Never thought my first essay on this wing of Substack would be explicitly talking politics, but considering the tumor I’m about to remove from my TL, it’s long since time to operate.
Before I start, I want to preface all of this with a simple statement: no.
I am not here to discuss the myriad of malformities plaguing modern western civilization. I’m not here to save the Republic outright, I am not here to crush communism, I am not here to talk about flavors of the month nor issues of the week. I am here to talk about something incredibly specific, but incredibly important.
As an outsider.
I hold my feelings, I hold my beliefs, but they are not what is important to the conversation I’m about to have with you. What is important are my beliefs as an artist. An artist working in music, literature, film, and the curation of all and more.
And what’s most important is getting people’s heads dislodged from their colons.
On a semi-frequent basis (these two examples being foremost in my mind), there is a particular subset of people, often of a more conservative/right-wing/whatever nature that go in for the kill on either the age-old “tHe RiGhT cAn’T cReAtE aRt” or attacking any form of popular culture in the name of righteously smiting the impure. One day a Daily Wire pundit whines about Prince’s music being “bad,” the next you have shmucks like Exhibit B whinging about comics and animation being “kids stuff.”
And it is this surprisingly consistent and vocal subset that readily confirms something I’ve maintained since publicly producing projects: never mix your politics with your promos.
Now, your work is an extension of yourself. That’s fact. It speaks to what you believe in whether you want it to or not. I write stories where there is a kernel of my truth at least once per tale. I write characters who dress the way I do, enjoy the kinds of cars, music, and stories I enjoy, and more over, are the kind of people I’d like to have a drink with. On top of that, there are characters who represent parts of myself.
Readers of my wolven cyberpulp project 365 Infantry may recall the tumult faced by heroine Valentina in “The Hunt” serial, the victim of a cruel psychological war scheme that she hunts down to the ends of the Earth. Those stories (the first especially) are often inspired by my personal struggles with mental health. And while not wholly analogous, they do represent the crux of my point; your work will become commentary in some way. Commentary on yourself, the way you view the world, etc.
Now that the “all art is political” fracas is aired out, I will promptly flip the script and say that I never present my work through that lens, nor do I produce it through said lens. I create not to vent my frustrations with the world, nor to make explicit statements. I create to amuse myself. I wrote music because I hated Top 40 radio. I wrote stories because I couldn’t find any worth reading.
I make movies because I’m a masochist, but that’s another story.
Point is, my release valve is escapism through clever ideas, lovable characters, and an aesthetic palette I am comfortable in saying is unlike anyone else’s. I can go from the etchings of Rembrandt to the music of Giorgio Moroder to the films of Alfred Hitchcock. If you are what you eat, I’m the Unicron of culture: I eat everything in sight and I’m coming to a solar system near you.
But here I have been consistently seeing this laughable subset of conservatives that are hellbent on “owning libs” and “taking back the levers of power,” and yet, like the lady with her eyes pecked out in Omen II, run haplessly screaming into the streets, about to be relieved of the burden of rectifying culture by a Mack truck.
This isn’t to say activism is futile nor that political engagement isn’t worthwhile. On the contrary. Left, right, center, or sideways, if you believe in something that can make the world a better place, you owe it to yourself to pursue that change. In a civilized world (e.g. the parallel dimension I’d rather be in), it wouldn’t have to come to blows or making an ass of yourself, but we must deal in the world in which we live, one that just so happens to be rather fucked in the head.
As I often say, you can’t save the West with Monets, but the key is this: you can make the world a brighter place by creating more of them. And that brighter world is a world in which we are all truly cultured, well-read, and most importantly, freely thinking. But that culture can spring from popular art as well as high art. I am just as inspired by the paintings of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable as I am inspired by the graphic design of Saul Bass, or the sharp comic stylings of Doug Wildey. I find just as much value in the artfully human films of François Truffaut as I do the Technicolor madness of Dario Argento.
There is no zero-sum game to be had here; all are valid, all have their place. So many of these wonderful works are built upon the back of a rich history, and become the next link in that long golden chain. Musicians pull from fellow musicians, artists pull from the styles of other artists. And filmmakers, the dirty pilferers, steal from everything that isn’t nailed down. Everyone adopts elements of past work to produce what they’re trying to make in the present. And on and on until the Earth ceases to be. They can pull from the beauty of Michelangelo or the provocative forms of Frazetta. They can draw on Shakespeare as much as they can Lester Dent.
“What does this have to do with conservatives and culture-making?” you may now start screaming at the screen upon which you’re reading this.
The answer: illiteracy.
Not of the common man (though that is a contributing factor), but of the figure heads and people who hold mic 90% of the time. Their minds are jelly, and they are in fact dumber than a box of pet rocks. Dumber when it comes to culture.
On politics, I’m sure they’ve read dozens of philosophical texts (he said out the side of his mouth), went through the Constitution back to front, and are knowledgeable enough on every issue put in front of them to carry a conversation right into the next Raycon sponsorship.
This is not so when it comes to culture.
They expect everyone to thump a Bible without being able to read it, to maintain their will to fight while being pumped full of enough losses to turn Black Tuesday into Blackpill Tuesday, to get their masculinity from the digital Cracker Jack boxes that are “alpha males” on the Internet, and to be able to just legislate away society-wide issues. Just write ‘em off and the land will heal itself. Just like that.
Heal itself after being pumped full of subtle and unsubtle propaganda for decades, a culture of nihilism without self-determination, a youth without imagination beyond what they are fed five seconds at a time by their phones, and a growing class of smug, retiring adults cashing their checks and punching their tickets for the great train ride into the sky, content in knowing their lives will be enjoyed without hardship, and pretending that the world they were able to bootstrap through can still be bootstrapped through today. A world without upward mobility, a world regulating itself into unsustainability, and a world routinely driving itself mad with enough logic puzzles to make your high school math teacher dry-heave.
With all of that weighing like a plate of bricks, is it no wonder people prefer to watch a rock-em-sock-em action film than read Tolstoy? Is it no wonder a grown adult would rather destress with literal children’s television than engage the adult world that has become so unbearable in the ways we were never warned of, and in truth, ways that were never intended?
The answer is not to “RETVRN” in a hard reset, forcing people to only produce concertos and classical forms. The answer is not slamming Bibles in people’s faces expecting them to just “get it.” The answer is slowly snapping the people out of it. The answer is building a culture on the back of a lexicon they can grasp and slowly pull them into the world of riches. Of a century’s worth of phenomenal films, centuries’ worth of incredible music, and millennia’s worth of fine art and stories.
If that starts with comics, cartoons, and video games, so be it. There is no shame in relaying tales of courage, friendship, bravery, and true altruism through these vessels. None whatsoever. I was taught by a puppet show about creating noble heroes, and I see no shame in that.
And yet, these vocal proponents of “conservatism” simply can’t wrap their thick heads around this. They want something for nothing. They simply want the way of life back, but they have neglected the civilian route to take. The civic route is clear as day, but their zeroing in on it makes them believe they can just waltz all over the topic of culture like they have a clue. When they don’t know shit.
This is why I consider myself an apolitical agent of what author, artist, critic, and commentator RazörFist termed the Iron Age, the modern era of independent entertainment filling the void of corporate-backed drivel. I have seen some incredible talents in this sphere, and with no regard for humility, I count myself among them. I write and create videos, music, stories and more at a rate few of my peers young and old do. And I do so because I have simply stopped giving a shit.
I don’t fucking care what anyone thinks about the fact I’m writing a multi-narrative sci-fi franchise about talking wolves and their gas-guzzling machines. I don’t care if no one catches the incalculable references. I stopped caring about getting published beyond self-publication once I realized the magazine space was fucked five ways ‘til Friday, and no one knows me well enough to invite me to an anthology (yet).
Be the change you want to see in the world, and that change will be made manifest. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this week, but it will come. I’m not going to wait for people who have to “learn how to be elite,” I’m not gonna wait for someone in a suit halfway across the country to fix my shit. And you can’t legislate the arts into being good. That’s not how it works. Become a patron of an illustrator or a storyteller, spread the word, recommend them to potential clients, be patient knowing they don’t have seven figures to put into their work to begin with.
But above all else, to these proponents of shutting down any attempts at culture-building and taste-making: shut your damn mouths. You haven’t half a clue.
Just because you like to bite the pillow and get railed by society so you can self-righteously lash out at it and talk about what makes real men and women for 280 characters at a time, doesn’t mean that’s going to fix shit. For those who are grifting, take the money and fuck off to the hinterlands. For those who sincerely believe this, you will be the reason your much cited dystopias will come to pass. The world of Orwell’s Oceania is a world without imagination, because all thought is controlled by the state through forceful conditioning. Huxley’s World State is a world without imagination because it is substituted for immediate, sedative, and complacent pleasures. And we are currently on track to get both simultaneously.
True imagination is the seed from which free thought grows. Without that imagination, without the daring to dream, you can never truly think freely. You’ll always be chained to reality, chained to the grimness of the world as it stands. But with a little imagination, maybe you can start to see the world as you wish it, as it should be. And with that dream in mind, then you start looking at ways to make it a reality. Doesn’t have to grand in scale, but it can be the start of something.
Maybe it starts with a Monet.
Great article!
I'm convinced the subset of conservatives you're talking about want to lose. Why else would they continually shit on 'low art' and only promote 'high art' of the past? (and they don't even do that well) It makes no sense. As your Exhibit B demonstrates there is no attempt at understanding only a visceral knee jerk. No understanding to how important high and low art are to culture as a whole, no understanding that surrendering the low (the cartoons, the comics) means you lose in the long run. No understanding that these forms can be, as you say, entry points to high art. What makes it worse is the complete lack of patronage networks and not even the hint of starting one. These con grifters don't care.
I bet people have gone from Judge Dredd comics to Alan Moore graphic novels then science fiction novels and ended up reading Dostoyevsky. I have read, and enjoy, all of those and can't be the only one. Will every Dredd reader do that, no, but some will, and I bet more have/will than these conservative grifters rally to their side as they bang the same old tired drum on their long road to defeat.
We need art, culture, both high and low of all mediums to be effective. Without art there is no heart. If you haven't read Dave Greene's piece on this issue it is well worth it: https://fiddlersgreene.substack.com/p/the-heart-reset
Hellene also had an article but looking more at the message within: https://alexanderhellene.substack.com/p/all-fiction-is-message-fiction
There is no meaningful high culture, so pop culture is all we’ve got, at least to reach the 99% of people. The 1% elites whose opinions and tastes DO matter still care about high art and it’s production, but it’s more loyalty test (“No, I LOVE that literal steaming pile of shit covered in shredded aborted embryo—it’s powerful. Really!”) than anything else.
So conservatives, pretending to care about the state of high culture, neither promote it, find it, nor consume it. Instead they conceded the ground there and in pop culture without a fight because there’s no immediate ROI. Tale as old as time to us old farts, but I’m glad you young guys in your 20s are seeing the con as well. Once you’re aware, you can’t unsee it.
Those blackpillers are worse than useless.