I like this piece, and the others in the series, but I’m not sure I’d agree on the premise of the series. Personally, arts criticism right now seems to be intent on politicizing art, regardless of intention. Obviously, if you define the word broadly enough, all art is political, but it would be naive to deny that right now many are toeing the line between having a point of view, and having an agenda, in analyzing it.
I’d also question whether people are hungry for political art, or people are politically hungry, and projecting that on to art. Perhaps it’s just me, but I started to read old Roger Ebert reviews, and a line from his introduction struck me as what was missing from current criticism:
“I bought books by Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Louis Giannetti, and Arthur Knight, and pondered them. In The Immediate Experience, a book by Robert Warshaw, I found and underlined this sentence: ‘A man goes to the movies. The critic must admit that he is this man.’ I translated that to mean that the critic must place experience above theory, must monitor what he actually thinks and feels during the film, and trust that above all. If the film is by a great director, does that make it a great film? If it comes from a disreputable genre, does that make it unworthy? In the mind of the critic, each film must earn its own living.”
Of course, it’s not so far from this as to be unrecognizable. And, of course, Ebert himself wasn’t afraid to consider politics when reviewing a movie (it would be as silly to forcibly remove them as it is to forcibly insert them). In reality, the critical consensus on most films are about right. But, there’s a reason why many, if not most, warn about the politicization of art (as well as criticism), and it’s propensity to lead people towards bias.