And the wild part is I remember for a time G*mers screeching about wanting critics like Roger Ebert to take games seriously as an art. Now they got their wish, developers are treating their projects like art, and they don’t like it because it dares to make them uncomfortable sometimes.
Why are fascists so opposed to art having anything more than a surface-level meaning, anyway?
because fascists view art as the maintenance of aesthetic. to a fascist, art must inherently pursue and preserve a standard of ‘beauty’. it feels nonsensical, but fascism is an ideology fundamentally centered around mythos and culture. An ‘uncouth’ or ‘ugly’ culture is ‘d/generate’, whereas a ‘moral’ and ‘pretty’ culture is ‘pure’. fascists view art as the battlefield, because fascist analysis places the aesthetic at the level of importance that we place material conditions.
CHUDs constantly go on about “beauty” but fascists single-handedly turn country music into a punchline.
They’re not even good at living out their own values.
If they had paid enough attention in school to understand art can do more than deliver booba images, they wouldn’t be fascists.
Genuinely, though, it’s because fascism as a mass movement is currently in its transitory stage where it hasn’t found a solid economic foothold. The American petit bourgeoisie is not anxious enough to really cause fascism to crystallize into a solid movement with a complete platform. This is useful for fascists because being vague and abstract allows them to appeal to more people who are just alienated enough to reject liberalism. Keeping everything down to just aesthetics in this ridiculously childish way is all they can do, which ends up working against them as well. I expect that if they had a more organized movement, the aesthetics would remain just as shallow and they still wouldn’t understand art, but they’d be at the book burning stage so we’d have bigger problems at our hands than which side has better art.
We’re already at the book burning stage and have been for some time now.
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/missouri-republican-candidate-torches-lgbtq-inclusive-books-viral-vide-rcna137715
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/17/media/right-wing-book-bans-accelerating/index.html
Art is communication, communication facilitates understanding, idk quite how to articulate from C to D but that sounds dangerous for the fascist project
Also rejecting deviation means clamping down on personal expression, leaving just the one acceptable surface aesthetic
Because they continually seek the moving (and impossible) target of some abstract and vague nostalgic perfect time.
They chase that dragon forever and anything new or provocative enrages them accordingly.
They’re just being dishonest. They’re okay with art that has a deeper meaning so long as the deeper meaning is also fascist.
Chuds do enjoy exploring the deeper meaning behind shit like Attack on Titan.
Spoiler: more fascism.
Because they’re simple minded rubes