I see.
I should clarify that I'm a bad amateur philosopher. So when you put limits on what is possible, I go straight to the edge, and ask whether the edge is really there. Are you sure this is truly impossible? What if I... etc
It might be worth pointing people out ahead of time that you're just doing thought experiments for your own philosophical pleasure, then; rather than engaging with the point they're making.
Or heck, point out you're not a fan of absolute statements & carry on with the actual discussion. I don't think many people have the patience for a "if I shit in a circle and call it art, is it truly art?"-level discussion without it being prefaced by some kind of warning.
Thus far I see people pushing the line of what construes politics to fit stuff in. Expounding the definition of politics often as much as diluting the actual political comment a piece makes.
Interesting coming from a person who was critical earlier for how-to guides and random data generated by A.I.
Let's start at the top. When I think of politics, it centres primarily around governance. So primarily speaking, for me, Ghostbusters fan fiction doesn't induce politics or talk of governance. It's fighting crime per say I guess... but really, it's just some people having fun busting ghosts. If someone were to think of Ghostbusters fan fiction as actually about fighting crime and somehow commenting on it, what do I care? For me they missed the whole point of it. I'd just disagree vehemently with this analyst. Making it political in this kind of way is absurd and unreasonable. So it doesn't fit the first primary understanding I have of politics.
Okay, see, here you're already assuming people in this thread are claiming all art is
explicitly political in a very specific way. The statement "all art is political" usually refers to both
explicit and implicit politics.
You still haven't linked the fanfiction in question, but the original ghostbusters
has actual explicit points related to governance, doesn't it? "this man has no dick" man is portrayed as a meddling government agent getting in the way of the every-man guys just trying to do the right thing and busting ghosts. There's clear analogs there between actual government agencies being seen as meddling & mr.no dick.
Going deeper, I understand a secondary definition attributed to politics; how decisions at the highest level affect different members. Best example being in the case of the newest Ghostbusters, I can see where someone would say gender politics comes into play. And you can even apply gender politics by reversing back to the first example, e.g. you can talk about the lack of female science fiction authors, and the reversal of this in the number of female slash writers.
Politics falls in formal & informal categories, that secondary definition is
clearly what people talk about when saying "politics is everywhere" or "all art is political". Gender, sexuality, views on violence/pacifism, religion etc can all be considered political and any piece of fiction will inadvertedly have implicit messages on this front.
The portrayal of gender stereotypes, whitewashing, stereotypical or unflattering portrayals of certain religions, views or groupls of people, the way violence, imperialism and military intervention are portrayed in a show. All of these are broadly "political" in nature.
(another good one: the inherent fetishization of a genre like slash fiction)
So yeah, from this angle the political commentary makes sense. Ghost-busters when talking about gender politics is a good example to use in an essay.
What I'm then saying is that in fiction, I don't limit the imagination. Anybody can write about a donkey wandering the desert. What's the politics there?
It only works in a political context when you want to see politics there. It's not inherent to the piece at all.
I'm not sure what you're suggesting by saying "limit the imagination", that sounds like a complete non-sequitur.
Let's try something else. If I say think of an elephant. You'd hopefully will. What's the politics at play there?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
As I, and others have stated in previous posts; if you reduce "art" to the most bening, non-communicative elements if discourse such as "ELEPHANT" ... yeah there's not a lot of political inference there ... however as I stated before, that's not what people talking about art & politics in this topic are talking about
anyway.
Like let's list them so far:
1. an instruction to craft a paper plane
2. random words made up by an A.I.
3. a picture of seemingly random numbers
4. a donkey in a desert
5.
the thought of an elephant.
Notice a pattern here? All your examples verge on the very edge of what anyone could reasonably describe as art at all! For someone seemingly annoyed by people using the term "politics" broad enough to include such non-politically charged issues as gender, race or sexuality I gotta admit your examples of "art" amuse me.
It actually makes me wonder if that's really how you look at art, just "anything you make, or think of is inherently art" or something?
Well, being an amateur linguist interested in this field, I'll answer. You can talk about the relationship and the power the author has over the reader or the listener.. etc etc. Still, this has no real bearing on the piece. That is just one interpretation among billions of possibilities. It has no greater truth than all the billions of times somebody said elephant before and and when absolutely nothing was made of it.
Just for clarity, do you believe the author's intentions are absolute and there's
no possible way an author could ever unintentionally have subconscious biases slip into their work?
Further on, I can expound this reasoning to every other piece of content in history, just as you guys expound the definition of politics to fit your frame of reference. There are some philosophers, for example who believe that life has no inherent point. At that level, how can anything have any inherent point? And if not, then nothing is political. We're just chemicals. Just one chemical hitting another one. and politics is just an illusion. Cause and effect etc...
This seems like a complete non-sequitur again, I'm surprised you didn't go into straight up solipsism yet.
But I don't go that far. you'd go crazy if you did. I'd just wait for somebody to show me their political slant to it. And I can say I agree in this regard. And I don't agree in that regard. And further after, it's just noise. A woman wants to write a slash rape ghost-busters fantasy, I'd just say, okay. She says, I don't mean anything by it, its just popped into my head. I'd be like, who cares, Go for it.
I'm honestly failing to understand your point here,
at all.
You don't care about ghost rape slash fiction, so other people shouldn't either? It isn't political cause the author's will is absolute? What are you trying to say?
Admittedly, it's harder for something like batman to be apolitical, as echoshifting pointed out above, even when you don't study it closely.
For lots of people though, it's just batman. And Capullo is addressing this audience.
Not sure what your point is here either ... "if a majority of an audience doesn't see politics in something, it is inherently apolitical" ?
Like your points seem to be more meandering words and thoughts without any real goal aside from a weird combination of "ehhh" & deeply caring about people seeing politics where you don't.
/edit
But I don't go that far. you'd go crazy if you did. I'd just wait for somebody to show me their political slant to it. And I can say I agree in this regard. And I don't agree in that regard. And further after, it's just noise. A woman wants to write a slash rape ghost-busters fantasy, I'd just say, okay. She says, I don't mean anything by it, its just popped into my head. I'd be like, who cares, Go for it.
Thinking about this more, it suddenly hit me why you're not sharing this apolitical fanfiction you kept talking about with us Lmao.
