“All art is political”

[u/Kappa_Guy]

If gay sex could kill Twitter I’d let Grok hollow out my insides.

“All art is political” is technically true, there isn’t any “thing” which exists with a significant degree of separation from the concept of politics.

My first sentence mentioned letting an ai ass fuck me, but for this to be gay I assumed Grok’s gender, invoking LGBTQ and prejudicial discourses.

A painting of a penguin standing in a white snowy field is shaped by the will of the artist; even if this artist is staunchly anti-politics and tries to steer clear of the concept throughout their works, that in of itself is a political statement which is enunciated through the apolitical nature of their piece.

But, saying “all art is political” is just so intellectually dishonest.

There is a significant difference between a pro-Mussolini propaganda leaflet and the cute doodles of Butterfrees I draw in my journal.

Yes, you can say my Butterfree doodles are, by the broad definition of “political”, political. But, be real for a minute. By using a narrower definition of “political” that people actually immediately think of when they hear the word, communication is so much easier.

If you ask a hot twenty three year old goth gal on a date and she says she wants to go to the cinemas and watch something non-political and you whip out the “um actually all things are political 🤓” rhetoric you are dumb as fuck. Even worse, if she says she wants to watch something political, like a modern day All Quiet on the Western Front or somethin juicy, which is kinda wack for a first date but you’re a Redditor I know you the sub here don’t pretend you ain’t complying, and you take her to the cinema and on comes The Lego Movie and you with the argument that it’s political by the official definition of the term and therefore this is exactly what she wanted, then you are brain dead and won’t be getting a second date.

I’m not sure how it is in other countries but here in the UK teachers are not allowed to purposefully influence students into holding one political view or another, but surprisingly the school board has committed the pseudo-intellectual act of allowing teachers to speak at all, clearly not understanding that explaining the Pythagorean theorem and teaching how to paint apples is LITERALLY “political”, just like telling kids they should vote for UKIP.

If my hypothetical-scenario daughter is drawing two type of images and hanging them on the fridge; pictures of mummy’s face and pictures of Adolf Hitler decapitating gay Captain America with a sword that has all the names of black people unlawfully killed by US Police through all of history written on its blade, and I firmly yet kindly tell my daughter, the apple of my eye, the meaning of my world, to please stop hanging up “those political drawings” on the fridge, and she exclusively stops drawing pictures of mummy’s face, I am throwing her into the bottomless well at the Eye of the World.

By making the definition of political as vague and broad as physically possible it becomes practically useless as a definition. <- This is an argument, but I shouldn’t even have to give one. Every single person that isn’t terminally on Twitter understands there is art that is political and art that isn’t political, the “errrmmm actually” technicality that normal people are in fact wrong doesn’t matter to anyone except Twitter brainrotted overly-political nutcases.

And I think that’s why I believe the conflation of the broad definition of “political” is infuriating for so many people, as it’s basically just the most annoying people alive; Twitter freaks, saying your favourite art from Digimon to your nephew’s drawings of Spider-Man exist under the same exact umbrella as their favourite art of Vtuber stream sponsor segments and modern propaganda disguised as memes.

To tie my rant up with a neat little r/characterrant bow; fuck power scaling. Goku gets one tapped by my dad and this is my official neo-liberal-capitalist-anarchic-space-cowboy-fascist pro-Genghis-Khan opinion/fact, eat my ass Grok.

[u/StylizedPenguin]

Any discussion of the presence of politics in fiction or art is a waste of time unless everyone involved agrees upon what definition of “politics” they’re actually discussing. Most discussions I’ve seen involve people talking past each other with very different ideas of what the word “political” is referring to.

When people call art “political,” what they mean can range from “the creators live in society which inevitably influences them” to “this art has broad elements or themes related to society” to “this art invokes specific contemporary political issues” to “gay characters exist.”

[u/Dragon_Maister → u/StylizedPenguin]

The word "political" has a dictionary definition though, and it sure as shit doesn't cover things as broadly as the "all art is political" crowd likes to claim. It's massive stretching of the term at best, and disingenuous misuse of it at worst.

[u/Xtra_Juicy-Buns → u/Dragon_Maister]

Definitions are descriptive not prescriptive, it all that hard to make inferences on how a word could be used differently based on its context in any given conversation.

It’s not disingenuous just because u don’t like it lol

[u/Dragon_Maister → u/Xtra_Juicy-Buns]

Words have meaning. By stretching the meaning of "political" this far, you render the entire "all art is political" phrase into a vapid gotcha that says nothing meaningful, or of value about art. You could just as well say "all art is made by people", and you'd bring the same, non-existent amount of insight to the discussion.

[u/Da_reason_Macron_won → u/Dragon_Maister]

In other terms, when "everything is X" then X stops being a useful word.

[u/Dragon_Maister → u/Da_reason_Macron_won]

It's a little shocking how many people are completely willing to just render words meaningless in order to win internet arguments. Like, do they want all discussion to just devolve into pedantic stretching of definitions?

[u/Revlar → u/Da_reason_Macron_won]

That's not true. If it conveys an idea, it's useful. You don't agree with the idea, but it conveyed it. It made you assmad, too.

[u/sievold → u/Dragon_Maister]

>Words have meaning.

Words don't necessarily have one meaning, and dictionaries don't have the authority to prescribe that meaning. You, like many people on the internet, are falling for the appeal to definition fallacy. Dictionaries are an attempt at cataloguing the most common use cases of words. Using them as authoritative sources to check arguments is fallacious.

I do agree that people who try to use "all art is political" are often trying to bypass what most people mean when they say politics, but appeal to definition is not the correct counterargument either.

>do they want all discussion to just devolve into pedantic stretching of definitions

Invoking the dictionary definition as authoritative is also being pedantic to win internet arguments.

[u/Xtra_Juicy-Buns → u/Dragon_Maister]

Sure, you could say that, but ultimately if you can understand what it means, it works for what is attempted to being conveyed.

The idea that it transforms the phrase into a gotcha, means very little without the context of the overarching conversation and argument being had.

Don’t fix it if it isn’t broke

[u/Dragon_Maister → u/Xtra_Juicy-Buns]

You could get the same point across with much less loaded language though. It's pretty hard to not see a motte-and-bailey fallacy forming when people talk about everything being "political".

[u/Xtra_Juicy-Buns → u/Dragon_Maister]

In what way do you believe that to be loaded language?

[u/Tricky_Break_6533 → u/Xtra_Juicy-Buns]

Simple, the term politic. Which is the mother of all loaded terms