Are tyrants good for art?

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Alexander Nevsky (1938)
The Cranes are Flying (1957)
Ivan's Childhood (1962)
Andrei Rublev (1966)
Stalker (1979)
Come and See (1985)

And for all of its repressive structures in place, Iran has a great cinema movement.

Laura


-----Original Message-----
>From: Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com>
>Sent: Aug 12, 2012 1:08 PM
>To: Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com>
>Cc: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>, pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: Are tyrants good for art?
>
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oRbStmxvm4
>
>
>
>On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 1:03 PM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "It's because traditional tyrants left a good deal of freedom in society.
>> Ancient China wasn't anything like a modern democracy, but it produced some
>> of the greatest art there's ever been, while Mao's China produced nothing.
>> Tsarist Russia contained many kinds of discrimination and injustice, but in
>> the late 19th and early 20th Century it was in the vanguard of literature,
>> painting, music and dance. The Soviet Union produced little that was even
>> remotely comparable. The arts flourished in the empire of the Habsburgs,
>> while Nazism produced Leni Riefenstahl's repugnant and much over-rated
>> Triumph of the Will. Whereas authoritarian regimes leave much of society
>> alone, totalitarianism aims to control everything. Invariably, the result is
>> a cultural desert."
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Culture thrives on conflict and antagonism, not social harmony - a
>>> point made rather memorably by a certain Harry Lime, says philosopher
>>> John Gray.
>>>
>>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19202527
>>>
>>> John Gray
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Gray
>>
>>