Symposium: Know Your Audience

This article is in response to “Want Truth? Work for Beauty” and is part of the symposium on What’s Wrong with Conservatism and How Do We Make It Right?

Art is a grand teacher. This is something Mr. Russello is wise to point out. From Jonathan Swift to J.R.R. Tolkien, conservatism has a rich literary history involved in everything from subtle persuasion to the polemics of Belloc.

It is also true that the hard-nosed legislative conservatism of recent years is failing our culture. As we fight to protect tax cuts and American exceptionalism, we leave unborn children and the notion of the family as the building block of society behind. Believe me. I’ve heard enough from Europeans over the last few days about the childishness of American conservatives as they engage in what is termed a petty war between old men in suits.

So we are failing. And art is the way to turn. Russello is also right to resist a slide into propaganda. I’ve taken a Chinese cinema course; I’ve seen lots of Maoist propaganda. It is neither entertaining nor inspiring.

Perhaps this is only because I’m a middle-class white boy sitting in England at a laptop, but putting that aside, I’d like to addend something to Russello’s proposal. We need to be careful. This may sound harsh, but in a country where conservatism is associated with the gun-toting, high-stakes ethos of Pawn Stars and Duck Dynasty, we will need a new appeal in order to confront, shall we say, more sophisticated shows such as Modern Family. Take Mike Judge’s The Goode Family, it was the yin to his King of the Hill’s yang. It lampooned liberalism straight into its own coffin. By contrast, its counterpart, which pokes fun at the back country lifestyle, is a hilarious staple of modern adult animation. The viewership just isn’t conservative. People won’t stand for attacks on the “progressive” in the same way they will attacks on the “conservative.” It’s not that we’re a humorless bunch. But can we really say, sans South Park, that many popular television shows are both conservative and funny? The closest we have is The Colbert Report. Yeah.

So I must emphasize not the subtlety of our mission so much as its necessary entertainment value. Art can intentionally bore and still be good (cf. Spring Breakers). But, for the most part, television is entertaining. South Park wins its fans (myself included) with fart jokes and egg-headed Canadians without lips. Not only must we be subtle but we must be interesting. The truth demands it.