Comment on Political science
testfactor@lemmy.world 8 months agoI think the issue with this interpretation is the word “inherently” in the original post. It implies there is some intrinsic value to the art that makes it political.
While it’s true that all art can be interpreted politically, it’s no more or less true than “all food can be interpreted politically” or “all cats can be interpreted politically.” I can understand absolutely anything you want in a “political frame of reference.”
When a definition is that broad, it becomes useless.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
It’s not useless.
It’s specifically not useless because people forget this.
Where there is disagreement, there is politics.
Telling Mariah Carey to leave politics in her b-sides is, inherently, not possible.
testfactor@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s true that where there’s disagreement there’s politics. It’s also true that where there’s agreement there’s politics. There’s politics in Mariah’s B-sides and A-sides and in the font chosen in the album cover. The material the disc is made out of is politics, and so is the air that transmits the sound waves to your ears.
My point is that if everything is political, then calling something political loses all meaning. The term political is, then, useless.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
But how would you tell someone of the world’s politics without it?
You don’t seem to agree, but it’s kind of incontrovertible.
All communication is rhetoric. The way that you stand, the clothes you present, the style of speech you adopt—but rhetoric is just the name for all of that.
Colloquially, political just means something is more terse than usual.
But that’s the thing I’m arguing about. The usual, the normal, is still at odds with the fringes. There is no debate between the political instigators and normal, apolitical society, who would like to return to a time when trans people weren’t in movies (or blacks, or women)—there is only politics.
I’m just saying, a lot of people are afraid to rock the boat, and they need to get off that shit.
testfactor@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The issue I have is that when you say that “trans people deserve equal rights,” and “I prefer my toast with butter on it” are equally political, I can’t take that position seriously. You might as well be saying they are equally “clifnibble” for all the meaning of has.
What you’re doing here is an “everything is a sandwich” type thing. Taco, sandwich. Ravioli, sandwich. The planet earth, basically a ravioli, so sandwich.
While that’s a fun thought experiment, and maybe technically true depending on how you define the word, if someone started trying to eat dirt because they said they wanted a sandwich, I’d call them nuts.
Yes, all things are political, if you define the word political that way. But when you start spouting off about how someone butters their toast being political, you’re reducing issues that actually matter down to that level.
And look, I do understand what you’re driving at. You are pushing back against people who don’t want to involve themselves “in politics.” I think it’s horribly reductive to paint them all as wanting to go back to the 1950s. I think most are probably fine with the LGBTQ+ community, and aren’t looking to go back to some racist “utopia.”
I think most just want to live their lives. They have families and jobs and parents with failing health and financial pressures. There are thousands of marginalized groups. They would happily throw a dollar in a donation tin for them, but they don’t have the emotional bandwidth or time to travel to DC and stand in protest, or argue with strangers on the Internet over it.
They’re not scared to rock the boat, they just have shit to do that has a far more immediate impact on their life and mental/physical health.