[quote=Iroquois][quote=Yoda]Keep saying thoughtful and nuanced things, people, and I'll be forced to move this into a thread.[/quote]

Damn, I'm never going to overtake Rodent on the leaderboard if that keeps happening. Time to start posting "Good morning" over and over again.[/quote]

[quote=Iroquois][quote=AgrippinaX][quote=Iroquois][quote=AgrippinaX]Fair enough. It felt like a bit of a rant, although I agree politics should probably be left alone in  art-related forums.[/quote]

I never said that politics should be left alone in regards to the discussion of art, though - if anything, art is inherently political (even if a given piece is lacking in overtly political content) and engaging with that is a necessary part of gaining a deeper appreciation for the form. Otherwise, it's just surface-level aesthetics.[/quote]

It is true that most works of art espouse or put forward at least some form of ideology or worldview, but I don’t think that makes art inherently political. The moment we are no longer able to view a work of art in an abstract manner, we lose the ability to enjoy it. It seems like a waste to me to lose a chance to appreciate something if you disagree with the ideology behind it.[/quote]

I suppose it depends on how you define an abstract manner, then. The flip-side of getting too wrapped up in viewing everything through a narrow ideological lens is abstracting to the point where a given work loses any inherent sense of meaning and any sufficiently convenient interpretation can fill the void.[/quote]

[quote=AgrippinaX][quote=Yoda]Agripp makes an interesting point just now that I hadn't considered before: that even if art is political, it doesn't obligate us to engage with it primarily on that level.[/quote]

Yet you always summarise it better than my long-winded posts ever could. Yes, that’s what I was getting at.[/quote]

[quote=Yoda]Keep saying thoughtful and nuanced things, people, and I'll be forced to move this into a thread.[/quote]

[quote=Yoda]Agripp makes an interesting point just now that I hadn't considered before: that even if art is political, it doesn't obligate us to engage with it primarily on that level.[/quote]

[quote=Iroquois][quote=Yoda]Anyway, for the purposes of running an art-themed forum, I think there's a pretty obvious (and necessary) distinction between examining the political stances films do or don't take, and just using them to pivot to talking about political issues explicitly.[/quote]

True enough - that thread I was talking about is definitely one such example.[/quote]

[quote=AgrippinaX][quote=Iroquois][quote=AgrippinaX]Fair enough. It felt like a bit of a rant, although I agree politics should probably be left alone in  art-related forums.[/quote]

I never said that politics should be left alone in regards to the discussion of art, though - if anything, art is inherently political (even if a given piece is lacking in overtly political content) and engaging with that is a necessary part of gaining a deeper appreciation for the form. Otherwise, it's just surface-level aesthetics.[/quote]

It is true that most works of art espouse or put forward at least some form of ideology or worldview, but I don’t think that makes art inherently political. The moment we are no longer able to view a work of art in an abstract manner, we lose the ability to enjoy it. It seems like a waste to me to lose a chance to appreciate something if you disagree with the ideology behind it.[/quote]

[quote=Yoda]Anyway, for the purposes of running an art-themed forum, I think there's a pretty obvious (and necessary) distinction between examining the political stances films do or don't take, and just using them to pivot to talking about political issues explicitly.[/quote]

[quote=Yoda]I've heard this argument before, and I think it's based on broadening the term without acknowledging said broadening.

"All art is political" is true in the sense that "everything can be art," but both statements are using the terms so broadly that they're rendered close to meaningless. And more importantly, it's kind of playing dumb, because it should be obvious that "politics" in this context means something a lot narrower.[/quote]

[quote=Iroquois][quote=AgrippinaX]Fair enough. It felt like a bit of a rant, although I agree politics should probably be left alone in  art-related forums.[/quote]

I never said that politics should be left alone in regards to the discussion of art, though - if anything, art is inherently political (even if a given piece is lacking in overtly political content) and engaging with that is a necessary part of gaining a deeper appreciation for the form. Otherwise, it's just surface-level aesthetics.[/quote]

[quote=AgrippinaX]Fair enough. It felt like a bit of a rant, although I agree politics should probably be left alone in  art-related forums.[/quote]