====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
"S. Artesian" wrote: > > ====================================================================== > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > ====================================================================== > > Huh? Are we talking about D.W. Griffith's "Birth of A Nation"? Or is there > some other Birth of A Nation out there that doesn't glorify the KKK riding > to the resuce of white womanhood? Carrol's take is like saying Woodrow > Wilson did the most for world peace by exposing the hypocrisy of capitalist > "isolationism." Or that Teddy Roosevelt did so much for the equality of > races by actually going on safari in Africa. Wilson and TR were agents of an imperialist state, _acting_ to serve that state. We are talking about aninanimate object, which cannot speak for itself or act for itself. The viewer, on her own, or with guidance fromothers, determines how that object is used in the world. Birth of a Nation was actually USED by civil-rights activists to clarify for selected audiences the illumination of the enemy which, given the right perspective, it makes visible. The viewer needs to get that 'proper perspective' from elsewhere, from political practice. You can't react to art passively and expect to get anything useful from it. The Battleship Potemkin (influenced, incidentally, by Birth of a Nation) could easily be used, in the right context, for reactionary purposes. You fetishize artworks if you assume that their intention works automatically. Carrol ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
