What would culture be like in a socialist society...

What would culture be like in a socialist society? Many people argue capitalism fosters cultural creation but I feel it stifles creativity and promotes homogeneous garbage.

Attached: culture socialism.png (2480x1736, 5.41M)

Other urls found in this thread:

independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Not even capitalists think this.

Attached: 1481239204953.gif (377x372, 3.46M)

sooooooo many filming techniques were invented in the soviet union. I don't know anything about it but my anticommunist film maker friend begrudgingly told me this so if you have a google i am sure you can find

If one thing is certain, art and media in socialist societies, left unstifled, would escape from the haze of circular rehashes and safe market algorithms all forms of art and media is currently entrapped in. It would allow people to break from the old in its totality and allow actual new original forms of art and media to be forged, as opposed to the coattail riding inherent in all of culture today.

Are they forced to read "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" by Eisenstein? lul cucked

Some truly braindead bootlickers do, I'm sure. It's pretty depressing.

Hopefully not de facto state propaganda.

Some of you would seriously call pic related postmodern CIA engineered anti communist subversion if you didnt know the historical context. Then uncritically say that a portrait of Stalin at the beach or something is simply drawing attention to the benevolent leader of global proletarian struggle.

Attached: b02395456f06fb6d5d7bea0618ca05da1552b1ff.jpeg (961x768, 77.61K)

I want to clarify that overall I am optimistic and enthusiastic about the potential of art and culture under socialism but have recently just been annoyed with kiddies who make utopian claims about the unbounded possibilities of art under socialism and then have boomer troglodyte opinions about art in general

inb4 primary antagonism is between Ministry of Science and Ministry of Art

The USSR saw a massive wave of innovation through the avant-garde movement spearheaded by Dziga Vertov and Eisenstein. In a short amount of time, the avant-garde movement produced an absolutely staggering amount of masterpieces and world classics. It's one of the finest examples of what happens when the artists don't have to care about profits and are allowed to run hog-wild. "The Man with a movie camera" was basically a feature length experiment of editing images that bare no relation to each other to create impressions and stories. Eisenstein, through a revolutionary use of the montage-technique would make these films where the protagonists were effectively collective masses. Battleship Potemkin is probably the biggest example of this.

The avant-garde tradition carried over to the work of Andrei Tarkovsky who's films are basically heralded to this day as some of the most (if not indeed the most) advanced uses of the cinematic language. He'd make these intensely psychological surrealist films, often with very somber tone, that sort of break out of the traditional forms of drama and film as "story telling". I mean they have highly developed and effective dramatic structures, and they do each tell a story, but they follow a logic completely to their own, being effectively more instinctive and "cinematic" rather than dramatic in the sense of theatre or Aristotles' poetics. A big theme throughout the Eastern Bloc was that they'd give massive resources into really bold and experimental film projects - as long as they weren't too "dangerous" politically. Another good example would be a Belorussian film called "Come and See" which is probably the best film on WW2 Eastern front.

I still think they shot theirselves in the foot with too heavy state control about the "political" content. Even if you agree with the idea of censorship in general, the problem is that censors tend to be most mediocre and stupid people imaginable, and their biggest effect is to stifle creativity, while they remain too stupid to detect subtler forms of satire and protest.

I think if you'd want an example of what traditional film would look like at its best with little to no preassure from the state but in a culture where socialism has achieved hegemony, then I think Akira Kurosawa might be somewhere near to ball park. He was a communist party member in his youth, and while he later distanced himself from them, many of his best works remain very Leftist in their outlook. Seven Samurai is an epic action film about badass sword fighters that ends in muddy, non-romantic battle scene and straight out says that all Samurai are parasites and oppressors, and that the world belongs to the peasants. He also made a great film version Gorkys play "Lower Depths", which is basically a story about the self-perpetuating horror of poverty depicting lumpenproles who'd rather drink themselves silly and dream about salvation rather than go get it. "One Wonderful Sunday" is a film about a young, impoverished couple who go on a date in post-war Tokyo. The film's "antagonist" is poverty itself and the criminals and bourgeoisie who give the young couple no quarter. In an earth shattering scene the man is on his knees on the ground, completely defeated by the hopelessness of his life, when the woman suddenly turns to the audience and begs us to cheer him on, and while we're at it give a big hand to everyone whose young, deadbeat and hopeless. The woman also starts clapping and slowly the audience joins in the applause, unless it's comprised of Western bourgeois fucks. The man "hears" the applause and slowly starts rising up. It's the one example of "interactive" cinema I've seen that's not completely retarded, and the revolutionary thing about it is it calls the audience to recognize themselves as a collective with a shared relation to the film, and it calls us to support the young couple (and by extension, each other). Shit like this is still light years ahead of most socialists films I've seen, and it coming from Japan acts as an example of why I think

Attached: onewonderfulsunday.jpg (208x300 449.96 KB, 19.51K)

It's a debatable discussion, soviet political censors were heavy handed but the resulting films with political content are more refined, because the people making those films have to be very careful and precise. This is indeed heavy pressure, but it creates political pieces that are also very well made - the creators of the film have to be exact and don't half-ass political insinuations or blatant opinion, unlike modern Russian trash films.

Outside of the direct political sphere, soviet films were largely in control of the film-makers, and we got many great films, such as the Comedies of Gaidai.

Moreover the planned economy system applied to the film-industry meant that filmographers, camera-men and others were ensured to always have work they could sign up for. For example in the Kazakh SSR each year there were 2 orders for nature documentaries and this allowed for hundreds of detailed nature documentaries made that are fairly unknown today.
That man is a master of film, and I'm unsurprised of his leftist youth. I really want to watch 7 Samurai again now, I haven't watched it in over a decade.

Thanks.

Artists usually must cater to the their patrons for funds, and when their patron is the state, you tend to get state propaganda.

Being an independent artist is a struggle in a capitialist society, but you can find more patrons than just the state, allowing more creative freedom in exchange for the challenge of getting people to voluntarily pay you.

Attached: lenin-stalin.jpeg (474x361, 38.08K)

...

Excellent post, do you have source recommendations on this?

Labour voucher economy would prevent "self-employment" and commoditization of art. The state would provide tools and time for all, and patronage for the cream of the crop. Only then will art and artist be "free" and exist alongside high culture.

Why as a matter of fact I do!
I would also recommend Mayakovsky's "Decree to the Army of the Arts No.2" to get his real view of what he thought about art and the revolution: as himself a non-bolshevik it is quite interesting to see how the revolution is to him a process of establishing working class power in all sectors of society.

Also Shostakovich is the best Russian composer of all time anyone who says

Socialist culture will be a genuine culture of the masses.
Capitalist culture is also driven by the masses, but by the unthinking consuming masses, not masses that have taken agency for themselves. They are not engaged in the creative enterprise themselves, but buy creative works to distract themselves from their daily lives.
After the transition into socialism this will change, and culture will be produced on the basis of what people want to produce and see produced, rather than what they can be tricked into paying money for. This is an enormous change.

Another enormous change will be the abolition of copyright. Capitalism turns culture into property. Organizations get to own stories and characters, and make them unusable to anyone who contradicts their interests. If it doesn't do this, culture does not get produced. Socialism abolishes this state of affairs and makes every idea everyone's property.
When a capitalist company runs into a good intellectual property, only they get to work with it, and thus the future of this IP is entirely dependent on how competent they are. Without intellectual property, a good idea can be taken up by anyone with the inspiration. Whenever a brilliant story is told, the whole of society will get to build on it without limitations.
Suppose that all videogame resources are freely available for everyone to use. You will be able to combine existing material in an infinite number of ways. These can become professional games. Imagine videogames created by a unified modding community, that also gets the budgets that currently go into triple-A games. That's how communist videogames will be created.
Imagine all books that are written being freely available online, free to be copied and applied in whatever way people wish. This will open the space for totally new ways of thinking about information. We can create wikis just copying whatever passages we find interesting in the books we read, commenting and elaborating on them as we go. We can link texts to each other, move between different books as if they were web-pages. The linearity of written work will be broken entirely.

Communist culture will go beyond our wildest imagination.

This is beautiful example where capitalism works wonderful in theory, but isn't true in real world. How often do you meet people outside of your mum's house?

Lot's of artists today are employed by theaters. Those are subsidized by state, but are given freedom to make stuff people want to minimize losses, or even make a profit. Another big group of artists are, as you mention, contractors which have agreements with some private entities to make money - with various success. Third, the biggest group, are artists which aren't in position to leave everything and try living off their creations.

Difference between socialist and capitalist regime is simple - in capitalist society most of artists must focus on their career. In socialist society, everyone is guaranteed job - hard, but for decent pay with no stress after work- which gives artist much more time to practice and create what he wants.

Pic related drawing is also "just competition with theme".

Attached: ClipboardImage.png (1024x627, 866.73K)

Honestly art in socialism would be like that one time in dwarf fortress where my dwarf spontaneity built a bunch of columns of wood, and it became an artifact.

The future can't come soon enough.

Attached: gervais.png (223x238, 96.78K)

Look at how shit mobile games are

Mobile games are nowadays very good, just filled with too much advertisement

I concede the point that artists are compromised by whoever their patrons are. However, even if a socialist state funds artists and does so without political orders, it is ultimately going to have to choose who among the artists gets funding, and whoever better appeals to those in-charge of the decision wins. If those in charge of disbursing art funds consistently choose things the upper party officials don't like, they are liable to be replaced. In this way, I think artists and art commissioners alike will feel pressure to bend in a certain direction.

As for consumer-oriented art being garbage, I say that's subjective; the consumers seem to keep buying it.

People can be artists in capitalist and socialist societies. Arts are publicly subsidized in both as well. You say the socialist model has an edge in the arts because people are guaranteed a job, but I think you overlook that if the artist doesn't do a good enough job, they will find themselves re-assigned to some shit job they don't want. In both societies artists have the stress of doing well enough to keep being artists, and both can worry about it or relax after work.

Attached: chinaart.jpeg (960x1243, 308.1K)

this has not stopped good mobile games from existing, it just floods the market with shitty ones.

besides the monetiztion is the largest rotting tumor in mobile games, and games in general.

Again capitalism making things worse than they could be.

No, I didn't overlook it. I was trying to say that artists which are not appreciated enough to live off their art are forced to work "normal" jobs. And since jobs in socialist regimes are not designed to suck your soul off, any artist would have more free time to create stuff after work.

could the MCU still exist in socialism? i know it is hyper-consumerist crap but i still enjoy it in a very superficial way despite the amount of exploitation and work it takes to make.

It obviously should be banned and reactionaries like you put in the gulags.

#teamcap

Most mobile games are people's attempt to make a quick buck. If they were created by people with the passion to create something good for others to enjoy, I'm sure they'd be great.

I'm sure some studio would expand the MCU under socialism, but it wouldn't get the massive budgets it has now, and probably have a lot more weird experimental shit in it.

Thanks, user! Any book in particular you'd recommend of these? I heard an interview by Sheila Fitzpatrick and have been intrigued, but even as I can read past bias, I'd really like to take a break from blatant anti-communism.

Depends, I prefered the Katerina Clark for the work I was doing because her descriptions of things like the anniversary celebrations in Petrograd were utterly fascinating. I would say all of them are critical to an extent, but not rampant anti-bolshevik propaganda.

No more abstract “art.” Through paint at a wall isn’t art. Never has been, never will. Realism will probably be the predominate form of painting.

lole pleb

postmodern art seperates the smoothbrains from the bigbrains.

Attached: Red-hulk-1-004.jpg (603x431, 57.59K)

Yeah, the bigbrains hate it.

there is a difference between validity and taste, dummy.

the emergence of art is a only the economic and social conditions reproducing themselves in the imagination of the artist. Art is a reflection, postmodernism , modernism are reflections. Art should be looked at in that way and no other

at the very least, art requires the context of the environment of it's creation. derrida says "nothing exists outside of the text", but if the author is porky then clearly there is bias and strategy in the piece's creation.

then its a reflection of porky isn't it my brudda

i suppose

Lmao. Kill yourself reactionary asshat. You're not taking my Kandinsky away from me.
Realism in social depictions is good, but fuck visual realism. Just take a photo ya doofus.

Doesn't art also have an experimental-scientific aspect to it? It's the study of pure human creation, with no other purpose than to be interesting to other people. Labor for labor's sake almost. Surely we must appreciate the radical nature of that being socialists.

Pic related is better than all abstract art combined. Also abstract art is what is reactionary, because it’s only used for money laundering and tax avoidance. It has no other value, because it has no use value.
It’s not the same.

Attached: Raphael.jpg (1024x683, 192.83K)

I just want to chime in here to say Raphael and the other Renaissance artists are good in regards to their medium and time. However, to copy or attempt to replicate them is not only lazy, but dishonest. Attempting to make such art is not only creating something which is doomed to be in the shadow of the original greats, but expecting us to say such art is good because of those previous greats. Its cheap and it preys on our nostalgia and sentimentality to judge art. Michelangelo made his paintings, and died. Donatello made his sculptures, and died. Filippo designed his architecture, and died. They are theirs and any attempt to create art similar comes impressed upon it the idea that we should call that art "good" simply on the premise that it bears similarities to previous art that was considered "good". Either create something that is truly yours, or don't create it all. If you must make such tribute band art, be honest that you're nothing more than a tribute band. Don't attempt to fabricate a dishonest lie to me and embed it in head.

Attached: ilia-chashnik-kosmos-19253.jpg (506x589, 48.72K)

Are you trying to kill Art?

Art is good when it gives the viewer a message or idea. This message or idea must be easily understood, so that it can be universally transmitted to all. That’s the problem with abstract art. People are suppose to find their own meaning in the art. This prevents the formation of a universal.

Art should demand some effort from the onlooker. We should aim for universality by teaching people who cannot comprehend it, rather than by dumbing shit down for them.
Bullshit. Some abstract artists might have thought of their work like that, but they were wrong. Good abstraction aims towards the universal just as effectively as any other kind of art.

Attached: Vassily_Kandinsky,_1923_-_On_White_II.jpg (1658x1658 41.67 KB, 424.35K)

They might intend a universal, but if you take a group of a hundred people and have them look at some random abstract art most will find no meaning in it. And those who do will vary wildly in what they think that meaning is.

You'd be posing them a loaded question. Abstract art isn't meant to convey a specific message. It's more a reflection on aesthetic experience itself, or even on pure shapes on a canvas. There is much to think about there.
Take the example of Picasso's bull. He isn't trying to tell you something specific, but rather playing with the way the shapes that make up the animal function.

1/2

I agree with the general notion, but you're taking it too far, or rather not elaborating enough. Abstract art can be used to as an aesthetic tool in a larger work, and even in more traditional or "realistic" forms, a level of abstraction is always at present. Or at least it should be. With no abstraction, you might as well be looking out of the window.

I think film is a good example of how stupid and mediocre shit gets when naturalism and realism become the default. At least since the 70's (but you could argue this started around 40's and 50's when genres like Film Noir and Italian Neorealism popularised a new level of realism and grit) there has been a constant move to more "realism" in Film, especially when it comes to stuff like story, dialogue and acting. There are still strong currents of more stylized film making, but the general trend is that the world and the characters therein should be "credible" ie. they should be such that the audience have an easy time "believing" that what they see is happening in their own reality, or a world that most closely represents that reality. Abstraction in this regard has become something of a quirk, while even heightened forms of traditional narrative genres, like melodrama, have become almost sources of embarrassment.

The highest level of abstractionist styles used effectively in Film was in my opinion seen during the silent era. The movement that pushed the envelope furthest were the Russian avant-garde movement I wrote about in an earlier post, but let's look at German Expressionism for a change. These were films that dealt with dark subject matter, and often fall into the more general genre of horror. Nosferatu is one example, but Dr. Mabuse, Metropolis and Faust belong to the genre too. The visual style of German Expressionism used abstract shapes and distortions to create geometrically disorienting and "nightmarish" landscapes on the screen. They relied on the formula of fairytale and legend to craft their stories. This was not a period of deep character studies. They used modern film making techniques and art styles - which they pushed to the limit - to deal with more primal layers of human psyche. This method could also be used very effectively to deliver a political message, as with the class-collaborationist Metropolis.

In America, some of these Expressionists, Fritz Lang most prominently, helped lay the foundations of another stylistic genre: Film Noir. The stories were more realistic American crime pulp, but the Expressionistic style - though much more subtle - helped give a visual representation of the desperate, often claustrophobic state of mind of the characters. Fritz Lang and his gang helped inspire a new generation of film-making which wished to deal more directly with social issues of poverty, corruption and crime, and this is what ultimately lead to Film Noir. The style was separate from Expressionists, but they left a strong imprint on the style, especially in regards to sharp angles, stark contrasts between light and dark, and the hilariously excessive use of smoke.

The trend towards realism took a next big leap with Italian Neorealism after WW2. This wave of film still retained a a whole wealth of experimentation and playfulness (not being complete morons, the film-makers still saw realism as a stylistic tool, not some sublime default everyone should strive for), but basically the most naturalistic of these films - like, say, the Bicycle Thief - are what dominate all those stupid 100 greatest films ever made. The next "big thing" in the bourgeois Film world was the French New Wave, which experimented with the extremes of pure naturalism and pure abstraction. The films actually worth watching from this gang lean heavier on naturalism - like 400 Blows - while abstractionist films - like everything that champion hack Jean-Luc Godard ever made - were utter intellectual masturbation and meta film. In my unpopular opinion, the only director who was consistantly able to pump out great films was Agnes Varda, who somehow managed to forge a synthesis with the extremes of the abstract and the real.

Attached: pierrotlefou01_0.jpg (1200x675 124.43 KB, 102.86K)

Of all these waves and styles, realism - sometimes sprinkled with cool cinematic trickery - is the ticket the bourgeois Film makers have rode on. Intellectual masturbation after all still requires a level of intellect to pull off, so what's left for the mediocrities that make the "prestige films" is to be as "real" as possible. What dominates the majority of all Western Film today - when we're not speaking of pure spectacle and escapism - is a boring, bloodless form of bourgeois realism. Even genres like comedy - the most celebrated pieces of which used to be dominated by utter madness and boobery like Chaplin, Mel Brooks, the Marx Brothers and so on - now require a form of boring middle class realism and melancholy to recognized at all (American Beauty, Woody Allen films etc.). This is probably because for realism to work, it requires a strong level of familiarity with the world and the people it depicts on the part of the author, and since 99% of the people working in the field come from the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, hollow petty-bourgeois realism is what we get. While the film industry was never exactly proletarian, the wilder and more abstractionist forms and styles that were popular even in mass entertainment pictures up until the 60's and 70's (in some cases even 80's) allowed the film makers with actual convictions and sympathies for the lower stratas of society to delve into such issues without necessarily having to replicate the realistic conditions of the working people. Even genres that take their que from Film Noir have been completely bourgeoisified. Just look the fucking abomination of "Nordic Noir". Pure bourgeois realism about the angst of gentrified middle class cunts. When lower classes exist in these films at all, they're always in relation to the good hearted or guilt ridden petty-bourgeoisie.

Attached: flashbackparty_bluejasmine.jpg (718x404 54.04 KB, 59.97K)

(me)
Forgot to add 2/2

consumerism is the reason all of art and mainstream media today are dog shit.
conservatards like pjw and peterson blame it on cultural marxists when the cultural marxists were the first ones who spoke about it and looked into the effects on capitalism and consumerism on popular culture.
even in a socialist society media consumerism would still be a complex problem because majority of people would still choose shitty simple stuff or the shock value ones.
news consumerism is the most dangerous and complex form of consumerism because it allows almost full control over people and no one believes news provided by the state and having independent news outlets won't solve anything because they would still use the same tactics news outlets use today to gather the biggest following

Attached: AdornoHorkheimerHabermasbyJeremyJShapiro2.png (1067x696, 484.85K)

Is this not, fundamentally, what the influx of personal computers in family homes, and mass access to the internet has changed? No longer are we asked just to consume products in order to fulfill this or that desire via advertising, to watch this movie or this TV show to have a laugh and just generally feel good, after the horribly boring and sterile process of work is done. Instead, what has happened, is that after the creative consciousness led to by virtual programming was fully organized and "streamlined" by the market, is that the process of consumption now implies within itself a "engagement in the creative enterprise". You cannot simply enjoy a certain pop culture franchise, you must also assert your consumer identity via the production of fan works in an effort to not only maximize your enjoyment but also partake in the making of art (vulgar, tasteless art, yes, but art), communicating also your enjoyment to all others. The communities based around modifications of videogames, anime, movies and music and so on reflect this. There's an underlying current of stretching the time spent engaging with the work as much as possible. The pressure is not only to enjoy, and communicate your enjoyment, but also to compete in a "social media marketplace" for attention, which usually decides whenever or not the artist may live off his work, via a gift economy. One could almost say that the old distinction between "work" and "leisure time" has completely eroded as a result: we work when we play and we play when we work. What is particularly interesting is the aesthetic forms this art (that is, fan works, or as my Japanese friend calls them, Doujinshi) takes: usually, even when it is deprived of clearly pornographic or "naughty" elements, it aims more at collective self-enjoyment than any particular universal or absolute goal. In the same way "hacker ethic" is neutered and deprived of it's true revolutionary character via it's participants' reluctance to step beyond "individual liberty" and the recent appropiation of such movements by Big Data, the massification of the means to do art is neutered by the reluctance to step beyond individual enjoyment and success. This is also why i am deeply skeptical of the possibility of any "genuine culture of the masses", to put it simply, most people are just too boring to make art, you know.

Attached: true.png (256x256, 118.25K)

No neoliberal bullshit capeshit.

They're competing for clicks and the favor of the YouTube algorithm. That won't exist under socialism, where advertisements are no longer necessary for artists to make money. This changes everything.
Who gets gifts is determined by who is favored by corporations. Only they get the exposure necessary to build a fanbase. There are odd exceptions, of course, but those tend to be the creators who are actually good.
And what defines individual success? Does being individually successful not imply being successful within a community? And does artistic success specifically not imply that you create something that this community considers to be good?
It is because the agents of capital deliberately manipulate our culture that this potential of universal enrichment is thwarted.

It'll be a gradual process for socialist culture to reach the heights it's capable of. At first it'll still be tainted with consumerism. This is why I'd say that next to a Patreon-like system choosing creators through direct democracy, we also need serious institutions funding and promoting the work of historical traditions and new interesting movements.

(me)
(also me)
I accidentally had this flair on from another thread. Sorry for the confusion.

I'm really interested. Can you give examples of Soviet films with precise political messages?