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The Apotheosis of the Nation-state

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The World Cup is the apotheosis of the nation-state. Of course, so is the American Super Bowl. I stayed up last night reading Argentinians’ tributes to Messi. People were brimming with pride for their country. “I’m so grateful to be Argentinian,” they said. It’s the national flags, the anthems, the exultation of the imaginary community of the nation that suddenly becomes not so imaginary when people recognize each other because of their team shirts, even in faraway lands.

There has been a lot of moaning among right-wingers over the success of Christopher Nolan’s new movie. “We lost the culture,” they weep even though that part of culture was always extremely left-wing. Whatever a Hollywood movie from seventy years ago might seem today, back when it was created, it was very progressivist. The acting profession never led people to highly moral, traditionalist behaviors because of its very nature.

So forget movies. We never have and never will dominate movies. We will never dominate gangsta rap either, and it’s time to make peace with that. I can’t even say that this is bad news because it’s not news at all.

In the absence of bad news, there is good news, which is that the nation-state is very much alive.

20 responses to “The Apotheosis of the Nation-state”

  1. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “The World Cup is the apotheosis of the nation-state”

    I remember a funny video from 2010 when Spain first won. It was in Barcelona and some very pouty independentsta was indignant, roughly “I don’t know why they celebrating… thees ees not Espain, ees Catalunya.”

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      The very first thing that the Spanish commentator said yesterday after the Team 1 was to give a list of how many Basques, catalonians, valencianos, andaluces, castellanos, etc. there are on the team. In multiethnic, multilingual nations like Spain, this is extremely helpful to nation building.

      It was a huge mistake of the Ukrainian nation building that there was no effort, not even to do this, but at least to recognize that this is something that needs to be done. You can absolutely be a very successful multi-lingual, multi-ethnic nation-state, but it takes a very specific kind of work. In Ukraine, the war ended up doing this work. But of course, it would have been better to start earlier.

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  2. ShadowsCollide Avatar
    ShadowsCollide

    I agree that conservatives ought to realize they are never going to dominate movies or popular music, those have been liberal coded for so long and much so-called conservative music and movies are pure cringe. Conservatives should concentrate on what they’re good at instead of making cringey “art”

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    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Pop music and movies are, by definition, media that appeal primarily to the passions, selling dopamine hits. Christianity has no business there, and needs to stop trying.

      We already have many centuries of religious art, with much discussion around them. Religious art isn’t about *appeal* it’s about *function*. The gauge for religious art– music, iconography, architecture– is whether or not it does the things it is supposed to do: teach correct theology, guide the soul toward God. Nothing that fits those parameters is going to make the top 40 charts or win an Oscar. And that’s not a problem we need to solve.

      ethyl

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “Religious art isn’t about *appeal* it’s about *function*”

        Very interesting ideas. In terms of music, a lot of traditional religious music either leaves me cold or leaves me thinking “how very competent! so intricate!” or “so compelling” or even “how strange (in a good way)” but it’s never sparked any religious feelings in me. But then I suspect that the capacity for religious faith is just not part of my make up so it’s a bit like deaf person watching a string quartet and being interested in the intricate fingerwork and expressive arm movements.

        The religious music I most respond to is probably African American gospel which is kind of…. pop adjacent? For a few years in high school (due to the vagaries of AM radio) I listened to a Nashville station that played gospel music after 11 or so, including recorded sermons. I would listen and fall asleep to it and in the morning the radio was silent except for low statis (it only received that station from around 9 pm till sometime in the wee hours of the morning).

        But as much as I love that music and respect the sincerity of those who produce it… it still doesn’t stir anyting religious in me.

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        1. Avatar
          Anonymous

          One of the interesting things about Orthodoxy (for me at least) was glimpsing the synergy between its traditional artforms. Abstract any of it from its right context and it kind of deflates. There’s still something there, but it’s harder to access because it’s a fragment not a whole. Byzantine music (and Gregorian chant) are music forms that play the architecture of a stone church as an instrument. Take the chant outside its instrument and it loses something. Build a church in a non-canonical shape and you can make a hash of the acoustics. Iconography is an art, but… it’s an art in a context for a purpose, never just a set of graphic design strictures and style guidelines. Where will that icon go? What will it be used for? Those things have a lot to say about what it should look like.

          I wouldn’t blame your lack of spiritual response to religious art on some personal flaw. I think the context in which you engage with it matters a lot, and it’s not primarily a tool for evangelization: it’s a tool developed inside a religious context, for the aid of participants in that religion. It’d be weird for a non-participant to experience it the way participants can and do. So if you walk into a church and you’re wowed by the art and architecture, great! But that’s kind of a side-benefit not the main purpose?

          There’s a lot of traditional religious art (not just Christian) that’s oriented around helping participants achieve altered states of consciousness and directing them toward experience of the divine. I have kind of a hair trigger for ASC, so it’s hard not to notice 😉 There are services we normally do in low light (ideally by candlelight), which gives a radically different vibe to a fully-icon-invested nave. Add a long, meditative chant like the slow polyeleos to that, do it when everybody’s been fasting for at least twelve hours, throw in some incense… the function becomes pretty obvious. But none of the parts that go into that are particularly functional on their own, or we’d all have frankincense vaporizers in hippie food stores causing mass epiphanies.

          That said, I’m a liturgical chanter and have had some experiences with that, that make me question whether it is ever OK to broadcast contemplative religious music over the radio or internet. Is it OK to randomly, anywhere and everywhere, out of context, expose people to things whose function is to induce altered consciousness? No guardrails? I’m inclined to err on the side of caution there and say no. For exactly the same reasons, I’m vehemently against playing trance/electronica over the speakers in commercial establishments. I did not consent to having my consciousness manipulated with the audio equivalent of a jackhammer (also it makes me queasy): I will leave the venue immediately and never come back. Not OK.

          To some extent *all* music is about synchronization. In traditional low-tech contexts, maybe you get the tribe together, bang the drums, light the bonfire, dance together: this is how you get everybody on the same psychic wavelength so you can work and live together. Synch everybody up (Gospel has a LOT of this going on and I wonder if its primary function is more community-building than spiritual). I don’t think it’s crazy to ask, about any music you are subjected to voluntarily or involuntarily: what is this synching me up to and am I OK with that? Maybe not everyone is equally susceptible, but music is a human universal for reasons. Whether you deliberately use it or not, it has an effect on you. I also think that turning music from a primarily collective participatory experience into a largely individual niche passive experience is a non-trivial contributor to the breakdown of culture and community in modern times for… all the reasons above. People still want to synch up, but now nobody’s synching up to God or each other. So… what *are* they synching up to?

          Weirdly, the older I’ve gotten, the more I think the nutso evangellies of my youth who didn’t want their kids exposed to Disney, rock n’ roll, or any other mainstream popculture products were… not entirely wrong. Still crazy though.

          So… movies and pop music: IMO at a foundational level those are just not compatible with Christian practice and should be regarded as tools not suited for our use. Movies and TV are literally (not intentionally at first but developed that direction) hypnosis generators. Flickering light in a dark room is a pretty good analogue for the old communal fires and stories/dance, except now that’s been reoriented and fine-tuned to commercial and propaganda purposes. Ellul thinks the consumption of propaganda through mass media this way cuts people off from spiritual perception. The flicker rate, light/dark intervals, loud/quiet intervals, have all been very minutely studied and optimized over the years to pin down your attention and keep you in a receptive state for as long as possible, without your voluntary or conscious participation. This is unethical. But what it means is even if you try to use it for good… you’re still doing something unethical. Yes, even Veggie Tales. Unethical and manipulative. Because if it’s *effective* it’s unethical, and if it’s ethical it’s *ineffective* and boring.

          ethyl

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          1. Avatar
            Anonymous

            whoops wall of text ranting.

            Sorry.

            ethyl

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          2. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            This one beautiful, thank you. What’s amazing in church is precisely how every element plays together to bring you into a mental state all its own. My church, unfortunately, has way too many protestant elements because we have many converts. It’s way too well-lit, the walls are way too bare, the pews are very numerous. It’s my church, I love it but I wouldn’t mind more of a strictly Orthodox experience.

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            1. Avatar
              Anonymous

              I now have strong and controversial opinions on certain four-part hymns for the same reasons… there’s one I think of as the “jazz-hands anaphora” that I wish we could excise from the choir book. Yes, it makes the choir sound very impressive. No, I don’t think it functions the way liturgical music is supposed to function and did we *have* to throw that in right after the consecration??? Couldn’t we save the jazz-hands stuff for, I dunno, the recessional when we’re just trying to discourage chitchatting in the prosfora line? There’s also an Agios that for the first three notes is identical to this one we used to sing in the Presbyterian church (and drives me a little batty):

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          3. Avi Avatar
            Avi

            Thank you ethyl for this piece.

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      2. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        Between a Gregorian chant and the entirety of the top 100 charts, I think the choice is obvious but I’m one of few weirdos.

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      So true. I want to climb into a foxhole out of shame whenever right-wingers try to put on a large pop concert. It’s very, very sad. I’m the opposite of a music connoisseur, but even I know that these attempts are embarrassing.

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  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    regarding movies, we’ve been watching some older movies – ones from the 70s and 80s like the Airport movies and the 2 Airplane movies – and the promotion of values subversive to the traditional family and American values were already being normalized. I didn’t notice it at the time but now I do and also see the way it’s spread. Like putting a drop of food color in a glass of water.

    A.

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  4. Demotrash Avatar
    Demotrash

    Funnily enough, the right wingers I know think that The Odyssey was pretty good and that whiners need to stop whining. I’m glad to be friends with a reasonable crowd. This movie was not even particularly left wing by Hollywood standards.

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    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      It appears to be a sponsored-post joke. I saw a friend (whom I know did not see the movie) post a glowing “OMG best movie ever” for it, so I asked.

      Apparently, there was a possible max promotional payout of $7k, though my friend says he only collected $3.50.

      ethyl

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      1. Demotrash Avatar
        Demotrash

        I’m referring to people I personally know and talk to, so nothing to do with the funny sponsored posts

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      2. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        Ben Shapiro adored the movie. It’s funny because the main idea of the film is Tucker Carlson-like “war is bad, so let’s sit there and get massacred by people who have no such scruples.”

        Ben and Tucker have a lot more in common than they think. 😆😆

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        1. Avatar
          Anonymous

          Ben and Tucker are probably both doing paid endorsements.

          ethyl

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            As I said:

            https://x.com/i/status/2079313444579213408

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  5. Demotrash Avatar
    Demotrash

    I do think certain kinds of movies (horror, action, etc.) used to be more right wing or at least ideologically neutral. But I also think we’re gradually returning to that baseline, so I’m not too worried about it.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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