The Culture Wars

[FlashDangerpants]

No. It just means making a f****** movie.

You would make it about porn, you old dirty bastard.

[accelafine]

No. It just means making a f****** movie.

You would make it about porn, you old dirty bastard.

'Interesting' where your mind immediately went to

[phyllo]

In some cases less easy to see because ON THAT ISSUE the "woke" side has essentially won and the anti-woke" side reduced to a a smallish if vocal minority. That was not the case say for something like South Pacific when new on Broadway or even new as a film << Even the movie was a decade before Loving vs Virginia >> In other words, we now don't tend to see this work as an attack on established values. That was not the case when it was new. Banned in certain parts of the country and even lawmakers trying outlaw it as "communist agenda". Not that THIS battle of the culture wars began post WW II. Showboat on stage was 1927 (a film version 1936). So ....... if we were back in 1960 we would be perceiving THAT battle of the culture wars having been running for three decades.

Let's see, what date would you assign as the start of the "woke" issue "workplace harassment" (either sort) in the current culture wars? But as I have already pointed out, The Apartment was 1960. To see what has changed, a major element in the comedy is that JJ Baxter prefers to have his neighbors, Doctor and his wife, continue to misunderstand what is going on (too ashamed to admit to being harassed -- though that would likely have made those neighbors sympathetic rather than blaming). We would not expect that today (recent decades)/

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that most people on the forum have either never seen those movies or saw them so long ago that they don't remember them.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Ongoing, continuing from before? Perhaps I am seeing this as ongoing because of my age. But I do not see works challenging the "received cultural sensibilities" as being recent. Nor the accusation that this is an elitist/ethnic subculture attack against the received cultural sensibilities/values. Which issues/values changing over time.

“Woke” is for sure a recent term, a recent twist, on a long process of progressive transformation in American culture. And that progressivism is part-and-parcel of Americanism. So I suppose it is part of the pattern, baked in as it were, that this initial progressive motion will never come to rest. Since that seems to be true it does challenge the opposing motion normally described as “conservative”. For example I would suggest that Tocqueville’s Democracy in America maps out quite nicely the progressive, innovative character of the nation. I.e. some sort of ‘spirit’ of the nation, the people, the Constitution, etc.

It is interesting with this in mind to think about America’s innovative religions: Mormonism, Christian Science, Southern Baptism and Pentecostalism being the primary ones. And as well the impetus of what was set in motion by way of the War Between the States, more properly the war by the North against the South. The trends of that war, the invasion and occupation of the South by the North, and this first effort at “nation building” and “cultural imposition” certainly colors the character of the nation. And one must consider with all this the formation of America’s civic religion with its political saints and apostles, its patriotic mythologies and ideology.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that most people on the forum have either never seen those movies or saw them so long ago that they don't remember them.

In one sense that does not matter because nevertheless the influence of film and literature spread itself in the culture. So I think Mike’s references make sense and support his assertion. (I do have a copy of The Apartment but I admit not to have watched it as a “cultural text”.)

On the other hand those who are cinephiles would be aware of the major films and would have studied them from sociological angles.

I am trying to think of more recent literature that is more defining for all of us here but then I always realize I am on a European forum where the influences of Americanism are less immediate (though not one person on the forum ever discusses Europe, it is always America and American trends. That’s sort of a trip when you think about it). But America and everything it has done and does is possibly the most notable influence on world history for 150 years, more or less).

But for a piece of literature with an intense progressivist energy — and what could be said to be “ur-woke” — I would cite Keyse’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

You could describe the entire mood of the novel as progressive culmination, and the rebellion against Big Nurse as an attempt to undermine and transform stultifying institutionalism. And to give Chief Bromden such a far-seeing and essentially “prophetic” voice cannot but be seen as pretty progressively radical …

It is odd as well to realize that both McMurhpy and Chief Bromden are “Christ figures” in the radicalizing, transformative sense of radicalized American Christian religiousness.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Here is another interesting filmic text that had significant influence on American culture: the bag scene in American Beauty. The film is largely about tracing the evolution of rebellion against “stultifying authority”. The Big Nurse figure in OFOTCN is now Col. Frank Fitts, the outmoded anti-homosexual, and finally, as he is performed, the repressed homosexual. So much “transvaluation of values”.

You would not really think about it as such, but the movie has a great deal to do with normalizing homosexuality and certainly normalizing adult male desire the girlish body. You can certainly discover in this and other films of the era the birth of “woke” ideology as a transformative social force.

Here is the full bag scene as a separate short film.

[phyllo]

In one sense that does not matter because nevertheless the influence of film and literature spread itself in the culture. So I think Mike’s references make sense and support his assertion. (I do have a copy of The Apartment but I admit not to have watched it as a “cultural text”.)

If you're trying to make a point and most people are not familiar with the examples that you are using, then you have miscommunication.

That's why I used 'Star Wars' as an example. You see a progression to wokeness in the movies. It's a more recent series and more people have probably seen it. (Of course, I may be mistaken. Maybe it's too lowbrow for the intellectuals on this site.)

I am trying to think of more recent literature that is more defining for all of us here but then I always realize I am on a European forum where the influences of Americanism are less immediate (though not one person on the forum ever discusses Europe, it is always America and American trends. That’s sort of a trip when you think about it).

A lot of active posters are American or "near-American" on this site.

But Maia is from the UK, she posts about UK issues and she gets lots of responses.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It is interesting with this in mind to think about America’s innovative religions: Mormonism, Christian Science, Southern Baptism and Pentecostalism being the primary ones. And as well the impetus of what was set in motion by way of the War Between the States, more properly the war by the North against the South. The trends of that war, the invasion and occupation of the South by the North, and this first effort at “nation building” and “cultural imposition” certainly colors the character of the nation. And one must consider with all this the formation of America’s civic religion with its political saints and apostles, its patriotic mythologies and ideology.

Again, focusing on more or less recent films that are precursors of what we now call “woke” I would suggest Mississippi Burning. If read on the surface its message is simple: establishing the righteousness of a newer but contrived American attitude toward Black African oppression. As audience, you participate in an enactment not only of the construction of American civil attitude toward the South and southern caricature, but you get a marvelous opportunity to act out and to re-enact the proper performance of “justice”. And as a result you are freed from imagined complicity.

Consider this scene in the barbershop. That’s you giving that Southern racist hick a well-deserved thrashing. And when you push his face into the mirror, that mirror means far more than it seems. And through that vicarious enactment you cast off real history. You are absolved, my child, now go in peace but don’t forget to serve the Call of the Woke when you are cued to do so …

Now here is a curious thing: In actual fact the FBI (Federal police force and paramilitary Federal force) battled against the Black Liberation movements in the Sixties and Seventies. But in this film the Federal authority breaks the law in order to secure the righteous justice that simply had to come as a result of the authority of the North over the South.

[Alexis Jacobi]

One more scene from a very influential film: Born on the Fourth of July. Here is the very wounded American child who served faithfully the established patriotic ideal of his country (the Civic Religious mythology) and learned, by the sacrifice of his own self, just how untrue it all was … and is.

When you add together all these influences, all the “artifacts” and “texts” of recent modernity, in what way can you define “conservatism”?

Here is a fantastic scene from the same film. Two lost American warriors battling it out in a Mexican desert.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Isn’t it interesting though that our European brethren are almost completely without dynamism?

[French dynamique, from Greek dunamikos, powerful, from dunamis, power, from dunasthai, to be able; see deu- in Indo-European roots.]

[MikeNovack]

Male suicide and depression aside. Nobody is going to do shit about that.

That seems excessive. You seem to be getting oversensitive and emotional in response to no actual harm at all. This plea for masculinity shouldn't really go that way. If somebody made Lois Lane a character with something to do other that scream and wait for Superman to rescue her that isn't really such a terrible loss for you is it? (I don't watch superhero movies, I have no idea what Lois Lane did in the last one, I'm just guessing, I couldn't care any less.)
[/quote]

THAT actually provides a good example of how values change over time. Superman/Lois have been around long enough for changes in cultural expectations alter the story lines. Thus when Rosie was a riveter, Lois is strong, competent, active, just needing rescue because she has terribly bad luck. She's doing everything right (as investigating journalist) but something beyond her control means she needs rescue.

[MikeNovack]

Male suicide and depression aside. Nobody is going to do shit about that.

That seems excessive. You seem to be getting oversensitive and emotional in response to no actual harm at all. This plea for masculinity shouldn't really go that way. If somebody made Lois Lane a character with something to do other that scream and wait for Superman to rescue her that isn't really such a terrible loss for you is it? (I don't watch superhero movies, I have no idea what Lois Lane did in the last one, I'm just guessing, I couldn't care any less.)
[/quote]

THAT actually provides a good example of how values change over time. Superman/Lois have been around long enough for changes in cultural expectations alter the story lines. Thus when Rosie was a riveter, Lois is strong, competent, active, just needing rescue because she has terribly bad luck. She's doing everything right (as investigating journalist) but something beyond her control means she needs rescue.

[phyllo]

One problem with Superman is that he is too powerful and so he has to go around saving other people all the time because there are no real challenges to him.

Then if they make him weak and vulnerable (which they have done in the more recent movies), then people complain that he isn't super any more.

That's why Spiderman and Batman are considered to be more interesting characters.

[MikeNovack]

Sorry about that "pictures none of us have seen". I did worry but then considered if unable to recognize films on the all time "top 100 list" not really able to consider film. Especially films that won a bunch of Oscars.

And yes, there was a great film on the other side of black/white --- The Birth of a Nation << over 100 years ago, so be seen in a film history course but if such a course taken, this film definitely on the list >>

European cultural values? Yes. In this case you probably not seen the film but Billy Wilder's Avanti. Less cultural "wars" than comedy based on the differences between Anglo-American and Continental European sensibilities. I mean yes, Wilder is coming down in favor of the European values/sensibilities but gently. We're including things like an actress too plump to be considered attractive by Hollywood standards (Juliet Mills intentionally put on ~25 lbs. to play the role)

But there is another reason, probably less obvious, for my using stuff by Wilder. There is a tendency for writers and directors to be seen as always being on one side or the other, and this is not true of Wilder. Lubitsch directed it, but Wilder was the screen writer for Ninotchka <<1939, on the all time great lists, poking fun at Communism (banned in USSR) >> Nothing else coming close in "let's make fun of Communism". But I expect few of you to know "who wrote the screenplay for what". If you trouble yourself to look up the amazing number of films where Wilder was screenwriter, his being "all over the place" rather than on one side will be very clear.

And of course Wilder because his other comedy on the all time great list, Some Like it Hot, about cross dressing and ending on a hint of trans, issues still current in the culture wars << mind, none of this is voluntary ---- our "heroes", musicians on the run because witnessed a mob murder, are hiding out among as members of an all women band >>

BUT -- none of this addresses WHY in the current iteration of "the culture wars" we have some on the anti-woke side, a very vocal some, shouting "we need to stop the wokes" as opposed to "we need make our own expressing OUR values". Actually, we DO have people doing just that, making some pretty decent films too. Just not being noisy about it. And of course utter nonsense believing nothing made showing men in heroic/positive roles. Always have been made and still are. Is the problem perhaps that some on the anti-woke side have such a toxic notion what it means to be masculine that they just can't see it.

[phyllo]

Sorry about that "pictures none of us have seen". I did worry but then considered if unable to recognize films on the all time "top 100 list" not really able to consider film. Especially films that won a bunch of Oscars.

It seems to me that what is happening now is different from what was shown in those movies.

One reason being that we live in a 'post truth' world now.