Ideology as Boundary Condition in Filmic Art

And because of this, there is a timely aspect to art. It is of a moment. The original artwork is always receding from view as times change. Art touches on the timeless, but the artwork itself (much as we may wish to deny it) is time-bound.


At a certain point it disappears entirely, or is reconfigured into something which its original audience would find alien, or is kept around as an honored but increasingly baffling relic (we know this is important, but we're not longer sure why) that has an honored but fossilized place at the table, like a great-grandparent safely seated for Thanksgiving supper.

I've often thought this about comedy, in how it would be virtually impossible for humour to translate across multiple generations. References to pop culture, the way language and slang is used, the social issues of the day, all of these will eventually change, wiping out all of the short cuts a comedian must use to make his ideas and images cut through their delivery.


I used to take some solace in remembering my childhood relationship to Monty Python, and how I would find so much of it funny, even when they would mention obscure British parliamentarian figures or celebrities that I didn't know then (and still don't know now). And they still functioned since what I was actually laughing at was the sound of the names, and it was really more the musicality of language which I was responding to. The specific references really didn't matter. They were timeless. Or so I thought. But then I think of how our relationship even to the sound of language, its rhythms, the cadences, how we subliminally encode what specific kind of accents mean to us (will lower class or upper class ways of speaking in Britain remain consistent 100 years from now, will our impressions of the rich or the poor, the presumed educated or the uneducated nature of those ways of speaking still hold the same prejudices) and I realized even the basic operating tools of humor can't help but ultimately change.


And then I hear people talking about the immortality of artists once they really hit their A game, how they are now for the ages, and can only laugh at the complete hopelessness of such a thing. Really, the only joke that may still have a chance of being universally funny a thousand years from now (even though it is a joke I don't imagine many people other than me find terribly funny)

This is the confines of language and observational/reference humor, less so humor in general. Slapstick forever.

Chaplin, Keaton and Llloyd will ride eternal, shiny and chrome.

Yes, I suppose this has a chance to be true, in how we can still appreciate art from the Renaissance, as it is mostly figurative and frequently engaged in the kind of physical drama which can be instinctively understood with pretty passive observation.


And maybe people will always relate in the same way to the Tramp character, kicking the upper crust in the ass. Maybe that will be universal forever. But even these basic elements can warp as time goes on. Maybe that kick in the pants will one day be viewed as being completely uncalled for. An 'unneccessary act of aggression' against the 'providers of employment'. Or maybe inequality will be something entirely alien to people of the future (lol).



It does stand a significantly better chance of anything language based though, that is almost for sure.

I don't care for tunafish or turtles and ideology is in the eye of the beholder at the time the beholder is beholding.. Take a Shakespeare class and see how those plays changed with the times even though one is dealing with the same work over and over again.

It's a small consolation to think that that which is truly timeless will be all those videos of guys getting hit in the genitals by various objects. America's Funniest Home Videos will have a timeless element, but above the base, immediate, sensual depictions which our lizard brains will always appreciate, that which depends upon more abstraction and interplay (e.g., the sublime) will retreat from us.

And dick jokes. Rome graffiti covered the city walls in dick jokes.

The lower the brow, the longer the brow.

I hope we are not reducing crotch hits to being some culturally empty gesture only worthy to the dum-dum's of the world. Especially in a thread about the political import of every element of art.


Physical and even scatalogical humour like this has layer upon layer of culturally significant functions. It humanizes those who seem to exist on a level above the common man. It is the just desserts come-uppance doled out to our oppressors, an expression of anger that doesn't need to be resolved in truly consequential violence. It allows for empathy and community towards the daily indignities of the down-trodden, when it is the man in the street who is the victim of blunt force trauma to their dong or ass. It is a valve that is used to decompresses anxiety and panic when introduced into a moment of great seriousness: the fart as an emotional blowhole.



A bonk on the head or a kick in the dick or a tumble into the gutter are essentially perfect jokes. They are the haiku of comedy. Some may find them elemental to the point of childishness, but they have maintained themselves for centuries for the simple reason they have no need to evolve with the times. They have said, and continued to say, everything they need to in the most direct manner. They are jokes which both children and the geriatric, the upper and lower classes, should be able to equally participate in.



It's possible they have been as important to the survival of the species as penicillin or the words 'I'm sorry' and 'thank you'. Who would ever want to live in a world without such a simple thing that can bring us all together.


*pushes Corax head first into a pile of horse dung*


*takes bow, curtain closes*

I'd assert that all movies are political, even though the politics often are "assigned" after the movie is seen. In the Die Hard movies, we have Bruce Willis as the usual inarticulate, macho cop, chasing bad guys, shooting, blowing up stuff, one of the biggest gender stereotypes. In Silence of the Lambs, we have a male serial killer skinning female victims, being chased down by an methodical female cop who's not part of the "boy's club" in the precinct house. She doesn't do car chases or blow up stuff.

Both movies fit right into gender stereotypes.

As for Napoleon Dynamite, I'd expect that no movie producer would think about making a movie with such an awkward female character until a male character had done it first.

"I'd assert that all movies are political, even though the politics often are "assigned" after the movie is seen. "

Responding to my own response, I recall when I was in grad school studying clinical psych and many studies of human behavioral "categories" had a parameter that addressed judgement and moralisms. It seems to be variable of human behavior that some people need to place a moral judgement on anything or anybody. Everything gets a "morality score". That fades over into what we call politics in the sense that one group or another wants to advance an agenda, based on what they think is right and, therefore what government should do or enforce.

Movies fit right into this via the endless culture wars about who's allowed to see what. What's "right" of course depends on ideology and politics.

In that aspect, I'd pose the question of what movie could someone make that is NOT ideological and doesn't make any judgement about what's right and wrong. Conflict and resolution is the nature of plot lines, so what plot could not have conflict? Would there be anything left?

Welcome to the Dollhouse has a terribly awkward female lead and came before Napoleon Dynamite. Just saying. Got no ax to grind.

When your a hammer everything's a nail... i had a friend who wouldnt let us watch mortal kombat in peace with commentary on the films politics, it was mortal kombat!! I just want blood haha

I also would say america has a problem separating its entertainment/art from its politics.
A very good example is the current state of late night talk shows .

There used to be a line, now its treated like we are all to too lazy to go out and find the information it has to be fed to us like children.

Putting aside what you wrote about Lambs (which I also disagree with), what is with these takes I keep seeing that claim that Die Hard is some sort of explicit embracing of toxic masculinity? Where is that supported in the movie? If anything, the movie's about rejecting that, because part of the point is that John, not Holly, was the one in the wrong when he did the "alpha male" thing by harassing her for distancing herself from him, because he immediately admits to himself that he messed up by doing so, and he accepts her independence at the end by calling her by her maiden name (without her ever having to concede any independence herself, because she never even hints she's going to move back to New York for him). I mean, there's literally a scene where he admits that he should've been more supportive of her before!:

When it comes to things like a person not supporting their spouse like in Die Hard, or a woman wanting to be one of the equals in a boy's club, like The Silence of the Lambs, I feel these are themes in storytelling and not politics. Politics is when when they try to get political about the themes, and that's where it feels preachy when more recent movies do that. I just feel they need to go back to letting themes be themes, without feeling like they have to get political about them.

There isn't such a clean delineation between "themes in storytelling" and politics, especially since the storytellers' personal politics are almost invariably an influence (consciously or not) on the stories that they do end up telling. I don't know how you can look at the ways in which Die Hard and Silence of the Lambs write matters of gender equality (or lack thereof) into their stories and conclude that there is nothing political about that whatsoever. I don't think that films fit cleanly into a binary of "no politics whatsoever" and "political and preachy about it", nor do I necessarily think this is a new thing if films like The Birth of a Nation are anything to go by.

Besides, the plot of Napoleon Dynamite literally revolves around an election so saying it has no politics whatsoever would be a little silly.

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His name is "Jinnistan" not "Jinniston." He didn't quit, but was banned. That he was banned implies that he was unable cooperate. And he wrote many long posts of his own. Cheers.

Those are good points. I guess after thinking about it more, films feel too political if they get preachy about their politics for me. Movies like Die Hard and The Silence of the Lambs, didn't feel preachy at all, if that makes sense.

I was watching the movie The Batman for example, as there is a scene where a major character starts to preach about 'white privilege'. This brought the movie down for me, because it's as if the filmmakers had to turn the story into a race thing, and preach about it through dialogue. Who cares if certain characters in the movie are white, just stick to the themes, without preaching...

But that is just my idea of being too political when you have to preach about it, if that makes sense.

I concede it is a little jarring to actually hear the phrase "white privilege" in the context of a superhero movie, though I'd still contend it's justifiably uncomfortable because it adds an extra degree of distance to the dynamic between Bruce and Selina as they already exist at completely opposite ends of the class spectrum.

I understand the rich vs. poor class, but I didn't think they had to make it a race thing, and just mention the rich vs. poor part but leave race out of it, since the theme is rich vs. poor, not race, or so I felt.

Well, those themes are inherently political, it's just a matter of whether they're well executed or not. Like, something like Captain Marvel was pretty overbearing with its "grrrl power!" pandering, which felt calculated to draw more attention to Marvel itself for empowering a female superhero, rather than just let that empowerment speak for itself, which is something that Silence Of The Lambs did far better, since it presented a female character merely choosing to be tough/resourceful on multiple occasions, without forcing itself to make a big deal out of it for brownie points from the audience.