic in honor of something art should be one of the tools by which we improve our society art should be didactic if I was a museum curator I would make a room for love a room for generosity books alone books written by lone individuals are not going to change anything I received a request from a longtime viewer that I respond to the political philosophy of a landable tone you've just heard an uninterrupted but highly edited and compressed form of his philosophy on this topic and I just note I feel as if I'm sort of kicking someone when they're down because this is not really his area of expertise this is definitely not his area of greatest strength thanks to Wikipedia I now know that he first became famous and respected as an author actually for his thoughts about romance stating relations between the sexes falling in and out of love I have no reason to question his credentials under the heading but it's remarkable the extent to which I disagree with them and the extent to which I really have complete contempt for his expressed views in this lecture that I think I have compressed down to two minutes here fairly effectively given the vague resemblance it has at least to my own thoughts in a video many of you will have seen that's just titled on community I have often argued on this channel that there's an important role for community building and institution building I'm normally saying it in reference to veganism as a political movement but it could apply just as easily to the struggle we have as atheists or as nihilus in trying to raise our children with meaningful values and meaningful rituals a meaningful life in what sometimes seems like an intensely meaningless and largely commercialized world so a lance speaks very very rapidly in that clip as you saw it's not sped up that's the that's the space at which he gave the lecture originally so let's now go through it step by step now religions have a much saner attitude - art they have no trouble telling us what art is about essentially it's propaganda Rembrandt is a propagandist in the in the Christian view now the word propaganda sets off alarm bells we think of Hitler we think of Stalin don't necessarily propaganda is a manner of being didactic in honor of something art should be one of the tools by which we improve our society art should be didactic so you guys may have noticed at the start of that clip that I point out to you that he's reached an audience of three quarters of a million viewers just with that one version of the video on one YouTube channel I don't know how many other broadcast media are used for this however you might also notice that it's just coming up now - its seven-year anniversary and I think it is worth asking with any kind of political manifesto of this kind to what extent in seven years have any of these ideas been put into practice to what extent have they found currency - what a sense have they proven to be applicable or effective and would I be going too far if I said not at all that these have been in a seven-year retrospect this program of action is laying out is a complete failure including even the position he takes here on art art as propaganda and this might be the easiest to implement part of his vision major Hollywood movies now and yeah I did look this up for me in the video major Hollywood movies cost about two hundred and fifty million US dollars to make it's easy to say as he does in his rousing conclusion here art should be didactic well there's a real hierarchy of power involved in who would make the decision about what is going to be taught what lessons are going to be set down who is so to speak going to write the script and then who is going to furnish the 250 million dollars to deliver that message we see year after year now artistic projects that may start off with various pretensions of making the world a better place but in the end are scrambling trying to just not drive their own studio to bankruptcy it is a very very difficult struggle to make a movie about a man in skin tight clothing who's been bitten by a radioactive spider earn the five hundred million dollars or more that it needs just to break even so it's interesting to me that this argument as simple as it as it may seem can simply be refuted but pointing to the economic reality of what propaganda is what propaganda always must be and why there is a profound difference between propaganda and art if the government of China which is still to this day a communist country paid two hundred and fifty million dollars to make a film carrying its didactic message as he says do you think that film would earn back the two hundred and fifty million dollars in profits from audiences here in Canada the United States Western Europe from audiences paying to see it this is sadly or strangely not a hypothetical question one of the last really large-scale large budget attempts at propaganda filmmaking from China was a major film about lei Fong I'll tell you a little bit who that is the young life on the early life of lei Fung a National communist hero whose whole life by the way is fiction he originated as a propaganda figure I think he's a propaganda figure still and despite the government putting in a huge budget of course it was all done a non-profit basis it was such a flop it was so on successful that in some cinemas nobody bought even a single ticket and local governments respond to this challenge in different ways apparently in some counties or some areas the government in order to cover up a sense of embarrassment cancel the screenings entirely took the film out of cinemas so that wouldn't have the embarrassment of looking at empty seats and in other counties reportedly they tried to round people up and force them to go and watch the film so yeah there are some basic ideas here about what is art what is propaganda the economic and political basis for why propaganda is so profoundly different from art that a landable tone seems to have gotten to his middle-age years without ever seriously questioning or thinking about and to say this is a one-sided a rose-colored glasses view of propaganda is an understatement I did laugh out loud just now listening back to the tape at the moment when he says well the word propaganda might remind you of the Nazis or Joseph Stalin says don't just don't don't think about that the word propaganda sets off alarm bells we think of Hitler we think of Stalin don't propaganda is something paid for period that that's absolutely part of the definition and it is true that it is not always governments who pay for propaganda it is true that we can all donate money to a cause like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and independent charities especially when they have a clear singular purpose may take on propagandistic art projects filmmaking or what-have-you but point to is that propaganda is normally something the audience will see unwillingly or involuntarily even if that's as simple as Mothers Against Drunk Driving paying to put up a video playing in a public place as an advertisement or a poster I remember they used to be all the time in the buses when you were riding the bus there'd be post there'd be posters advertisements in the bus that's paid for and you didn't choose to see it I do not remember my against drunk driving ever putting together 250 million dollars to make a mainstream Hollywood movie and then trying to earn a profit on how to no dramatizing the misery of people dying in in drunk driving accidents now I want to move past very quickly here the abstract general question of who would pay for this so who would pay for this new school of art and propaganda Steinbach I want to ask you directly you the viewer or you Alain de Botton if you see this would you would you pay the money for this this comes back to one of the great fundamental differences between faith and faithlessness it's very easy to get people to contribute money to a presumed good cause on the basis of faith and people become remarkably skeptical about donating their money when they're making decisions on the basis of something other than faith when people actually believe that they're donating money to save their soul to buy their way into the eternal kingdom of heaven or to defeat some great and supernatural evil it's remarkable how uncritical they are about donating money and not really caring about where it goes and what happens to it by contrast we really do have major campaigns in veganism veganism as an ethical cause as an ethnological cause even as a health-based cause we do have propaganda campaigns that are based on people donating their money to create those works of propaganda and then to somehow advertise them or expose them to an audience or what-have-you and to say people are skeptical about donating their money is an understatement I think one of the questions people ask whenever they drive past a giant billboard telling you not to drink cow milk because think about the suffering of the cows people driving their cars say who would pay for that who indeed would you and all the time I talk to my friends my friends and colleagues in the vegan movement and they tell me that they are donating money to somebody like Joey carbs strong or someone like earthling ed or a direct action everywhere led by twaimz young I have varying degrees of misgiving about the other leaders who are out there in veganism but the level of skepticism the level of scrutiny we don't believe in these people in a very real sense which I'm but on level of faith we don't believe in this cause so the questions about donating money to support propaganda or to support art with this conception of a didactic propagandistic role for art in our society the very simple question of who would pay for it and would you and then what are you gonna do if nobody shows up in the cinema what are you gonna do if the movie bombs are you gonna have the soldiers so you can have the army force people to watch the movie at gunpoint are you gonna force it down people's throat by making it the only thing on TV like North Korea I'm sorry these are maybe dark and extreme questions but at the opposite extreme would you be happy raising two hundred and fifty million dollars and nobody sees the film your money just goes down the drain it's a flop and how many times is that going to go on how could that ever possibly have the durability and influence that he's looking for he wants a theist institutions to resemble the Catholic Church well I'm sorry in the absence of faith it could never possibly be that durable because what you're describing here implicitly is madness [Music]