The Future Is Subversive

The movie Max is a fictional story.  Certain elements of the story are historically accurate: Hitler did serve in the army in World War I, was wounded several times, and received the Iron Cross.  He was also, at one time, an aspiring artist.  (See Adolf Hitler for more details.)  Max Rothman, however, and his relationship with Hitler, are fictional.  

The movie interests me in a variety of ways. I think the "what if" question (What if Hitler had succeeded as an artist?) is the wrong question to ask. The real question the movie poses is What is the relationship between Art and Politics.  As I've mentioned previously, the "tagline" for the movie in trailers was "Art + Politics = Power."  

A French philosopher named Jacques Ranciere has written about something he calls "the Distribution of the Sensible."  Art, he claims, is not necessarily revolutionary, but neither is it (ever) apolitical. Some art is explicitly and intentionally political; much is not.  Some artists claim that real art is not political-- that it is always somehow above or beyond politics; it is "pure."  Ranciere believes that art is always already political-- not necessarily in the explicit sense, but in the sense that it makes possible what we can see/not see, say/not say, understand/not understand.  That is, it distributes what is "sensible":  both what we can sense (see/hear/feel), and what makes sense (what is comprehensible). Abstract art, for example, stretches our imagination so that we can see what we have not been able to see before; likewise, "great" literature expands our experience, helps us to experience as other people, and therefore enables us to "see" the world differently.

Thus the "Distribution of the Sensible" depends to a large degree on who can speak, who can say what is seen (or not seen, or not spoken).  

It's worth noting that the movie (Max) was criticized for "humanizing" Hitler.  But as one reviewer wrote, 

"The movie has stirred some concerns that humanizing Hitler may desensitize us to his historic evil. But it's important to understand that evil springs from recognizable human sources, that it's closer than we realize: common, even (as Hannah Arendt says) banal." (Michael Wilmington)

And Roger Ebert wrote:

"The film . . . has been attacked because it attempts to 'humanize' a monster. But of course Hitler was human, and we must understand that before we can understand anything else about him."

Hitler did not emerge full-blown (as it were) out of nowhere. He became.  

He also rose to power over a period of time, enabled and supported by a variety of other people.  His ideas were monstrous.  But without power, those ideas would have remained just ideas.  This is why I find the argument for the expression of ideas (any ideas), problematic.  One must ask, at what point does the speaker or writer of those ideas gained sufficient power to become a danger to others? In the movie, the expression of "ideas" was certainly harmful to Max Rothman. (As it is so often harmful to marginalized peoples of all kinds, both in the U.S. and around the world.)  And because increasing numbers of people were persuaded to agree with those ideas, Hitler was able to gain increasing power.  And we know how harmful that was, to how many people.  (Actually, in some sense, the death toll continues to rise, with increasing Nazi activity in the U.S. and abroad.)

Possibly it is also worth noting that such ideas don't always come with a Nazi label.  There's an awful lot of racism and xenophobia in the U.S. today.  In fact, much of the U.S. activity around the Mexican border is a clear violation of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide  (e.g., forcibly separating children from their parents).

The point is, People can and are harmed by "ideas."