You were looking, O king, and lo! there was a great statue
August 25, 2023 3:53 PM Subscribe
It has struck me lately that the recurrent frenzy of destruction of prized objects in popular culture may tell us less about our current relationship to the past than it does about our fears for the future. After all, each effort a culture makes to preserve an object of admiration involves a wager about how later generations will need access to material that is already in some measure outmoded. If every museum may be understood to indicate something about what a culture anticipates or hopes will happen in the years ahead, to depend on a secular prophesy of value, the loss of protection, the acceptance of injury, even the cheerful anticipation of acts of violence may in turn need to be understood to be forceful indications of fundamental changes in values. from In The Age of Artpocalypse; Beauty and Damage on TV
The essay was interesting and I don't mean to be dismissive but I do dispute its first sentence. I suppose we can quibble about whether burning the Mona Lisa in Glass Onion is strictly necessary but in my opinion its an important element of the social critique inherent in the whole story. Without getting too spoilery the fact that the Mona Lisa (if it even is the real thing and the idiot rich guy wasn't tricked by the French) is in the custody of that character and that the measures that are supposed to protect it are purposefully subverted is symbolic of the stupidity of the tech bro dominance the movie is critiquing and the folly of giving them prestige and power.
posted by Wretch729 at 5:24 PM on August 25, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Wretch729 at 5:24 PM on August 25, 2023 [8 favorites]
I have snacks.
I have ketchup and mustard.
I have my big tube of krazy glue.
I am ready for a trip to the museum.
Art is a healthy channel
For my rage against the world.
But not in that way.
posted by not_on_display at 6:19 PM on August 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have ketchup and mustard.
I have my big tube of krazy glue.
I am ready for a trip to the museum.
Art is a healthy channel
For my rage against the world.
But not in that way.
posted by not_on_display at 6:19 PM on August 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yeah the first sentence of this this is better stated as “I didn’t understand Glass Onion.”
posted by Navelgazer at 7:46 PM on August 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Navelgazer at 7:46 PM on August 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
Without getting too spoilery the fact that the Mona Lisa (if it even is the real thing and the idiot rich guy wasn't tricked by the French) is in the custody of that character and that the measures that are supposed to protect it are purposefully subverted is symbolic of the stupidity of the tech bro dominance the movie is critiquing and the folly of giving them prestige and power.
True - but in the author's defense, it's still interesting to contemplate why he chose that as the McGuffin in question, as opposed to, like, the original draft of the Declaration of Independence or the Magna Carta, or Ford's original patent application for the car or something.
In my first readthrough of this essay I didn't quite catch his point, but now I think I do, and it's here:
But these days we're starting to listen more closely to the dissenters - and we're finding some of them aren't uncultured, mad, or evil. Some may be poor ("that guy's just mad about how the wealthy class can afford to spend several million on a painting as opposed to donating to soup kitchens"), some may be fearful of larger problems with the earth ("that guy's just mad the government is investing in art and not in green energy"). I mean, there's a reason that the Just Stop Oil crowd kept targeting major artworks in its demonstrations. There are also those who are upset about the Western World running roughshod over the art world for so long - either in how a given museum acquired an artwork ("that guy's from Greece, and he's pissed about the British Museum having stolen the Elgin Marbles") or in what work gets celebrated ("that guy's pissed about how the Met opened up yet another European painting wing and is blowing off Pacific Islanders art AGAIN").
Right now, we don't all have the same opinion about whether the things in museums are "valuable", and for a wider variety of reasons. And noticing that is a really interesting comment on the times we're in.
I'm weirdly reminded of a very small throwaway scene in the British film Threads, and how it landed with me when I saw it. (For the people who haven't seen it - Threads was a 1980s "what would happen if nuclear war broke out" TV film from the UK.) Earlier on in the film, there's a sort of "runup to war" sequence which shows clips of public response to increases of tension in an existing war in Turkey; there's been a couple instances of localized nuclear missiles being used already, and people are starting to realize The Big One could happen. And in the midst of clips of people doing panic-buying of food or nailing boards over their windows or whatever, there is a very brief clip showing the curators in a museum very carefully and painstakingly, and calmly, taking paintings off the walls in the museum and packing them away into crates; presumably they will all then be taken into a safe storage facility in the basement or something. When I saw that, as a Cold War teenager, my gut reaction was a weird sort of mockery and pity - "damn, guys, the bomb is gonna drop and protecting art is going to be so totally pointless because society would be totally fucked". I think that's the point of this essay - that there are a lot more people who are thinking that society is going to be totally fucked soon, or are thinking that society already is fucked; and these scenes of clickers in The Last Of Us destroying art or of people in The Walking Dead raiding a museum for tools or of Glass Onion techbros destroying the Mona Lisa are catering to that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:25 AM on August 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
True - but in the author's defense, it's still interesting to contemplate why he chose that as the McGuffin in question, as opposed to, like, the original draft of the Declaration of Independence or the Magna Carta, or Ford's original patent application for the car or something.
In my first readthrough of this essay I didn't quite catch his point, but now I think I do, and it's here:
Although museums house the past, they depend upon a vision of the future to give them their meaning. Preservation and protection are markers of current value and future hope. In a modern condition more assured of destruction than during an epoch when all we had to fear were the irrational decisions of leaders who might press the buttons leading to nuclear annihilation, when our global commitment to the path of climate catastrophe has made the future bleak, when the widespread embrace of atavistic forms of nationalist populism often robed in religion has made the future seem neither shareable nor liable to be made up of rational beings contemplating with benign curiosity the historic value of objects in the museum, our doubts about a shared future are bound to make it difficult to fully credit those operating myths of the museum: a common past, a shared future.So - he's suggesting that the reason we're seeing so many "destruction of fine art" moments in movies and TV now, is that it's an expression of a fracturing of society overall. In the past, the majority society opinion was that "this shit's important to the culture, we need to protect it". You did have people who disagreed with that, but usually those dissenting opinions were brushed off as being uncultured ("pfft, that guy doesn't think that the Mona Lisa is important, what an uncultured boob he is") or evil ("yikes, that guy wants to steal the Mona Lisa, what an awful person") or mad ("oh gosh, that guy wants to burn the Mona Lisa, he's crazy"), and they were largely ignored.
But these days we're starting to listen more closely to the dissenters - and we're finding some of them aren't uncultured, mad, or evil. Some may be poor ("that guy's just mad about how the wealthy class can afford to spend several million on a painting as opposed to donating to soup kitchens"), some may be fearful of larger problems with the earth ("that guy's just mad the government is investing in art and not in green energy"). I mean, there's a reason that the Just Stop Oil crowd kept targeting major artworks in its demonstrations. There are also those who are upset about the Western World running roughshod over the art world for so long - either in how a given museum acquired an artwork ("that guy's from Greece, and he's pissed about the British Museum having stolen the Elgin Marbles") or in what work gets celebrated ("that guy's pissed about how the Met opened up yet another European painting wing and is blowing off Pacific Islanders art AGAIN").
Right now, we don't all have the same opinion about whether the things in museums are "valuable", and for a wider variety of reasons. And noticing that is a really interesting comment on the times we're in.
I'm weirdly reminded of a very small throwaway scene in the British film Threads, and how it landed with me when I saw it. (For the people who haven't seen it - Threads was a 1980s "what would happen if nuclear war broke out" TV film from the UK.) Earlier on in the film, there's a sort of "runup to war" sequence which shows clips of public response to increases of tension in an existing war in Turkey; there's been a couple instances of localized nuclear missiles being used already, and people are starting to realize The Big One could happen. And in the midst of clips of people doing panic-buying of food or nailing boards over their windows or whatever, there is a very brief clip showing the curators in a museum very carefully and painstakingly, and calmly, taking paintings off the walls in the museum and packing them away into crates; presumably they will all then be taken into a safe storage facility in the basement or something. When I saw that, as a Cold War teenager, my gut reaction was a weird sort of mockery and pity - "damn, guys, the bomb is gonna drop and protecting art is going to be so totally pointless because society would be totally fucked". I think that's the point of this essay - that there are a lot more people who are thinking that society is going to be totally fucked soon, or are thinking that society already is fucked; and these scenes of clickers in The Last Of Us destroying art or of people in The Walking Dead raiding a museum for tools or of Glass Onion techbros destroying the Mona Lisa are catering to that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:25 AM on August 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
That’s a totally solid point and I see now I was being flip above (or more so than I usually like to be, anyway.)
I can’t speak for The Last of Us or other movies, but In Glass Onion (spoilers to follow) the destruction of the Mona Lisa is meant to be shorthand the level of extreme measures required to actually make Miles Bron feel consequences for his actions, and to keep his unstable new fuel source out of people’s homes. It’s supposed to be shocking. But it’s also a moment of triumph within the situation presented in the movie, and while it doesn’t need to be the Mona Lisa per se in order to work, it needs to be something of immense agreed-upon cultural and historical value.
And while the moral calculus of the moment is pretty clear (if something doesn’t stop Bron, Klear is going to kill uncountable numbers of people) the emotional resonance of the moment comes from the feeling of “hell yes, fuck rich people.” And that is for sure an interesting thing to ponder in this light.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:05 AM on August 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
I can’t speak for The Last of Us or other movies, but In Glass Onion (spoilers to follow) the destruction of the Mona Lisa is meant to be shorthand the level of extreme measures required to actually make Miles Bron feel consequences for his actions, and to keep his unstable new fuel source out of people’s homes. It’s supposed to be shocking. But it’s also a moment of triumph within the situation presented in the movie, and while it doesn’t need to be the Mona Lisa per se in order to work, it needs to be something of immense agreed-upon cultural and historical value.
And while the moral calculus of the moment is pretty clear (if something doesn’t stop Bron, Klear is going to kill uncountable numbers of people) the emotional resonance of the moment comes from the feeling of “hell yes, fuck rich people.” And that is for sure an interesting thing to ponder in this light.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:05 AM on August 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
While I agree with EmpressCallypigos' great expansion on the theme of the essay, I also think that it may partly be something simpler, just a perverse joy in destruction. There were a bunch of 90s action movies whose names I don't recall that delighted in destroying famous landmarks. For me the Mona Lisa's destruction in Glass Onion felt gratuitous to as well, casting a pall over what was otherwise quite a good movie. The wider point of what do we even value anymore is a frightening one though.
posted by blue shadows at 10:48 PM on August 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by blue shadows at 10:48 PM on August 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
I also think that it may partly be something simpler, just a perverse joy in destruction. There were a bunch of 90s action movies whose names I don't recall that delighted in destroying famous landmarks.
Yes, but consider what the action movie villains are destroying - landmarks instead of random apartment buildings. If it were just "random destruction" a random apartment building would do, no?
And seeing a specific symbol get destroyed can hit a very specific trigger if the times are getting weird. When the trailers for Independence Day came out, it was right around the time when we were hearing the first whispers about Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. Clinton fans were feeling a little betrayed, and Clinton haters were just like "yep, figures". There's a scene in the trailer for Independence Day that shows the White House getting blown up by the aliens - and in theaters, that moment sometimes got cynical applause from the crowd. (I definitely remember hearing that in a theater before seeing Wag The Dog.)
It sounds similar to what the author's saying - when there's mistrust or a loss of faith in a particular institution, that's when you start seeing that institution - or symbols of that institution - attacked in pop culture. Right now, that mistrust is being turned against "the mainstream" - we've always done things this specific way, and we've always valued this specific stuff, and people are starting to question "why not that stuff and this other way?"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:00 AM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yes, but consider what the action movie villains are destroying - landmarks instead of random apartment buildings. If it were just "random destruction" a random apartment building would do, no?
And seeing a specific symbol get destroyed can hit a very specific trigger if the times are getting weird. When the trailers for Independence Day came out, it was right around the time when we were hearing the first whispers about Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. Clinton fans were feeling a little betrayed, and Clinton haters were just like "yep, figures". There's a scene in the trailer for Independence Day that shows the White House getting blown up by the aliens - and in theaters, that moment sometimes got cynical applause from the crowd. (I definitely remember hearing that in a theater before seeing Wag The Dog.)
It sounds similar to what the author's saying - when there's mistrust or a loss of faith in a particular institution, that's when you start seeing that institution - or symbols of that institution - attacked in pop culture. Right now, that mistrust is being turned against "the mainstream" - we've always done things this specific way, and we've always valued this specific stuff, and people are starting to question "why not that stuff and this other way?"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:00 AM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
So I'm in the Pompidou
That's in Paris
And the French
They're far more laid back about their art galleries
There's little children running around
I see a piece by Matisse
That's my window of opportunity
I take three steps back
I put my head down
And
I run at it!
('Modern Art', Art Brut)
posted by Hogshead at 5:20 AM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
That's in Paris
And the French
They're far more laid back about their art galleries
There's little children running around
I see a piece by Matisse
That's my window of opportunity
I take three steps back
I put my head down
And
I run at it!
('Modern Art', Art Brut)
posted by Hogshead at 5:20 AM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've been to Paris
And it ain't that pretty at all
I've been to Rome
Guess what?
I'd like to go back to Paris someday and visit the Louvre Museum
Get a good running start and hurl myself at the wall
Going to hurl myself against the wall
'Cause I'd rather feel bad than feel nothing at all
And it ain't that pretty at all
Ain't that pretty at all
( Ain't That Pretty at All - Warren Zevon)
posted by Jeff_Larson at 12:07 AM on August 28, 2023
And it ain't that pretty at all
I've been to Rome
Guess what?
I'd like to go back to Paris someday and visit the Louvre Museum
Get a good running start and hurl myself at the wall
Going to hurl myself against the wall
'Cause I'd rather feel bad than feel nothing at all
And it ain't that pretty at all
Ain't that pretty at all
( Ain't That Pretty at All - Warren Zevon)
posted by Jeff_Larson at 12:07 AM on August 28, 2023
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evolution
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posted by clavdivs at 4:05 PM on August 25, 2023 [1 favorite]