Here’s an interesting rant from a recent “The Rest is Entertainment” podcast (dated 6.17.24). It specifically addresses the recent Fossil Free Book vs. Baillie Gifford contretemps, which led to BG boycotting all book festivals. The rant also alludes to wokesters and Polanski pitchforkers in particular and their particular brand of insanity.
The Guardian‘s Marina Hyde went off on protestors and explained the quaqmire of art, politics and “the contraction of the mind” that occurs when everything is placed within the bucket of activism.
“One of the things I particularly don’t admire is the suggestion that everything is politics, and that art is the same as politics. Now some art is political, and much art is born of its time and therefore can have that sort of relationship to politics. But art and politics are not the same.
“And if you insist that all art must be politicized and that all artists must make statements all the time, then what you are essentially wishing for is a contraction of the human experience. A contraction of human possibility. Because you’re saying that art and politics essentially and semantically map onto each other. And this is absolute nonsense, okay?
“Art can exist just for its own sake. The pleasure of these things, just for their own sake, must be allowed to exist.” [HE interjection — Like Roman Polanski‘s An Officer and a Spy.]
“When I think of these people, I think these are the sort of people who would have confronted William Shakespeare and said ‘Do you, William Shakespeare, condemn Elizabeth the 1st’s brutal suppression of the uprisings in Ireland (1593 to 1603)? And if you do, why haven’t you said anything? Why haven’t you signed a letter protesting this? Because if you don’t sign it, William Shakespeare, then this new play of yours, The Taming of the Shrew, we’re going to protest this.’
“Throughout the whole of human history awful things have been happening, but art must be allowed to exist, in and of itself. And it doesn’t have to answer qny questions.”
Here’s a link to Hyde’s rant.
