28. Ocean Vuong

“They will tell you that great writing ‘breaks free’ from the political.” – Ocean Vuong

1.

Grinnell College cafeteria, 2/4/1999

Paul: Okay, if art is, as you say, timeless and universal, then how come people’s assessment of individual artworks changes over the years? 

Me: What do you mean?

Paul: Books that were once deemed great novels fall out of favor and vice versa. How do you explain that?

Me: The cream rises to the top, if you don’t mind the cliché. It takes us maybe a generation or two to realize what’s great. The Great Gatsby wasn’t that well regarded when it came out. Now, everyone considers it a classic.

Paul: I don’t like The Great Gatsby. 

Me: What do you mean?

Paul: It’s really a conservative book. Even if you can’t recapture the past, it suggests that there’s a nobility in trying.

Me: Conservative? It’s great art. Politics don’t enter into it. It’s not about politics.

Paul: All art is political. It exists in the world, it’s shaped by that world, and it comments on that world. That means it’s political.

Me: You don’t really believe that.

Paul: I sure do.

Me: I can’t believe it. You sound just like Professor Andrews.

2.

Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

They will tell you that to be political is to be merely angry, and therefore artless, depthless, “raw,” and empty.

3.

Jon Baskin, The Point, 1/26/2020

When I was in college, at the end of the last century, the prevailing school of literary interpretation was called “New Historicism.” The foundational assumption of this approach was that artworks were primarily of value insofar as they could offer us insight into the context and conditions of their historical production. The point of literary scholarship was to “unmask” these conditions. It went without saying, on this theory, that literature was a conduit neither of timeless truths nor of trustworthy passions.

4.

Ocean Vuong

They will speak of the political with embarrassment, as if speaking of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

5.

Andrew Schenker, from The Cine File (film blog), 12/26/2009

What do we do about artworks that either espouse a political view different from that of the reviewer or whose general way of looking at the world the critic finds difficult to accept? This is a particularly sticky issue, but one that can best be resolved by setting aside notions of strict objectivity.

6.

Ocean Vuong

They will tell you that great writing “breaks free” from the political, thereby “transcending” the barriers of difference, uniting people toward universal truths.

7.

Andrew Schenker

As a film critic, I’ve come over the years to realize that I can only write about a work from my own individual perspective and if a movie espouses a conservative political position or a juvenile cynicism about the world, I am probably unlikely to accept it.

8.

 

Ocean Vuong

They’ll say this is achieved through craft above all. Let’s see how it’s made, they’ll say—as if how something is assembled is alien to the impulse that created it.

9.

Jessa Crispin, The Guardian, 1/13/2020

If you insist that a movie is important, you don’t really have to deal with whether or not it’s good. You can shame people into seeing it as a political statement, rather than as an entertainment or cultural selection.

10.

Ocean Vuong

As if the first chair was hammered—crafted—into existence without considering the human form.

11.

Jessa Crispin
 
Part of this is the result of our commenting culture choosing to see everything through a political lens. While there are political ramifications to our entertainment—whose stories get told and whose do not is a political issue—the issue is not with the content but with a broken system of production and distribution and a lack of good critical writing that helps deepen an audience member’s intellectual engagement with what they’re consuming.

12.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The New York Times, 4/26/2017

Literature and power cannot be separated. American literature is read around the world not only because of its inherent value, but because the rest of the world always reads the literature of empires. The writing workshop, with all its unexamined assumptions, has spread to Britain and Hong Kong, a model of pedagogy that is also an object lesson in how power propagates and conceals itself.

Not accidentally, the “workshop” invokes the nobility of craftsmanship, physical (not intellectual) labor—and masculinity.

13.

Cahiers du Cinéma, July 1959, Roundtable on Hiroshima, Mon Amour

Eric Rohmer: I think everyone will agree with me if I start by saying that this is a film about which you can say everything.

Jean-Luc Godard: So let’s start by saying that it’s literature.

14.

A party at a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, 12/22/2012
 
Older Film Critic: Hey, you wrote something recently that I wanted to come over and disagree with you about, but now I can't remember what it was.

Me: It was probably that piece I wrote about the politics of Zero Dark Thirty and Argo.

Older Film Critic: Yes, that was it.

Me: So you disagree with it? I mean, what do you disagree with?

Older Film Critic: Well, I think if you look at criticism, all criticism is essentially the critic saying the filmmaker should have made the film that he, the critic, wanted him to make.

Me: I guess.

Older Film Critic: It could be something as simple as criticizing an acting performance. You're saying the actor isn't doing what you want him to do. Or it could be something much larger. It's a range. But all criticism does it.

Me: So, my piece is at the other end of the range, then, is what you're saying? By objecting to the political positions taken by the films.

Older Film Critic: Yes, I guess that's what I'm saying.

Me: So, is it not permissible to critique a filmmaker because you fundamentally disagree with, essentially, their world view? If, for example, you find their movie politically repugnant?

Older Film Critic: Well, sure, it's permissible. I just think you take it too far in your piece. There are only so many demands you can make on a filmmaker. At a certain point, you just have to let him make the film he wants to make and judge it on its own merits.