Maybe It Doesn't Have to Be an Oxymoron After All
The gallery show was titled "Political Art," and I did not have high hopes. The intrinsic conflict is in the attempt to serve mutually exclusive purposes. With politics, the goal is to persuade you think a certain way. With art, it's to get you to think for yourself. And there's no shortage of evidence to reinforce the thinking that the two just don't mix: Frederick Hart, 1984, union songs.
The refutation of my theory is showing on movie screens. Thanks to the sixth-most famous man in Kazakhstan for making me rethink my position. What a refreshing, outrageous reminder that bad political is not an inherent contradiction. It's really just a failure of execution. For every Frederick Hart, there's a Maya Lin.
And extra-special gratitude goes out to Cohen for his courage to refuse to say he's sorry. In the alternate universe I live in, NBC, ABC and NPR follow his example and retract their apologies over Sarah Silverman, Bill Maher and Andrei Codrescu.
The refutation of my theory is showing on movie screens. Thanks to the sixth-most famous man in Kazakhstan for making me rethink my position. What a refreshing, outrageous reminder that bad political is not an inherent contradiction. It's really just a failure of execution. For every Frederick Hart, there's a Maya Lin.
And extra-special gratitude goes out to Cohen for his courage to refuse to say he's sorry. In the alternate universe I live in, NBC, ABC and NPR follow his example and retract their apologies over Sarah Silverman, Bill Maher and Andrei Codrescu.
posted by DO at 10:37 AM
5 Comments:
Why did you like the movie, and what has he accomplished through it?
1. If there were a referendum on expanding the list of deadly sins, I would lobby hard on behalf of prejudice and hypocrisy, Cohen's prime targets.
2. Cohen exposes ugly truths about America that most of us would prefer to sweep under the rug.
3. By choosing humorous satire over sanctimonious scolding, he makes it possible to transform people who might not confront these issues on their own. Didacts preach to the choir. Cohen is our Jonathan Swift.
4. I have more, but I'm curious to know if you have seen it.
5. If so, what did you think?
I did not see it, but have strong opinions based on what I've heard about it from those who have, from the media reviews, and from related articles (Guardian, CSM).
"Yagshemash" and "jenkooyeh" being in any way connected to "throw the Jew down the well" were enough for me to be suspicious of anything this guy was doing.
My father went to see it, having lived in Kazakhstan himself as a child, and found it vulgar and stupid -- called it anti-politically-correct bullying, confirming for me Cohen's parallels with the ultimate such bully, Howard Stern.
I saw it. My dad was wrong. It was not anti-pc-bullying, it was pc bullying.
I was also wrong in expecting ticket to cost me 50% of the usual. It was 66.666666666
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