Louis Proyect wrote: > My review of "No Country for Old Men" has generated a more general > discussion about art and politics on my blog and on Stan Goff's Feral > Scholar. Although the debate has been pretty polarized over the role > of Cormac McCarthy in realizing some ideal about Great Literature, > just about every participant lays claim to radicalism or Marxism. > > One of the more ubiquitous posters is one John Steppling, who seeks > to rescue art from commissars like myself who are represented as > latter day partisans of the proletarian novel and socialist realism: > > You cannot attack Mccarthy for not writing a book making the didatic > points you want him to make. Thats not what literature does at any > time. I find a lot of people on all political sides become a bit > frightened by characters when they are constructed as McCarthy > constructs them…by which I mean without conventional sentimentality > and motivation.
I don't know what's been said in the discussion, but my feeling is that "No Country for Old Men" does have a political point. It's just not one that's especially pleasant to the left. My reading is that the movie is all about the Tommy Lee Jones character (thus the movie's title), rather than being about the other two main characters. The world had become so chaotic and lawless (circa 1980!) that even a dedicated lawman like Jones gives up. The anarchy of the situation was symbolized to me by the scene at the end where the Javier Bardem character is hit, along with the behavior of the two boys. If I am right in my interpretation, the film is profoundly right wing. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
