Conservative Art or Apolitical Art?

I usually like what Clifton Duncan has to say, and I even appreciate what he is saying here, but I have to take issue with some things. It's Time for a Renaissance. - by Clifton Duncan

I do agree with the first part of his statement, or part of it anyway. The Right abandoned the arts and pop culture. Or to be more direct, we were booted out on some level, and some conservatives just couldn't be bothered with something so nebulous.

When I first moved to Cincinnati I went to the theater regularly. The city had a small but modern theater and arts complex, and the theater company put on several wonderful, and a few not-so-wonderful productions. When I moved back to Cincinnati, after about 10 years in Florida, the company had gone so woke that I stopped going. A few of my friends who also had attended regularly had stopped going. Do you want to be lectured about how evil you are because of the color of your skin? Neither did we.

While you could look at a lot of film studios, and dissect where they went woke, Alan Ng of Film Threat has thoroughly documented the downfall of Disney Animation in his series The D-Files. In the case of Disney, white men, old or otherwise, were forced out along with anyone who dared to question the Woke agenda.

But Clifton is focusing more on what the Right is, or in a lot of cases is not, creating.

Many stars of New Media call themselves “Culture Warriors,” and they need to stop.

They are pundits. Posters. Podcasters. Talking heads with no passion or aptitude for the arts. They create ZERO culture.

On the rare occasion they notice the arts, it's to voice tired complaints about "the left" having destroyed them. They lament the lack of beauty or depth or transcendence in today's art and entertainment, the crassness and emptiness of modern music, or the ugliness of modern architecture. They create nothing themselves.

Now maybe Clifton is watching different YouTube personalities than I am, but a lot of the folks I watch are very passionate. I'm guessing, only guessing, that they are passionate about art forms that Clinton doesn't consider art.

As one of Clifton Duncan's commenters points out, Daily Wire has been producing art. Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot, Run, Hide, Fight, and they have an entire channel devoted to children's' programming. I don't subscribe to the Daily Wire's website, so as far as I know I don't have access to any of their programming. But it does exist.

The documentary Am I Racist was the highest grossing documentary of 2024, and perhaps of the past 10 years. Even though it meets all of the criteria for consideration for an Oscar - racial composition of crew, etc. - the Academy was insulted when Matt Walsh submitted it for consideration. How dare a conservative think he could rate an award!

The movie that jumps to the front of my mind from the past few years would be Sound of Freedom. Produced by Fox, it was suppressed by Disney, until Angel Studios finally managed to get it released.

Angel Studios also produces a fair bit of content, but because it is Christian in nature, my guess is that Mr. Duncan discounts it. (Everyone else does.)

But let's get back to the "none of the pundits on the right are creating art."

Will "The Critical Drinker" Jordan wrote a series of books, and had one of them, or related scene involving the characters produced as a short film that is on YouTube.

Shad Brooks, of Shadiversity, Knights Watch, and Friday Night Tights (all YouTube channels) wrote a fantasy novel, Shadow of the Conqueror, which he has listed as volume one of Chronicles of Everfall.

And then there is the art that I assume is beneath Clifton Duncan. The quintessential art form of the 21st Century is the video game. As an industry it is 10 times the size of movies and television. And while the Woke mind virus has been infecting that industry, as it infected Hollywood, gamers are having none of it, and several game studios have closed following expensive, high-profile, woke failures. The companies, mostly from Asia at this point, that are resisting the Woke scolds are making a bunch of money.

There is no mention of video games in his article. My guess is that he doesn't consider them art.

But it costs millions of dollars, in some cases 100s of millions of dollars, to create a video game. What about art that can be created on a smaller scale? What about graphic novels and comic books? Does Clifton Duncan even consider that to be art? Most of the Right doesn't.

RazörFist, who has the YouTube channel The Rageaholic, wrote and published Ghost of the Badlands.

Jay "Drunk3PO" David created the comic series Achromatic Chronicles. Jay was a fifth grade teacher when he got the idea to write a story that "taught purpose and value." While they are aimed at kids, kids need art as well.

Gabe Eltaeb was a colorist for DC Comics, and then an independent contractor in the industry. Because of the Woke insanity he was faced with, he quit and started Big Man Comics. Their current offering is DEAN CAIN: ALL- AMERICAN LAWMAN.

And then there is Eric July. Eric created the company Rippaverse to counteract the downfall of his beloved comics from Marvel and DC. The Rippaverse wasn't started to be Right Wing comics and graphic novels. It was started to be apolitical. ISOM, Blood Ruth, Alphacore, Yaira, The Horseman, and more.

So some people are creating art. And encouraging others to do so as well. It just may not be coming to Clifton Duncan's attention because of his training in the classical arts.

RIP David Drake - 24 September 1945 to 10 December 2023

Via Twitter and Mike Kupari we get the sad news.

I have been informed that David Drake, fellow @BaenBooks writer, fellow veteran, and author of the excellent Hammer's Slammers series, has passed away.

I met him in 2018 and told him that I understood his work more after returning home from Afghanistan. He seemed to appreciate that.

My wife, a long time volunteer at conventions, knew him better than I did. She says he was always a gentleman who appreciated his fans, loved to tell stories, but wasn’t afraid to (politely) tell someone to shut up if he was talking out of turn.

Take a moment to say a prayer and/or pour one out for one of the all-time greats of military science fiction.

I found this thanks to Wombat-socho, who took the news hard.

I will advert to you that I am not really in the mood to do this post tonight, as I have been informed that one of my favorite SF authors, David Drake, has died. Still, if he taught me nothing else, he taught me that when you have a job to do, you do it – no bullshit or excuses accepted.

I was not really a fan of David Drake's writing. I have read his Hammer's Slammers collection, or I should say I have read most of the 3 book set. (It is a "modern classic" of SF, after all.) I also read Ranks of Bronze, but that was because I had stumbled across The Excalibur Alternative by David Weber, which is sequel to Ranks, and thought I should read it first. I may have read a couple of other books by him, as he wrote a lot of stuff based on Hammer, but they didn't make an impression, or much of one.

I can appreciate the skill that went into the work, and apparently he wrote combat, even Sci-Fi combat, in a very real way. It just isn't my cup of tea.

Get Woke, Go Broke - Book Publishing Edition

How many times do industries need to learn this lesson? WOKE BOOKS BOMB! Publishers take bath on Elliot Page tome, others

If you're not interested in making money, then you probably won't. If you're not interested in making money, then you probably shouldn't be in a position where your decisions determine if your company will or won't make money.

Experts said that in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the wave of protests that followed, publishing houses began hiring editors of colour, some of whom were more interested in ideology than selling books.

Eliot Page was given a $3 million advance for the memoir of transition, Pageboy. It sold 68,000 copies, which isn't a bad number, but not nearly enough to cover $3 million.

Other recent woke disasters: Carolyn Ferrell’s, Dear Miss Metropolitan , which nailed a $250,000 advance and sold just 3,200 copies since 2021 and “queer feminist western” Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens which earned the author a $500,000 advance while selling just 3,500 copies.

Editor Nadxieli Nieto bought Rasheed Newson’s My Government Means to Kill Me for Flatiron for a sweet $250,000. According to BookScan, it has sold less than 4,500 copies.

And the Woke insanity extends to actual discrimination.

“A friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good; they are just not interested,” author Joyce Carol Oates has said.

One publishing insider admitted as much.

“We flat-out decided we weren’t going to look at certain white male authors because we didn’t want to be seen as acquiring that stuff,” one senior editor told The Free Press.

And if a publisher wants to treat a "conservative" topic, they will be ostracized by their peers.

In a few years, we will no doubt see articles bemoaning the fact that so many publishers have gone out of business. You can't set fire to $3 million dollars here, and $250,000 there and expect to stay in business. But hey, all of those Woke editors that they hired hate capitalism. Too bad they need capitalism to keep their companies open and their paychecks coming.

Sci-Fi Recommendations - Ground Pounder Edition

Wombat-socho at The Other McCain has the following: The Mud Below.

Welcome back to the continued trashing of what may be the worst list of recommended SF not published on Tor.com. In this post, we’re going to talk about combat SF that is set on planetary surfaces, the province of the poor bloody infantry, tankers of various sorts, and of course the Mobile Infantry with its several imitators.

Starting with Starship Troopers, the novel, not that travesty of a movie by the same name, and moving on from there. His recommendations include Bolo and Ranks of Bronze.