compared2what? wrote:Alex Cox wrote:It explains how the work of a talentless boozer, Jackson Pollock, found its way into museums owned by the Rockefellers, and thence onto gallery walls all over the US. Pollock's slap-dash canvases were bought and sold - at US taxpayers' expense - to show that American art was "better" than the crude naturalism which Russians supposedly preferred. Unfortunately, most Americans prefer crude naturalism, as do I: given a choice between a Pollock or a Norman Rockwell I would gaze on the Rockwell any day.
That's such an insane choice for someone who's objecting to mid-century American propaganda to make...
Again, this is a misinterpretation of what Cox is saying. What he is saying is "I'd rather eat shit..."
I understand how some of you might make that misinterpretation, though. I just found it ironic that barracuda--being one to defend the artistic merit of the propagandists--gets so hung up on the criticism of Pollock. So Cox doesn't like Pollock. It's beside the point. Again, that's a matter of taste.
The real point is that the hugely successful propagandists thrived whether they had initial immense popular appeal or not. Cox--like barracuda--thinks Searchers is a masterpiece. Indeed, is able to appreciate artistry where he feels it exists. But he is always quick to contextualize it for what it is.
Which brings me to the biggest point of the whole Patriotic cum HUAC > CIA/Defense Dept/Pentagon > faschist movement to fill heads with oh-so glory-gloriously beautiful poop:
IT IS TO THE EXCLUSION OF WHOLE LOT OF OTHER WORKS THAT MIGHT OCCUPY A MORE MEANINGFUL PLACE OTHERWISE.
To take just one fairly early example, because it has gained cult notoriety over the last decade since Scorsese's paean to HH:
Why Suppress Salt of the Earth?
http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~smbosche/courses/read/2.htm
Meanwhile, Congressman Donald Jackson of California, a member of the Committee [House Committee on Un-American Activities], quoted Hearst columnist Victor Riesel in Congress, warning that Communists were making a picture close to the atomic testing grounds of Los Alamos: the subversives’ proximity to secret weapons was deemed ominous. (Jackson, who was determined to quash the movie, which he called “a new weapon for Russia,” also noted that the film company had “imported two auto carloads of colored people for the purpose of shooting a scene of mob violence”—it didn’t occur to him that the black arrivals were actually film technicians.) Other technicians and laboratories declined to work on the sound and film developing; the Pathe laboratories withdrew from the film processing. Distributors boycotted the movie; even after ten years’ litigation, the producers failed in their efforts to enforce antitrust laws against the suppression of their film. Roy Brewer had assured Congressman Jackson that the Hollywood AFL Film Council would do "everything” possible to prevent Salt of the Earth from being exhibited, and projectionists and theater owners who were members of Brewer’s union would not show it. The American Legion forestalled a number of bookings. Still, the movie had sporadic engagements in ten cities. Those who saw it in Los Angeles were urged to park far from the theater because FBI agents were said to be collecting license plate numbers from cars in the lot beside the movie house.
The game has gotten a lot more sophisticated since those heady days of the cold war, ladies and gentlemen. Alternate views on politics and art are so marginalized that the likes of George Clooney are considered to be iconoclasts in spite of their service to the big machine.
