John Green

John Green

John Green is a journalist and broadcaster. He has authored and edited several books and anthologies on a wide range of subjects including political biographies, labour history, poetry, natural history and environmental affairs.

What's the point of art?
Wednesday, 28 September 2022 12:49

What's the point of art?

Published in Cultural Commentary

What purpose do the arts serve today? The arts – Music, literature, painting, sculpture, dance etc. – represent vibrant aspects of human culture. They don’t provide us with food or have any obvious use value but without them we would cease to be human beings in any meaningful sense. We are the only animals to have developed an artistic culture.

The arts form part of the superstructure of society. They arose as an expression of social consciousness and have evolved intimately connected with economic and social developments. But why have the arts evolved into a sophisticated and vital part of our culture? Here, I reflect only on the visual arts and music in an attempt to examine what exactly their significance or use value is.

Artisans assuaging the gods

At the very beginning of human development, those very early drawings/paintings on rocks, of hunting scenes and portraits of wild animals, as well as music, as an accompaniment to dance, were the first expressions of human creativity. They came about in response to a deep psychological need for reassurance, as aids in overcoming our ancestors’ fears and their attempts to assuage the gods (i.e. the forces of nature). In this sense they certainly did have a use value, even if not a tangible one.

B and R award

Over time, they became increasingly ritualised. Artistic expression became wholly integrated into and part of the social fabric of the tribe, clan or people. At this time, individuals were not designated as ‘artists’ as ‘dancers’ or ‘musicians’, they were simply ordinary members of the group who took on creative tasks. Only later, when society began to produce a surplus of food, and could thus feed ‘non-essential producers’, was the group able to afford to carry individuals such as religious leaders or artists.

For a considerable time, artists (painters and musicians) were treated as mere artisans, as tradesmen, not very different from cobblers, weavers or metal workers. Only with the beginning of the Renaissance did individual artists begin to emerge and achieve special recognition. Artistic skills gained new value and the most skilful and creative of the artists were given due prominence. But still at this time, artists and musicians were obliged to work within a certain ritualistic framework, rooted in a hegemonic religion (whether Muslim or Christian) and within a fixed social hierarchy.

Individualisation and commodification

During the Renaissance, individual artists fought for and began to win increased freedoms of expression and a gradual release from strict religious and social constraints and developed their own individual creativity. This period also saw the dawn of art for itself, in the sense of works of art being no longer viewed as part of a ritual tradition but as aesthetic commodities in their own right. The culmination of this new perception of art would become abstractionism. By definition it offers no message beyond merely aesthetic pleasure or irritation.

Renaissance painting hall 03 Cleveland Museum of Art 2016 05 18 28357077585

The individualisation of the arts went in parallel with its commodification. A price was put on creative works and they were increasingly commissioned and collected by wealthy individuals, rather than by religious institutions. Once the arts’ essential ritualistic role had been eroded, they began to fulfil different purposes. And certainly in Europe, with the severing of that umbilical cord to ritual went the blurring and disappearance of separate cultural identities.

In our modern world of electronic communications, with large global movements of people and cross-cultural fertilisation, individual and separate cultures are being largely eradicated or subsumed into a global culture. This development has been accompanied by an almost complete absence of constraint, censorship or prohibitions.

What have these recent developments meant for the arts, both in terms of function and their place in our cultural life? What role do they play in today’s society and what do we expect from them?

Entertainment and enjoyment

First and foremost, I would argue, that we demand enjoyment, entertainment, and a cathartic experience from the arts. We may also relish a challenge, but that challenge has to incorporate pleasure – otherwise why would we subject ourselves to non-pleasurable or painful experiences?

For the general public the arts certainly do provide entertainment and enjoyment, even if largely of a soporific and passive consumerist nature. Painting and sculpture have today become somewhat marginalised, catering for a small number of (usually wealthy) afficionados. Although there is still a flourishing movement of amateurs alongside professional artists who create largely for their own pleasure – taking part in artistic activity as a practitioner can be rewarding on a purely spiritual level. And lavishly curated exhibitions of great artists of the past, usually accompanied by much media hype, still draw quite large audiences.

Music, on the other hand, has become a truly mass phenomenon. More so than the other traditional arts, music has undergone perhaps the most dramatic change. Traditional, ritualistic and religious music as well as genuine folk music have almost completely disappeared. In an age of secularism and of mass, electronic distribution, musical production has become almost completely commercialised, driven and dominated by large corporations who own rights and distribution networks.

Why do we still listen to music today and what do we seek from it? In its earliest incarnation music was very much a rhythmic sound made on rudimentary instruments. This became an accompaniment to dance and later song, serving as a socially cohesive force, binding groups together. With the continuing development and increasingly sophisticated of instrumentation and then the invention of notation, musical expression evolved radically.

Since the turn of the 19th century we began to divide musical expression arbitrarily into categories, e.g. classical, jazz or popular etc., such separation, though, serves more to confuse than enlighten. All music – for practitioners as well as audiences – has similar aims: to provide relaxation and to entertain.

Particularly, in our world today, I think, though, that practitioners (musicians and artists) will view/listen to musical works with rather different eyes and ears to non-practitioners. Practitioners will look for and obtain satisfaction largely from discovering innovation and challenges to the traditional, whereas non-practitioners (largely passive recipients or amateurs) will simply expect pleasure.

Clearly, the most popular music globally has become that distributed by the big recording and distribution companies, largely in the form of songs and dance numbers and aimed very much at a market in the younger age-range.

The failure of classical music

So-called classical music has entered a critical phase. The era of classical can be said, with one or two exceptions, to have ended by the turn of the 19th- 20th centuries, certainly in its traditional form. We continue to have live performances and recordings from the classical canon but contemporary works categorised as ‘classical’ are few and far between, and obtain minimal airing. This, I would argue, is largely because contemporary composers in that tradition, i.e. classically trained, have failed to find a language that is rooted in the past but which adequately addresses contemporary aural and ‘spiritual’ needs.

So it is largely non-melodic, using few recognisable and catchy tunes. It fails to plumb emotional depths or offer relaxing and enjoyable tonal experiences. Is this perhaps because virtually all possible combinations of melodic and tuneful composition have been exhausted by previous generations? Or is such tuneful and melodic composition in classical form inappropriate for our times? Popular music, too, is rarely genuinely innovative and largely recycles traditional melodic forms.

I can understand that composers, other than jobbing ones or those seeking primarily commercial success would find it frustrating and meaningless to simply repeat compositional forms fully explored by previous generations. They will continually seek new ways of using musical language. The question is: are they able to transform musical composition and innovate while still providing the enjoyment and entertainment audiences in their majority seek? There is perhaps a key contradiction between the needs of most listeners and creators, because, as I say above, the former will be looking primarily for relaxation and enjoyment, while the latter will be looking for new ways of expressing their musical ideas.

Can music convey messages?

A central question when talking about the influence of music – ignoring for a moment the setting of texts to music – is can it convey a message? Music can certainly convey or engender a multitude of emotions, from sad to happy, contemplative to rousing, as well as beautiful and tender. Some pieces of music are said to be full of humanity, but can a piece of music really turn us into a better person, help our humanity unfold? Can it make us more loving and less belligerent?

Those are difficult questions and probably insoluble. As with most other cultural activities, music today is divorced from ritual and is no longer a necessary socially centripetal force. Music on its own can convey no concrete message, but accompanied by lyrics it can, of course, just as the visual arts can convey messages, besides offering aesthetic and visual pleasure,

The pianist, Andras Schiff, recently said that Beethoven’s works ‘carry a humanitarian and spiritual message’ – but can music alone express humanitarianism or communicate a spiritual message? I would love to believe it could but remain sceptical. Many Nazis adored those classical composers deemed to be great humanitarians: Beethoven, Bach, Schubert and Schumann for example. Did it change those Nazis, give them a spiritually beneficial message?

Music has certainly often been used to encourage bellicosity and rouse people to war and as an accompaniment to war, but I can think of no example where it has been used to rouse people to peace. Even Beethoven’s famous 9th symphony with its setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy and its appeal for social harmony fails on that score:

Thy magic bind again
What vogueish sword has divided
Beggars will be nobles' brothers
Where thy gentle wing abides

This symphony has rarely, if ever, been able to engender true harmony and fraternity.

Once photography arrived on the scene in a big way towards the close of the 19th century, that traditional role for the visual arts – namely the depiction of events or portraiture and still lives as elements of historical record keeping – became redundant. Although portraits, still lives and landscapes etc. are still being painted, they are no longer vital as records of reality. Such works will, though, still be purchased by collectors in order to possess something individually crafted and unique. For the practitioners, both professional and amateur, artistic activity will continue to provide satisfaction and pleasure.

So, to return to my opening question, what purpose do the arts serve today? On the one hand, they serve the same function that they always have – giving pleasure and providing spiritual nourishment but in a very different way to that which they did in their original form. On the other hand, although there are certainly no longer defined parameters for the arts, both artists and their works have been largely commodified.  

chad people take turns to do the difficult jobs 

by Chad McCail

Capitalism has expropriated the arts very much for its own profit-making purposes. But in the ongoing struggle for cultural hegemony, the arts can and do play a vital role.  They are also weapons in this struggle, but if they are only used and seen as weapons, they will cease to be art and will be deprived of their unique humanitarian essence.

The Fall of Paris, by Ilya Ehrenburg
Tuesday, 19 January 2021 12:00

The Fall of Paris, by Ilya Ehrenburg

Published in Fiction

John Green introduces The Fall of Paris by Ilya Ehrenburg (1943), and presents a brief biography of the author. Image above: Ilya Ehrenburg with Red Army soldiers, 1942

I have just re-read The Fall of Paris by Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg. And what a re-discovery it has been! Few people today will have heard of this novel or the author, although he was one of the Soviet Union’s most renowned 20th century writers.

I was struck particularly by how pertinent this novel still is for the times we are living through today. It is also one of the most powerful examples of an accomplished socialist-realist novel.

In it, Ehrenburg describes the decay and eventual collapse of French society between 1935 and the German occupation in 1940. He was living in France during those crucial years before the Nazi invasion, and meticulously describes life in the capital city, as events unfold and the danger of war edges ever closer.

He adopts a traditional story-telling mode, with an anonymous third person narrator and a straightforward chronology of events. His protagonists are taken from all walks of life, classes and political backgrounds, but in his clever intertwining of their lives he reveals the social forces that ultimately determined the course of history.

There is the opportunist Radical Party politician Paul Tessa, with his ailing, devoutly Catholic wife; his wastrel son and a daughter who is so revolted by his opportunistic politics that she leaves home to join the communists; there is Breteuil, the unscrupulous fascist leader; Pierre Dubois, the principled socialist engineer in a large aircraft factory, his friend André, the apolitical artist; Michaud, the militant worker who goes to fight in the Spanish Civil War and Desser, the wealthy boss of the factory, as well as many minor characters.

Ehrenburg meticulously deconstructs the political machinations and battles that determined the trajectory of France’s Popular Front government, its supine abandonment of Republican Spain, its capitulation to the Nazis and its eventual demise. The background is true to life, with leading politicians, artists and public figures given their real names; only the novel’s protagonists are fictitious, but come vibrantly alive in Ehrenburg’s descriptions and dialogues.

This is no simplistic story-telling, with black and white characters, goodies and baddies – his characters are portrayed with all their contradictions, their strengths and weaknesses. The novel has all the traditional ingredients of romance, drama and intrigue, but incorporated realistically and believably.

Although it has since been swept under the carpet, it is salutary to be reminded that well before the Nazi invasion of France, the country had a flourishing fascist movement and that a fascist coup was a distinct possibility in the 1930s, while the governing and opposition parties continued to bicker and squabble fruitlessly among themselves. Ehrenburg demonstrates how the French government’s capitulation to Hitler, whether in Spain or over the Sudetenland, enhanced his sense of invulnerability and fed his voraciousness.

Ehrenburg quotes verbatim from the broadcast given by the Minister for Home Affairs, lying blatantly to the nation about France’s preparedness for war:

‘Never before have the skies of France see such a powerful air-force … never before has the soil of our country known such thundering hordes of tanks … we are working day and night to increase our gigantic armaments …’

At the same time the minister knows full well that the country has very few planes and tanks, and that instead of workers working overtime in the arms factories, the government has been arresting hundreds of communists and suspected communists, and keeping them in concentration camps, thus disrupting production. It all smacks very much of Boris Johnson’s lies about the war on Covid that ‘we are winning and leading the world’ despite the largest death toll per head of any country.

This is not a didactic book, but it does offer valuable insights into society and politics. His characters are colourful and three-dimensional, and his descriptions of French life are highly evocative. Despite it being written over half a century ago it is not simply of historical interest. It has retained its sense of taking the pulse of history and the individuals it describes are still around us today – as is the threat of fascism and the venal political manoeuvring of opportunistic politicians.

Short Biography

Ilya Ehrenburg was born in Kiev into a Lithuanian-Jewish family. When Ehrenburg was four years old, the family moved to Moscow, where his father had been hired as chief of a brewery. At school, he met Nikolai Bukharin and the two remained friends until Bukharin's death in 1938 during the purges.

In the aftermath of 1905 Ehrenburg became involved in illegal activities of the socialist opposition. In 1908, when he was only seventeen, the tsarist secret police arrested him for five months. Finally he was allowed to go abroad and chose Paris for his exile.

In Paris, he moved in Bolshevik circles, meeting Lenin and other prominent exiles. But soon he felt more attracted to the bohemian life in the Paris quarter of Montparnasse. He began to write poems, regularly visited the cafés of the quarter and became friends with many artists, including Picasso, Rivera and Modigliani.

During the First World War, Ehrenburg became a war correspondent for a St. Petersburg newspaper. He wrote a series of articles about the mechanized war that later on were also published as a book - The Face of War.

In 1917, after the revolution, Ehrenburg returned to Russia. In 1920 he moved to Kiev, where he experienced four different regimes in the course of one year: the Germans, the Cossacks, the Bolsheviks, and the White Army. After antisemitic pogroms, he fled to Koktebel on the Crimea, where his friend from Paris days, Voloshin, had a house.

Finally, Ehrenburg returned to Moscow. He became a cultural activist and journalist who spent much time abroad as a writer. He wrote modernistic picaresque novels and short stories which were  popular in the 1920s. Ehrenburg also continued to write philosophical poetry.

As a friend of many of the European Left, Ehrenburg was frequently allowed to visit Western Europe and to campaign for peace and socialism. He arrived in Spain in late August 1936 as a correspondent for Izvestia and was involved in writing propaganda and reporting on military activity. In July 1937 he attended the Second International Writers' Congress, the purpose of which was to discuss the attitude of intellectuals to the war, held in Spain and attended by many renowned writers including Malraux, Hemingway, Spender and Neruda.

Ehrenburg was offered a column in Krasnaya Zvezda (the Red Army newspaper) days after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. By the end of the war, he had published more than 2,000 articles in Soviet newspapers.

In 1954, Ehrenburg published a novel titled The Thaw that challenged the limits of censorship in the post-Stalin Soviet Union. It portrayed a corrupted and despotic factory boss, and told the story of his wife, who increasingly feels estranged from him, and the views he represents. In the novel, the spring thaw comes to represent a period of change in the characters' emotional journeys, and when the wife eventually leaves her husband, this coincides with the melting of the snow. Thus, the novel can be seen as a representation of the political thaw, and the increased freedom of the writer after the 'frozen' political period under Stalin.

While a whole number of other Jewish intellectuals suffered considerably under Stalin, and many were killed, Ehrenburg was left unscathed. It has been said that Stalin was so taken with his novel The Fall of Paris that he held a protective hand over him. He was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952.

Ehrenburg is particularly well known for his memoirs (People, Years, Life in Russian, published with the title Memoirs: 1921-1941 in English), which contain many portraits of interest to literary historians and biographers. In this book, Ehrenburg was the first legal Soviet author to mention positively a lot of names banned under Stalin.

JG

Ilya Ehrenburg's grave

Ehrenburg died in 1967 and was interred in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, where his gravestone is adorned with a reproduction of his portrait drawn by his friend Pablo Picasso.

'History Lite': Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy
Saturday, 22 August 2020 19:26

'History Lite': Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy

Published in Fiction

John Green reviews Hilary Mantel’s trilogy of historical novels. The above image is Hans Holbein's 1530s portrait of Thomas Cromwell

Hilary Mantel’s trilogy on the life of Henry VIII’s secretary, Thomas Cromwell (1485 –1540), has been widely praised, and the first two volumes each won the Booker Prize for fiction. Thomas Cromwell was Henry’s Lord Privy Seal, Vice-Regent and Secretary. In one capacity or another, he was the king’s closest adviser for 7 years. Cromwell has been much maligned by historians and invariably portrayed as a ruthless, Machiavellian manipulator who got his just deserts when Henry had him beheaded in 1540.

Mantel’s fictional biography has helped place him in a more differentiated and positive light, and rightly portrays him as the chief instigator of the English Reformation. For most of us who learned our history in the school classroom, the reign of Henry VIII is indelibly associated with his several wives and having two of them beheaded. England’s break with the Roman Catholic church in 1534 during his reign has also been framed in the context of the Pope’s refusal to sanction the annulment of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. This over-simplification of history has dominated the narrative of this key period in English history for generations.

Mantel is a skilled writer who knows how to tell a tale in a gripping and absorbing way. Her scrupulous research and eye for detail, together with great imaginative flair, give her books their magnetism. In her telling of Cromwell’s life, she emphasises the embedded class system of feudal England, and how it impacted on Cromwell’s own life.

He was born in London’s docklands, the son of a brewer and blacksmith, and grew up in relative poverty. He had no formal education but managed to survive those hard knocks in early life to rise and become one of the most powerful men in the country. As a young man, he had run away from home to Europe, where he slowly managed to escape his allotted place in life, overcoming the handicaps of his background and emerging as a successful, wealthy and intellectually capable citizen.

After his return to England in around 1515, he managed to obtain employment with the all-powerful Cardinal Wolsey, who immediately recognised his talents and nurtured them. Henry eventually fell out with Wolsey because he felt he had amassed too much power and wealth, and expelled him from his court. Wolsey died before he could be imprisoned – or worse. Despite his intimate association with Wolsey, Cromwell was left unscathed.

He progressed from serving Wolsey to serving the king, embarking on a rise so unremarked that few potential rivals in that greedy and thuggish court realised the threat he posed, until it was too late. As a ‘common man’ he had been largely ignored or dismissed by his ‘betters’.

Henry noted his abilities early on and appointed him as Chancellor of the Exchequer, one the most powerful positions in the country. Later he was appointed Lord Privy Seal and then Vice-Regent. This meteoric rise of a lowly plebeian boy to become the most influential man at the royal court was not viewed with equanimity by the aristocratic families of the day, who spared no effort to have him deposed. His humble background was continually raised by the blue-blooded in order to insult and demean him. Those of higher estate found the rise of a brewer’s son to the heart of government difficult to stomach. Still, after the carnage of the Wars of the Roses, many of the noble houses were not particularly ancient and Henry VIII’s England did offer unprecedented opportunities for a new breed of men, willing to risk all for the chance of power and wealth.

Mantel tells Cromwell’s rags-to-riches story eloquently and engagingly, providing the reader with a vivid portrait of Tudor court life. So why am I left disappointed by her trilogy?

I believe the popularity of her fictional biography lies largely in the detailed court goings-on, the gossip and intrigue that she describes so exquisitely and that permeates her narrative. But at no point is the reader helped to understand what the English Reformation meant in terms of the life of the country, international relations and the politics of power. After all, Cromwell was at the centre of this great historical process and, indeed, was very much its motor – but he didn’t work alone.

Democratising the church

What motivated Cromwell to pursue the reformation of the church, and to destroy the power of Catholicism? We know that Henry’s chief reason for breaking with the Roman Church was to get his hands on as much of the enormous wealth in the church’s possession as he could, and gain absolute power. He utilised Cromwell for that purpose. While Cromwell helped fulfil his desires, his own motivation went far beyond merely satisfying Henry’s greed and vanity. He saw the vital need to destroy the church’s absolute power, to democratise it, to make the scriptures available in English rather than in Latin for the first time and tackle church corruption. He was strongly influenced by what had been happening in mainland Europe in the wake of Martin Luther’s challenge to Catholic hegemony, and the writings of Erasmus, Tyndale, Melanchthon and other religious dissidents. This was the period of emerging humanism which would later develop into the 17th century Enlightenment.

Cromwell had also been influenced by the English theologian John Wycliffe (1320s-1384), whose ideas predated Luther’s by 100 years. Through his radical call for church reform and translating the Bible into the common vernacular, Wycliffe attacked the privileged status of the clergy, which had bolstered their powerful role in England and the luxury and pomp of local parishes. In 1382 Wycliffe completed a translation directly from the Latin Vulgate into Middle English - a version now known as Wycliffe’s Bible. Just like Martin Luther (1483 – 1546), Wycliffe argued that the Church had fallen into sin, that it ought to give up all its property, and that the clergy should live in complete poverty.

The tendency of the high offices of state to be held by clerics was not only resented by the lower orders but by many of the nobles too. Wycliffe regarded the Bible as the only reliable guide to the truth about God, and maintained that all Christians should rely on it rather than on the teachings of popes and clerics. He argued that there was no scriptural justification for the papacy.

In the midst of this came the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. This revolt was sparked in part by Wycliffe's preaching, carried throughout the realm by ‘poor priests’ appointed by Wycliffe (who were mostly laymen). The preachers didn't limit their criticism of the accumulation of wealth and property to that of the monasteries, but included secular properties belonging to the nobility as well. Such views were, of course, incendiary. England’s peasant uprisings came 100 years before Germany’s Peasants’ Revolt.

William Tyndale (1494 –1536), an almost exact contemporary of Thomas Cromwell and someone who followed closely in the footsteps of Wycliffe, had been exiled to Antwerp for his ‘heretical views’. Here he came very much under the influence of Erasmus and published his own (incomplete) translation of the Bible, from Hebrew, into English. His teaching had a considerable influence on Cromwell and while Mantel mentions this, she does not give it much weight.

Cromwell was largely responsible for carrying out the dissolution of the monasteries and confiscating their properties and wealth. At the same time he attacked the industry that had grown up around the worship of relics, the selling of indulgences and other archaic practices which he felt had nothing to do with genuine Christian worship and belief in God. Unfortunately this church wealth, rather than being redistributed to ordinary citizens and peasants, fell into the hands of Henry and his chief nobles.

Mantel underplays this historical context and fails to penetrate the psychology or the thinking of men like Cromwell and his reforming supporters. Nowhere in her books are we made aware of the discussions, debates and disputes that raged at the time, in which Cromwell was very much involved. She fails to grasp the full historical dimension of the Protestant Reformation and gets lost in the minutiae of courtly behaviour, the king’s sexual problems and the machinations of the various noble figures jockeying for power. In all the individuals she portrays, both real and fictional, we are not made aware of any intellectual curiosity or depth. They are treated like chess pieces, to be moved within the confines of the board.

The interconnectedness of the political and economic background with religious reform is in Mantel’s book vague or non-existent. One of the main reasons that the Reformation was so successful in large parts of Europe and in England was because the rising merchant class, the bourgeoisie, wanted to throw off their feudal shackles and escape the church’s suppression of all radical ideas. The church was holding back economic development, stifling the freedom of thought and scientific investigation that were essential if capitalism were to emerge and flourish as it later did.

Even sections of the aristocracy had begun to question why they were still obliged to send large sums of money to Rome in order to support an overblown and largely corrupt clergy. At the bottom of the pile, the peasantry throughout the country were still living in abject poverty, as virtual slaves of the big landowners – including the church – and were burdened with increasing demands on their labour, higher taxation and church tithes. The new Protestant ideas were music to their ears, and provided a stimulus for rebellion.

In Germany these ideas led to the great Peasant War, from 1524 to 1525. In England peasant rebellion on such a broad scale was absent, although in East Anglia, Robert Kett, a Norfolk gentleman, led a rebellion against Henry’s religious policies, the dissolution of the monasteries and the very unpopular enclosure of common lands by greedy noblemen. The rebels were defeated at Norwich by an English army supported by foreign mercenaries. This kind of background, which underlies and determines the lives of the figures who appear in the books, is hardly apparent. I feel we still have to wait for a definitive historical novel of this crucial period in English history.

Socially engaged, internationalist and critical: the destruction of GDR culture since reunification
Wednesday, 06 November 2019 09:56

Socially engaged, internationalist and critical: the destruction of GDR culture since reunification

Published in Cultural Commentary

John Green discusses the obliteration of GDR culture since reunification. The mosaic is in Eisenhüttenstadt, and is by Walter Womacka

This month sees the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, leading a year later to the annexation of the former German Democratic Republic by the Federal Republic. I use the term ‘annexation’ intentionally because despite the people of the former GDR voting in their majority for a unified Germany, what they got was a de facto takeover by the west.

In his recent book ‘The New Faces of Fascism’, Professor Enzo Traverso of Cornell University uses this term unequivocally. He writes that ‘The annexation of the former German Democratic Republic was conceived of as a political, economic and cultural process that inevitably implied the demolition of antifascism …’ Despite the passage of three decades, the territory of the former GDR is in many ways still very different from the former Federal Republic.

3271328827 475d833a81 z

Hollensturz in Vietnam by Willi Sitte. Photo by Bob Ramsak / piran café

One might have the impression from the numerous depictions of the GDR in the western media that it was a country characterised by oppression, lack of freedom and a grey, monotonous daily life for its citizens. That it was in fact a country with a relatively high standard of living, with a flourishing industry and a vibrant cultural environment is redacted from the mainstream narrative.

Despite the fact that both postwar German republics were formed as a result of the partition by the Second World War Allies of a unified German nation, there developed in the eastern part a specific and separate culture and way of life, based on socialist principles, even if the system could be characterised as ‘state socialism’ and authoritarian in many of its aspects. Against all the odds the GDR – based on only a third of Germany as a whole and the least industrially developed part, with very few raw materials – managed to build a second German culture based on a clear break with the country’s fascist past and firmly rooted in Germany’s communist and internationalist traditions.

In any state there will always be a tension and sometimes conflict between artists and state institutions and official ideology. And in this the GDR was no different from most other countries, but art and culture were taken seriously by everyone; they were not marginal to people’s lives. The country had a lively book publishing industry, there were theatres and concert halls in even smaller towns, there was a thriving film industry and art scene. Financial support and encouragement were given to amateur art groups, often located in or near people’s workplaces.

The four-yearly GDR art exhibition in Dresden, at which a huge array of contemporary art works were exhibited, was a great draw for visitors from all over the country. There were often animated and fiery discussions about certain of the works exhibited. ‘Socialist realist’ art was the form that was officially sanctioned and encouraged but this was a somewhat elastic concept. Most artists were happy to paint and sculpt in a realist manner but interpreted the world in their own unique way. There were those who preferred to explore abstraction and they got a raw deal in terms of being able to exhibit and survive economically. It is only now, belatedly, that GDR art is slowly being recognised as interesting in its own right and worth exhibiting, even if most selections dwell overmuch on the so-called ‘dissident’ aspect.

The GDR produced its own home-grown song movement with a whole number of groups and individual singers who developed a recognisable ‘GDR style’: socially engaged, internationalist and also critical. Sometimes, as with Wolf Biermann, the critical element went too far for the powers that be and he was banned from publicly performing, before being expelled from the country, but most managed to find a niche and steer clear of official sanction. There was a large annual festival of political song which brought together musicians from around the world, like Pete Seeger from the USA, Inti Illimani and Quilapayun from Chile, Leon Gieco from Argentina and the Sands Family from Ireland, among many others.

What overwhelmingly characterised GDR art and culture was that it was viewed by everyone as an integral part of society, and for artists being engaged as well as critical were taken as given. Broad sections of the population were actively engaged in the arts, either as participants or as audiences and readers. Schools and workplaces organised regular trips to the theatre, concerts, cultural events and exhibitions and these were invariably subsidised by the state.

This unique integration of art, artists and society which is only really possible under a socialist system, came to an end with the demise of the GDR. And although the Federal Republic provides generous support for the arts – in contrast to the UK – they are very much linked to the capitalist structures within which they operate and are often very elitist.

5598871424 36e3eccf5e b

Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, by Bertolt Brecht

While the ruling SED party and GDR government were certainly over-controlling in terms of their cultural policies and over-fearful of what they viewed as potentially negative western influences and anti-socialist activity, they did actively and generously encourage and support the development of an artistic environment that was socially engaged, integrated and committed to humanitarian aims. That legacy has been lost.

Following unification in 1990, almost all GDR industries were very quickly dismantled or taken over by West German firms, and all GDR institutions (e.g. universities, theatres, museums etc.), if not closed, had new managers imposed on them. Most of the staff in GDR universities, colleges and schools, as well as in local and national government, found themselves out of a job or demoted.

The GDR’s media – television, radio and publishing houses – were all closed. Former co-operative and state farms were also closed down. With this total dismantling of the GDR’s infrastructure, people were obliged to migrate to the west to find work, particularly younger people. This left whole areas of the territory virtually devoid of a younger generation. Still today, wages are still lower in the east, as are pensions. The promised affluence has benefited very few and the wealth gap between the population in the former GDR and that of the Federal Republic remains large.

GDR art tubke

Werner Tübke, History of the German labour movement II, 1961

The imposition of the federal German system on the East has also meant the obliteration of a specific GDR culture. Since unification, the German Federal government and media have attempted to deny anything positive about the GDR, and have deliberately conflated what they call ‘the two totalitarianisms’ i.e. nazism and communism. In doing so, they avow that this time they are determined to undertake a proper reckoning with the GDR and expose its totalitarian essence (implicitly recognising that they had not done this properly with Germany’s Nazi past). Most cultural representations of the GDR have also been eradicated or hidden.

In the concerted attempt to demonise the system and life in the GDR, there have been a plethora of horror stories – virtually all written by western pundits who never experienced the GDR first hand. The most notorious is the much-hyped book ‘Stasiland’ by the Australian Anna Funder, who visited the GDR for a few days as a tourist and returned there after unification to interview people who were ‘victims’ of the regime. Her book is littered with factual inaccuracie,s and reveals an abysmal ignorance of what life was really like in the country, but it is widely seen as the must-read book about the GDR.

csm ARCHIT 2 Copyright DEFA Stiftung Christa Koefer 1d055f3225

The Architects, a film by Peter Kahane. Photo by DEFA

In the cinema, the much-lauded ‘The Life of Others’ by the West German aristocrat, Florian Henckel von Donnersmark was a well-crafted thriller – but a total caricature. His portrayal of GDR artists as subject to Stasi control and at the mercy of arbitrary state coercion was a fantasy, but it perfectly fitted the narrative that the West German elite wished to promote. He spoke to Christoph Hein before making the film, wanting to utilise his experience as a writer who had certainly had his run-ins with GDR state censorship – but Hein himself later distanced himself from the film, and said it bore little relationship to reality.

GDR writers, film-makers and theatre directors have almost all been blacklisted, and have not been given the opportunity of reflecting their own assessments of GDR reality. This is all part of a concerted campaign to erase any positive vestige of GDR culture from the historical narrative.

GDR

The most egregious example of the destruction of GDR culture was the controversial demolition of the Palace of the Republic in the centre of Berlin. This modern building symbolised more than any other the confidence, forward-looking attitude and strength of the GDR. The building not only housed the GDR parliament but contained a theatre, concert halls, cafes and restaurants which were much used by the city’s population.

Of course, the two parts of the formerly divided Germany will eventually coalesce, and memories of the GDR are already fading as new generations come along. However, it would be a historical travesty if the many positive sides of the GDR experience and the contribution it made to the world were to be totally obliterated. It would be even worse if this experience and contribution were equated with the Nazi atrocities of genocide and fomenting world war, as part of the same ‘totalitarianism’.

Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It by John Green and Brunhild de la Motte is available from Artery Publications at £10.

America at Work: the photography of Lewis Hine
Thursday, 06 December 2018 16:29

America at Work: the photography of Lewis Hine

Published in Visual Arts

John Green reviews a new book about the life and work of Lewis W. Hine, one of the founders of of U.S. social photography.

Lewis Hine's iconic images captured the harsh realities of a country undergoing deep transformation during the early part of the 20th century.

Hine was born in 1874, in a small-town in Wisconsin, and when his father died he was forced to become the family’s breadwinner. After a series of poorly paid jobs he attended night classes to educate himself and was able to obtain a degree in pedagogy, before going on to study sociology under John Dewey.

cover

In collaboration with the Felix Adler Ethical Culture School which ran classes for deprived children, he started to learn the practical and technical aspects of photography. He is encouraged to document the activities of the school – and thus begins what will become a life-long commitment and passion for documenting the social and working conditions of North America’s labouring classes.

Hine prepared slide shows and made them available on loan, and organised exhibitions to make his work widely available. With his child labour photos, he became a forerunner of social documentary photography, bringing social problems to the attention of the US public. His images of child labour in the cotton spinning mills, mines, strawberry fields, tobacco and beef farms during the first decades of the 20th century are reminiscent of descriptions given so vividly by Friedrich Engels of Britain’s industrial revolution during the 19th century.

Noon hour in the Ewen Breaker Pennsylvania Coal Co. South Pittston Pennsylvania 1911

The National Child Labour Committee (NCLC) used Hine’s persuasive imagery for its own propaganda purposes. Child labour at the turn of the century was widespread: in 1910 over a million children either didn’t go to school at all or only irregularly because they had to work. Hine, as a teacher, had a rapport with the children and talks to them, using what they tell him in the captions to his photos. Only in 1938 would a Fair Labour Standards Act come into force, banning child labour.

Hine also took a whole series of photos on Ellis Island, documenting the tribulations of immigrants seeking asylum in the USA. He travelled thousands of miles documenting the country’s labouring classes, depicting them in all their vulnerability and dignity.

His work is almost all black and white portraits. At that time, photographing people in motion was not possible given the available glass plate technology, and without the highly sensitive film stock that came later on.

Hine book child labour

Alberta McNadd on Chester Truitt’s farm at Cannon, del. Alberta is five years of age and has been picking berries since she was 3. Her mother volunteered the information that she picks steadily from sun-up to sun-down. Cannon, Delaware, 1910

He clearly identifies with the children and the men and women whose labour made the USA what it would become: the world’s leading industrialised nation. It is in the faces that we see the hardship, poverty, shame and abuse. But despite the fact that Hine sees and documents the relationship between industrial production and human misery, he appears to show little curiosity about the economic forces behind this exploitation, and remains seemingly apolitical, as if he fears losing his observer status.

His images have a direct, communicative character, with no self-conscious artiness about them. Hine went on to cover the First World War for the Red Cross, and was the official photographer during the building of the Empire State building, bequeathing us awe-inspiring images of those heroic men who risked their lives to erect this symbolic New York skyscraper.

Workman on the framework of the Empire State Building New York City 1931

Workman on the framework of the Empire State Building, New York City, 1931

He went on to work for Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, but from the 1930s commissions declined. He had set up his own photo lab in New York and advertised as a ‘social photographer’, but his work at the time was hardly recognised as art and he found it increasingly difficult towards the end of his life obtaining commissions. He died in poverty in 1940.

In 1977 his work was rediscovered and is now considered to be invaluable not only as a historical document, but as great art. One of his students was the photographer Paul Strand who carried on his tradition.

This beautiful Taschenbuch edition does Hine justice by bringing his searing images to the eyes of a new generation and reminds us all where we’ve come from.

Lewis W. Hine: America at Work by Peter Walther is published by Taschen Biblioteca Universalis at £15. This article is republished from the Morning Star.

Nae Pasaran: They Did Not Pass
Wednesday, 19 September 2018 17:01

Nae Pasaran: They Did Not Pass

Published in Films

John Green reviews a new film about the solidarity and courage of some Scots engineering workers who took action against the Chilean military coup of 1973.

Nae Pasaran tells the incredible but true story of the Scots workers who, from the other side of the world, managed to ground half of Chile’s air force, in the longest single act of solidarity against Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship following the 1973 fascist coup.

The feature-length documentary from young Chilean film-maker Felipe Bustos Sierra charts the story of how, in 1974, a small group of workers at the Rolls Royce aircraft factory in East Kilbride, led by Bob Fulton, Robert Somerville, Stuart Barrie and John Keenan, took the decision not to refurbish Hawker Hunter aircraft engines destined to be returned to Chile.

They were engines from the planes that had been used to bomb the Moneda Palace in Santiago and murder President Allende. Fulton had seen the images of people packed into Santiago’s football stadium and Chilean air force jets strafing the palace and now one of the engines from those very same planes was right there in his factory, waiting to be refurbished.

These workers were not prepared to be made morally culpable and, at the risk of their livelihoods, they said “No” and they carried the whole workforce with them. Little did they realise that their small but courageous action would reverberate around the world and give renewed hope to those who were imprisoned, tortured and persecuted.

The boycott was only one of many actions taken all over the world in protest against Pinochet's dictatorship, but a highly significant one. Bustos Sierra decided that this was a story that had to be told. He tracks down the key men, now retired, and persuades them to retell their story.

Then he takes the thread to Chile, with interviews with those who experienced the horrors of the Pinochet dictatorship and who were given hope by the action of these anonymous Scottish workers.
He also interviews the former chief of the air force under Pinochet, still arrogantly unrepentant, but who admits that the Scottish workers’ action had a significant impact on the Chilean air force’s capabilities. It was dependent on British-supplied Hawker Hunter aircraft and the refurbished engines.

As a moving coda, Bustos Sierra manages to trace one of the Rolls Royce engines, now rusting in a Chilean scrapyard, and transports it back to East Kilbride to serve as a memorial to these men. They are also presented with Chile’s highest honour by the Chilean ambassador in a moving ceremony in East Kilbride.

JG medal ceremony 4

The boycott endured for four years but the Scottish workers were never, until now, aware of the impact their action had. For them it was simply a matter of conscience and an act of solidarity.

Bustos Sierra — himself the Scotland-based son of a Chilean exile — reunites these inspirational workers to hear their story. With unprecedented access, Nae Pasaran also ventures much further to detail the horrors of the Pinochet years, giving the historical and international context, and meets survivors of the period to hear the Chilean side of the story.

Although over an hour long, the film maintains the tension of a story which is at times deeply emotional, full of humanity and historically informative. This is history as it should be told and reminds us of how vital working-class solidarity is and how effective it can be, particularly in the world we are now living in, when some people are being categorised as of less worth than others and are denied basic human rights.

Don’t miss this film. Ask for it to be shown in your local cinemas and spread the word.

For details of screenings, visit naepasaran.com. This review first appeared in the Morning Star.

Karl Marx, tickled and honoured
Monday, 16 April 2018 16:06

Karl Marx, tickled and honoured

Published in Visual Arts

John Green introduces some Karl Marx bicentenary cartoons and caricatures.

5 May 2018 marks the bicentenary of the birth of Karl Marx. To commemorate this the Ken Sprague Fund organised an international cartoon and caricature competition which drew over 150 entries from artists around the world.

Ken Sprague was one of Britain’s foremost politically-committed graphic artists and the fund was set up to commemorate his work as well as the ideas he stood for. This competition was dedicated to Tony Farsky, a close friend of Sprague’s and himself a long-time supporter of progressive causes. 

The jury awarded a joint first prize to Stefan Siegert of Germany for his caricature of a laughing Marx (see above) and Ukrainian cartoonist Konstantin Kazanchev for his cartoon of Marx confronting a young skateboarder wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.

120.WINNER konstantin kazanchev resized1

Second prize went to Raed Khalil from Syria for his black-and-white drawing of a bust of Marx’s head with a flock of birds breaking into flight from it.

 

12. raed khalil syria head into birds resized1

Third prize was awarded to Ehsan Ganji from Iran for his cartoon of an assembly worker manufacturing truncheons for a police force that will then use them to beat protesting workers.

124.EhsanGanji IRAN truncheon resized1

Marx would surely have been tickled — and maybe honoured — to see himself caricatured, lampooned and eternalised in such humorous ways as demonstrated by the images in this exhibition. What the cartoons and caricatures do reveal is a wide range of political interpretations — some portray Marx himself, others indict capitalism and yet others vilify the whole Marxian outlook or ridicule its impact. Some are sharply funny, some deadly serious and yet others acerbic.

Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson says of the catalogue: “I got my first big break doing gags about Karl Marx. The point, however, is that so did he. Any idiot who thinks of Marx as a dour, 'humourless leftie' has never read him and probably never met a proper leftie either. This splendid book should put them right on both counts.”

What is most striking about almost all the submissions to this competition is how unnecessary language or translations are. Despite cultural and language barriers, most use a visual imagery that can be understood internationally, across all cultural, religious or political barriers and boundaries.

Cartooning and caricature have a very long tradition in most countries, but it has never been an easy occupation. Even today in some parts of the world cartoonists risk harassment, imprisonment or worse for taking on the mighty and powerful. In countries where there is no free press or a strongly censored one, cartoons and caricatures take on an added significance.

Cartoonists are the modern equivalent of the ‘Fool’. They are granted a licence to say and visualise opinions and viewpoints that would probably be unacceptable and outrageous if expressed by public figures. They take on leading politicians, celebrities and lampoon them, expose their hypocrisy, shallowness and egotism. Cartoons always work through ridicule, laughter, bitter irony and satirical barbs. They deflate pomposity and strip away the trapping of status and power. Cartoonists provide us with an alternative narrative to that provided by the mainstream media. Their imagination is infinite. Cartoons capture what screeds of print cannot do. They encapsulate complex phenomena in one-off visual metaphors. They also underline the ridiculousness of human beings slipping on their own discarded banana skins - engineers of their own downfall.

Our intention in organising competitions like this – the fourth under the auspices of the Ken Sprague Fund – is also to help stimulate young cartoonists and give encouragement to cartoonists everywhere to use this powerful tool against oppression, the arrogance and pomposity of power and speak up for the little people of the world, those with limited access to the wider media.

The Ken Sprague Fund was set up shortly after his death in 2004, to celebrate and build on his multi-faceted artistic creativity and humanitarianism. Among his many talents, Ken was also a great cartoonist and in celebration of this aspect of his creativity, the Fund organised Britain's first international political cartoon competition in 2006, and has held another three since then.

'Cartoonists', he once said, 'are often, but unfairly, not considered to be artists at all. The question, "but can you draw properly too?" is a familiar one to most cartoonists.' Such attitudes were reflected in the fact that few of the original cartoon drawings from previous generations exist today; they were often discarded after publication, not considered worth keeping. In our somewhat more enlightened times, they are now viewed as vital historical documents as well as works of art in their own right.

The catalogue, I’ll have the Last Laugh Yet! with the winners and a selection of the best images is available online or from bookshops for £8.99 plus p&p. The exhibition ‘Laughing with Marx’ runs from 23 April until Fri 11 May in the Guardian HQ foyer, The Guardian , Kings Place, 90 York Way, King's Cross, London N1 9GU. It is free of charge.

Prints of the caricatures and cartoons exhibited here can also be purchased. For details contact the Ken Sprague Fund, 11 Dorset Road, London W5 4HU or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

14. Marx in tree branches resized2

'That mankind's physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature' - Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844. Cartoon by Stephen Sieger, from the book.

Marx at the Movies
Sunday, 15 April 2018 12:53

Marx at the Movies

Published in Films

To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx this year, John Green gives a brief outline of some of the influences of Marxist thought on moviemakers.

What influence has Marx had on film and the cinema? A rather odd if not idiotic question the reader might think. After all, Marx died in 1883 and the first commercial, public screening of moving images, organised by the Lumière brothers in Paris only took place on 28 December 1895 – 12 years later. However, silly as it may at first appear, Marx and his ideas have had a profound influence on the development and evolution of film-making. 

The Soviet film-makers, Sergei Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov, founder of one of the world’s first film schools, should probably be credited with being the first to attempt to apply Marxist ideas directly to film-making. They immediately recognised the strong affinity between Marxist philosophy and the peculiar, unique essence of film and the creative possibilities it offered.

JG kuleshov

For Kuleshov, the essence of the cinema was editing, the juxtaposition of one shot with another. To illustrate this principle, he created what has come to be known as the Kuleshov Effect. In this now-famous editing exercise, shots of an actor’s face, looking at something were intercut successively with different images of objects (a casket, a bowl of soup, etc.), as if the actor were looking at them. Viewers apparently thought they could perceive subtly different expressions in the actor’s face corresponding to what he was supposedly looking at.

In actual fact, however, Kuleshov used exactly the same image of the actor, thus making the point that the mere fact of juxtaposing different images creates a third, imaginative image or perception in the heads of the viewer. Editing techniques can change or influence viewers' interpretations of images.

Another one of his famous inventions was creative geography, also known as artificial landscape. Those techniques were described in his book The Basics of Film Direction (1941) which was later translated into many languages.

But it was Eisenstein who was able to translate Marxist ideas most effectively through his films.  Marxist dialectics, the recognition that change in the world comes about primarily through a conflict of opposites to create a new synthesis, and that human history unfolds as the result of class conflict are central to Eisenstein’s approach.

JG battleship potemkin theredlist

Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin, 1925

While other Marxist film-makers chose more traditional ways of editing (montage) and story-telling, Eisenstein was convinced that the unique medium of film allowed – demanded even – a new approach. He became the father of what we today understand by the term film montage (creative, non-linear, editing). Following Kuleshov, he also recognised that by placing two very different images in conjunction, each would attain new meaning and lead to a new and deeper comprehension of reality.

By consciously framing and arranging elements within the frame of each image, in order to create a formal conflict, he also underlined this contradictory character. In his use of music too, he employed it not as mere accompaniment, to give emphasis to the emotional charge contained in the images, but as an aural commentary upon the visual, and as a counterpoint.

Eisenstein was also a master of choreography, to emphasise the role played by the masses in creating history and underlining the fact that it is not individuals who are paramount in bringing about change, but mass movements. In his films Potemkin or Alexander Nevsky, for instance, this aspect of his approach is demonstrated to awesome effect.

In order to break away from Hollywood’s ‘dream machine’ film-making culture, which used narrative structures that over-emphasised individual characters’ actions, Eisenstein shunned narrative structure by eliminating the individual protagonist. Instead, events were related in which the action is moved forward by the group and the narrative unfolds through a clash of one image against the next, whether in composition, motion, or idea. In this way, the audience is never lulled into a stupor of believing that they are watching real life, but something that has been worked upon, constructed.

While his films are immensely powerful historical statements, and his use of montage has influenced numbers of film-makers throughout the world, Eisenstein’s tendency to over-theorise could become something of a straitjacket on the narrative. Other film-makers, who would also have defined themselves as Marxists, while readily utilising some of his methodology and ideas, chose to follow more traditional narrative paths.

Although strongly influenced by those early Soviet innovators, few film-makers since have chosen to follow Eisenstein’s methodology strictly, but have chosen instead to incorporate Marxist ideas and a Marxist outlook more through their choice of subject matters. Although Bertolt Brecht, in his short foray into the film world, did use similar montage elements to Eisenstein and Kuleshov in his film Kühle Wampe, about working class life in Germany.

JG kuhle wampe 01

Kuhle Wampe, a 1932 film about unemployment, homelessness and left wing politics, conceived and written by Bertolt Brecht

Certainly many film-makers in a whole number of countries have at one time or other been members of their respective communist parties, and have espoused Marxism. Most of the Italian neo-realists were members of the CPI, including de Sica, Rosi, Pasolini, Bertolucci, Visconti. French filmmakers like Jean Renoir and later Jean-Luc Godard and the documentarist Chris Marker, as well as the Dutchman Joris Ivens, were all influenced in very different ways by Marxist ideas.

 The Italian neo-realists sought to tackle the subject of capitalism, fascism and social injustice in their films, clearly indicating, if not overtly, that a socialist organisation of society would be a better alternative. But they did this more through the use of amateur actors, raw, outside settings, and using natural lighting rather than the artifice of studio set-ups.

The Indian Marxist and film director, Mrinal Sen, played a significant role in the development of Indian film. The films he made were overtly political, and earned him the reputation of being ‘a Marxist artist’. He was working during the time of large-scale political unrest in India (1955 onwards). Particularly in and around Calcutta, this period was marked particularly by the Naxalite insurgency. He went on to make a series of films that revealed a shift in focus, and instead of looking at enemies outside the country, he sought the enemy within his own middle class milieu. This was his most creative phase.

British filmmakers like Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and the US-born Joseph Losey, as well as modern filmmakers like Ken Loach, have also been strongly influenced by Marxist ideas, expressed itself largely through their choices of subject matter and a class-based approach to story-telling.

JG navigators

Ken Loach, The Navigators, 2001

There has also been a large body of work devoted to Marxist film theory.  This work, though, has largely taken place in academic circles and media studies departments, rather than in the film industry itself.

Since the French Nouvelle Vague movement of the 50s and 60s, there have been few identifiable groups of filmmakers one could be characterise as following certain guidelines or a unifying philosophy (and even the Nouvelle Vague was a somewhat amorphous group, born from the pages of the French cinema journal, Cahiers du Cinéma).

However, in 1995 a small group of Scandinavian filmmakers, called Dogme 95, did attempt to define a new approach film making in answer to the dominant, commercialised Anglo-Saxon model, and found inspiration in Soviet cinema and Marxism. Founding members were the Danish directors Lars van Trier and Thomas Vinterberg.  In their manifesto they formulated ten rules, involving strict adherence to what they saw as a ‘natural way’ of filmmaking. They also wrote:

  1. Sergei Eisenstein and many other Soviet filmmakers  in the 1920s expressed ideas of Marxism through film. In fact, the Hegelian dialectic was considered best displayed in film editing  through the Kuleshov Experiment  and the development of montage.
  2. While this structuralist  approach to Marxism and filmmaking was used, the more vociferous complaint that the Russian filmmakers had was with the narrative structure of US cinema.
  3. Eisenstein's solution was to shun narrative structure by eliminating the individual protagonist and tell stories where the action is moved by the group and the story is told through a clash of one image against the next (whether in composition, motion, or idea) so that the audience is never lulled into believing that they are watching something that has not been worked over.
  4. French Marxist film makers, such as Jean-Luc Godard would employ radical editing and choice of subject matter, as well as subversive parody to heighten class consciousness and promote Marxist ideas.
  5. Marxist film theory has developed from these precise and historical beginnings and is now sometimes viewed in a wider way to refer to any power relationships or structures within a moving image text.

So, again we have an example of modern filmmakers seeking inspiration in Marxist ideas when formulating their own cinematic philosophy or filmmaking theory vis-à-vis the hegemonic commercial cinema.

In the British magazine Screen, published in the early seventies, there was a discussion of Screen Theory which is based on a combination of Marxism and psychoanalysis. To discuss that in detail here would be perhaps somewhat outside the scope of this short resumé. But briefly, the theoreticians of the "screen theory" approach – Colin MacCabe, Stephen Heath and Laura Mulvey –describe the ‘cinematic apparatus’ as a version of Althusser’s ideological state apparatus.

According to screen theory, it is the spectacle that creates the spectator and not the other way round. The fact that the subject is created and subjected at the same time by the narrative on screen is masked by the apparent realism of the communicated content. Screen theory's origins can be traced to the essays ‘Mirror Stage’ by Lacan and Miller’s ‘Suture: Elements of the Logic of the Signifier’.

Another group of filmmakers, the so-called Situationists, also adopted an approach based on a critique of capitalist film industry. Situationist film maker Guy Debord, author of The Society of the Spectacle,  began his film In ‘girum imus nocte et consumimur igni’ (Wandering around in the night we are consumed by fire) with a radical critique of the spectator who goes to the cinema to forget about his ‘dispossessed daily life’. This resonates with Marx’s ideas on alienation.

Situationist film makers produced a number of important films though, where the only contribution by the situationist film cooperative was the sound-track. In Can dialectics break bricks?  (1973) a Chinese Kung Fu film was transformed by redubbing into an epistle on state capitalism and proletarian revolution. The intellectual technique of using capitalism's own structures against itself is known as détournement.

Marxist film theory has developed from precise and historical beginnings and is now sometimes viewed in a wider way to refer to any power relationships or structures within a moving image text.

A massively broad understanding of Marxist film theory could be viewed as an attempt to decentre the narrative of the film away from individuals as the central drivers of a film, and as an attempt to analyse or re-contextualise hierarchical relationships regarding gender, race, socioeconomic status etc. or as propaganda to raise class consciousness.

One of the latest incursions into Marxist film theory has been made by the flamboyant neo-Marxist philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. in A Perverts Guide to Ideology, made by him in collaboration with Sophie Fiennes. Specifically, A Perverts Guide attempts to examine the hidden ideology immanent in films, and attempts to understand the message this ideology is seeking to convey.

JG pervertsideology

In his terms, ideologies aren't political doctrines codified into ‘isms,’ but rather the fantasies and beliefs that underlie the functioning of all societies. In showing how these are reflected in the stories of individuals conveyed to us through films.

He analyses a number of famous films, ranging from Jaws, Full Metal Jacket to Taxi Driver, using them to explore the deep-seated power of ideologies and how they surface in such seemingly unconnected elements as Nazi propaganda films, the London riots or Coke commercials from the 1980s.

 He remarks, for example, on the similarities between The Searchers and Taxi Driver, and attempts to draw a parallel between such films and the US military experiences in Vietnam and Iraq – one of many instances where he teases out connections between imaginary constructs and political realities. He concludes that, ‘The depressing lesson of the last decades is that capitalism has been the true revolutionising force, even as it only serves itself.’

Karl Marx, tickled and honoured
Saturday, 31 March 2018 12:47

Karl Marx, tickled and honoured

Published in Visual Arts

John Green introduces some Karl Marx bicentenary cartoons and caricatures.

5 May 2018 marks the bicentenary of the birth of Karl Marx. To commemorate this the Ken Sprague Fund organised an international cartoon and caricature competition which drew over 150 entries from artists around the world.

Ken Sprague was one of Britain’s foremost politically-committed graphic artists and the fund was set up to commemorate his work as well as the ideas he stood for. This competition was dedicated to Tony Farsky, a close friend of Sprague’s and himself a long-time supporter of progressive causes. 

The jury awarded a joint first prize to Stefan Siegert of Germany for his caricature of a laughing Marx (see above) and Ukrainian cartoonist Konstantin Kazanchev for his cartoon of Marx confronting a young skateboarder wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.

120.WINNER konstantin kazanchev resized1

Second prize went to Raed Khalil from Syria for his black-and-white drawing of a bust of Marx’s head with a flock of birds breaking into flight from it.

 

12. raed khalil syria head into birds resized1

Third prize was awarded to Ehsan Ganji from Iran for his cartoon of an assembly worker manufacturing truncheons for a police force that will then use them to beat protesting workers.

124.EhsanGanji IRAN truncheon resized1

Marx would surely have been tickled — and maybe honoured — to see himself caricatured, lampooned and eternalised in such humorous ways as demonstrated by the images in this exhibition. What the cartoons and caricatures do reveal is a wide range of political interpretations — some portray Marx himself, others indict capitalism and yet others vilify the whole Marxian outlook or ridicule its impact. Some are sharply funny, some deadly serious and yet others acerbic.

Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson says of the catalogue: “I got my first big break doing gags about Karl Marx. The point, however, is that so did he. Any idiot who thinks of Marx as a dour, 'humourless leftie' has never read him and probably never met a proper leftie either. This splendid book should put them right on both counts.”

What is most striking about almost all the submissions to this competition is how unnecessary language or translations are. Despite cultural and language barriers, most use a visual imagery that can be understood internationally, across all cultural, religious or political barriers and boundaries.

Cartooning and caricature have a very long tradition in most countries, but it has never been an easy occupation. Even today in some parts of the world cartoonists risk harassment, imprisonment or worse for taking on the mighty and powerful. In countries where there is no free press or a strongly censored one, cartoons and caricatures take on an added significance.

Cartoonists are the modern equivalent of the ‘Fool’. They are granted a licence to say and visualise opinions and viewpoints that would probably be unacceptable and outrageous if expressed by public figures. They take on leading politicians, celebrities and lampoon them, expose their hypocrisy, shallowness and egotism. Cartoons always work through ridicule, laughter, bitter irony and satirical barbs. They deflate pomposity and strip away the trapping of status and power. Cartoonists provide us with an alternative narrative to that provided by the mainstream media. Their imagination is infinite. Cartoons capture what screeds of print cannot do. They encapsulate complex phenomena in one-off visual metaphors. They also underline the ridiculousness of human beings slipping on their own discarded banana skins - engineers of their own downfall.

Our intention in organising competitions like this – the fourth under the auspices of the Ken Sprague Fund – is also to help stimulate young cartoonists and give encouragement to cartoonists everywhere to use this powerful tool against oppression, the arrogance and pomposity of power and speak up for the little people of the world, those with limited access to the wider media.

The Ken Sprague Fund was set up shortly after his death in 2004, to celebrate and build on his multi-faceted artistic creativity and humanitarianism. Among his many talents, Ken was also a great cartoonist and in celebration of this aspect of his creativity, the Fund organised Britain's first international political cartoon competition in 2006, and has held another three since then.

'Cartoonists', he once said, 'are often, but unfairly, not considered to be artists at all. The question, "but can you draw properly too?" is a familiar one to most cartoonists.' Such attitudes were reflected in the fact that few of the original cartoon drawings from previous generations exist today; they were often discarded after publication, not considered worth keeping. In our somewhat more enlightened times, they are now viewed as vital historical documents as well as works of art in their own right.

The catalogue, I’ll have the Last Laugh Yet! with the winners and a selection of the best images is available online or from bookshops for £8.99 plus p&p. The exhibition ‘Laughing with Marx’ runs from 23 April until Fri 11 May in the Guardian HQ foyer, The Guardian , Kings Place, 90 York Way, King's Cross, London N1 9GU. It is free of charge.

Prints of the caricatures and cartoons exhibited here can also be purchased. For details contact the Ken Sprague Fund, 11 Dorset Road, London W5 4HU or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

14. Marx in tree branches resized2

'That mankind's physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature' - Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844. Cartoon by Stephen Sieger, from the book.

Marx at the Movies
Wednesday, 14 February 2018 15:19

Marx at the Movies

Published in Films

To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx this year, John Green gives a brief outline of some of the influences of Marxist thought on moviemakers.

What influence has Marx had on film and the cinema? A rather odd if not idiotic question the reader might think. After all, Marx died in 1883 and the first commercial, public screening of moving images, organised by the Lumière brothers in Paris only took place on 28 December 1895 – 12 years later. However, silly as it may at first appear, Marx and his ideas have had a profound influence on the development and evolution of film-making. 

The Soviet film-makers, Sergei Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov, founder of one of the world’s first film schools, should probably be credited with being the first to attempt to apply Marxist ideas directly to film-making. They immediately recognised the strong affinity between Marxist philosophy and the peculiar, unique essence of film and the creative possibilities it offered.

JG kuleshov

For Kuleshov, the essence of the cinema was editing, the juxtaposition of one shot with another. To illustrate this principle, he created what has come to be known as the Kuleshov Effect. In this now-famous editing exercise, shots of an actor’s face, looking at something were intercut successively with different images of objects (a casket, a bowl of soup, etc.), as if the actor were looking at them. Viewers apparently thought they could perceive subtly different expressions in the actor’s face corresponding to what he was supposedly looking at.

In actual fact, however, Kuleshov used exactly the same image of the actor, thus making the point that the mere fact of juxtaposing different images creates a third, imaginative image or perception in the heads of the viewer. Editing techniques can change or influence viewers' interpretations of images.

Another one of his famous inventions was creative geography, also known as artificial landscape. Those techniques were described in his book The Basics of Film Direction (1941) which was later translated into many languages.

But it was Eisenstein who was able to translate Marxist ideas most effectively through his films.  Marxist dialectics, the recognition that change in the world comes about primarily through a conflict of opposites to create a new synthesis, and that human history unfolds as the result of class conflict are central to Eisenstein’s approach.

JG battleship potemkin theredlist

Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin, 1925

While other Marxist film-makers chose more traditional ways of editing (montage) and story-telling, Eisenstein was convinced that the unique medium of film allowed – demanded even – a new approach. He became the father of what we today understand by the term film montage (creative, non-linear, editing). Following Kuleshov, he also recognised that by placing two very different images in conjunction, each would attain new meaning and lead to a new and deeper comprehension of reality.

By consciously framing and arranging elements within the frame of each image, in order to create a formal conflict, he also underlined this contradictory character. In his use of music too, he employed it not as mere accompaniment, to give emphasis to the emotional charge contained in the images, but as an aural commentary upon the visual, and as a counterpoint.

Eisenstein was also a master of choreography, to emphasise the role played by the masses in creating history and underlining the fact that it is not individuals who are paramount in bringing about change, but mass movements. In his films Potemkin or Alexander Nevsky, for instance, this aspect of his approach is demonstrated to awesome effect.

In order to break away from Hollywood’s ‘dream machine’ film-making culture, which used narrative structures that over-emphasised individual characters’ actions, Eisenstein shunned narrative structure by eliminating the individual protagonist. Instead, events were related in which the action is moved forward by the group and the narrative unfolds through a clash of one image against the next, whether in composition, motion, or idea. In this way, the audience is never lulled into a stupor of believing that they are watching real life, but something that has been worked upon, constructed.

While his films are immensely powerful historical statements, and his use of montage has influenced numbers of film-makers throughout the world, Eisenstein’s tendency to over-theorise could become something of a straitjacket on the narrative. Other film-makers, who would also have defined themselves as Marxists, while readily utilising some of his methodology and ideas, chose to follow more traditional narrative paths.

Although strongly influenced by those early Soviet innovators, few film-makers since have chosen to follow Eisenstein’s methodology strictly, but have chosen instead to incorporate Marxist ideas and a Marxist outlook more through their choice of subject matters. Although Bertolt Brecht, in his short foray into the film world, did use similar montage elements to Eisenstein and Kuleshov in his film Kühle Wampe, about working class life in Germany.

JG kuhle wampe 01

Kuhle Wampe, a 1932 film about unemployment, homelessness and left wing politics, conceived and written by Bertolt Brecht

Certainly many film-makers in a whole number of countries have at one time or other been members of their respective communist parties, and have espoused Marxism. Most of the Italian neo-realists were members of the CPI, including de Sica, Rosi, Pasolini, Bertolucci, Visconti. French filmmakers like Jean Renoir and later Jean-Luc Godard and the documentarist Chris Marker, as well as the Dutchman Joris Ivens, were all influenced in very different ways by Marxist ideas.

 The Italian neo-realists sought to tackle the subject of capitalism, fascism and social injustice in their films, clearly indicating, if not overtly, that a socialist organisation of society would be a better alternative. But they did this more through the use of amateur actors, raw, outside settings, and using natural lighting rather than the artifice of studio set-ups.

The Indian Marxist and film director, Mrinal Sen, played a significant role in the development of Indian film. The films he made were overtly political, and earned him the reputation of being ‘a Marxist artist’. He was working during the time of large-scale political unrest in India (1955 onwards). Particularly in and around Calcutta, this period was marked particularly by the Naxalite insurgency. He went on to make a series of films that revealed a shift in focus, and instead of looking at enemies outside the country, he sought the enemy within his own middle class milieu. This was his most creative phase.

British filmmakers like Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and the US-born Joseph Losey, as well as modern filmmakers like Ken Loach, have also been strongly influenced by Marxist ideas, expressed itself largely through their choices of subject matter and a class-based approach to story-telling.

JG navigators

Ken Loach, The Navigators, 2001

There has also been a large body of work devoted to Marxist film theory.  This work, though, has largely taken place in academic circles and media studies departments, rather than in the film industry itself.

Since the French Nouvelle Vague movement of the 50s and 60s, there have been few identifiable groups of filmmakers one could be characterise as following certain guidelines or a unifying philosophy (and even the Nouvelle Vague was a somewhat amorphous group, born from the pages of the French cinema journal, Cahiers du Cinéma).

However, in 1995 a small group of Scandinavian filmmakers, called Dogme 95, did attempt to define a new approach film making in answer to the dominant, commercialised Anglo-Saxon model, and found inspiration in Soviet cinema and Marxism. Founding members were the Danish directors Lars van Trier and Thomas Vinterberg.  In their manifesto they formulated ten rules, involving strict adherence to what they saw as a ‘natural way’ of filmmaking. They also wrote:

  1. Sergei Eisenstein and many other Soviet filmmakers  in the 1920s expressed ideas of Marxism through film. In fact, the Hegelian dialectic was considered best displayed in film editing  through the Kuleshov Experiment  and the development of montage.
  2. While this structuralist  approach to Marxism and filmmaking was used, the more vociferous complaint that the Russian filmmakers had was with the narrative structure of US cinema.
  3. Eisenstein's solution was to shun narrative structure by eliminating the individual protagonist and tell stories where the action is moved by the group and the story is told through a clash of one image against the next (whether in composition, motion, or idea) so that the audience is never lulled into believing that they are watching something that has not been worked over.
  4. French Marxist film makers, such as Jean-Luc Godard would employ radical editing and choice of subject matter, as well as subversive parody to heighten class consciousness and promote Marxist ideas.
  5. Marxist film theory has developed from these precise and historical beginnings and is now sometimes viewed in a wider way to refer to any power relationships or structures within a moving image text.

So, again we have an example of modern filmmakers seeking inspiration in Marxist ideas when formulating their own cinematic philosophy or filmmaking theory vis-à-vis the hegemonic commercial cinema.

In the British magazine Screen, published in the early seventies, there was a discussion of Screen Theory which is based on a combination of Marxism and psychoanalysis. To discuss that in detail here would be perhaps somewhat outside the scope of this short resumé. But briefly, the theoreticians of the "screen theory" approach – Colin MacCabe, Stephen Heath and Laura Mulvey –describe the ‘cinematic apparatus’ as a version of Althusser’s ideological state apparatus.

According to screen theory, it is the spectacle that creates the spectator and not the other way round. The fact that the subject is created and subjected at the same time by the narrative on screen is masked by the apparent realism of the communicated content. Screen theory's origins can be traced to the essays ‘Mirror Stage’ by Lacan and Miller’s ‘Suture: Elements of the Logic of the Signifier’.

Another group of filmmakers, the so-called Situationists, also adopted an approach based on a critique of capitalist film industry. Situationist film maker Guy Debord, author of The Society of the Spectacle,  began his film In ‘girum imus nocte et consumimur igni’ (Wandering around in the night we are consumed by fire) with a radical critique of the spectator who goes to the cinema to forget about his ‘dispossessed daily life’. This resonates with Marx’s ideas on alienation.

Situationist film makers produced a number of important films though, where the only contribution by the situationist film cooperative was the sound-track. In Can dialectics break bricks?  (1973) a Chinese Kung Fu film was transformed by redubbing into an epistle on state capitalism and proletarian revolution. The intellectual technique of using capitalism's own structures against itself is known as détournement.

Marxist film theory has developed from precise and historical beginnings and is now sometimes viewed in a wider way to refer to any power relationships or structures within a moving image text.

A massively broad understanding of Marxist film theory could be viewed as an attempt to decentre the narrative of the film away from individuals as the central drivers of a film, and as an attempt to analyse or re-contextualise hierarchical relationships regarding gender, race, socioeconomic status etc. or as propaganda to raise class consciousness.

One of the latest incursions into Marxist film theory has been made by the flamboyant neo-Marxist philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. in A Perverts Guide to Ideology, made by him in collaboration with Sophie Fiennes. Specifically, A Perverts Guide attempts to examine the hidden ideology immanent in films, and attempts to understand the message this ideology is seeking to convey.

JG pervertsideology

In his terms, ideologies aren't political doctrines codified into ‘isms,’ but rather the fantasies and beliefs that underlie the functioning of all societies. In showing how these are reflected in the stories of individuals conveyed to us through films.

He analyses a number of famous films, ranging from Jaws, Full Metal Jacket to Taxi Driver, using them to explore the deep-seated power of ideologies and how they surface in such seemingly unconnected elements as Nazi propaganda films, the London riots or Coke commercials from the 1980s.

 He remarks, for example, on the similarities between The Searchers and Taxi Driver, and attempts to draw a parallel between such films and the US military experiences in Vietnam and Iraq – one of many instances where he teases out connections between imaginary constructs and political realities. He concludes that, ‘The depressing lesson of the last decades is that capitalism has been the true revolutionising force, even as it only serves itself.’

Page 1 of 2