Is all art propaganda?

This entry is the tenth instalment of my blog ( and eventual podcast) Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters. While I have not recorded the audio file yet, this entry was written to be aired in podcast format and as such will (at times) read more like the transcript of a podcast than a traditional blog. So without further ado, here’s the tenth episode of Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters.

(Chapter Headings: Introduction)

Hello, my name is Matitya and welcome to Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters. Today’s topic is all art propaganda? The short answer is no, unless you define propaganda far too broadly.

(Chapter Headings: George Orwell)

The Anti-Communist Socialist George Orwell wrote in his 1940 essay on Charles Dickens “All art is propaganda. Neither Dickens himself nor the majority of Victorian novelists would have thought of denying this. On the other hand, not all propaganda is art.”

(Chapter Headings: “All art is propaganda” is an obviously false statement.)

The statement that “all art is propaganda” is false. Michelangelo’s Pietà is not propaganda, neither is Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. One can object that Orwell was talking about literary art rather than about all art. I would respond that Orwell used the phrase “all art”. One could object that

1) It’s an essay on Dickens and as such is likely referring to literature and

2) The very quotation that I brought up explicitly mentioned “novelists” such that

3) It makes sense to interpret the phrase “all art” as hyperbolic and reckon that Orwell was talking strictly about literary art

I would respond to that by saying that it’s not even true about all literature. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum is not propaganda, regardless of later efforts to read political messages into it, and neither is Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll.

(Was Orwell just talking about Victorian literature?)

One may object that Orwell specifically brought up “Victorian” literature rather than literature in general but at that point we’re abusing the word “all.” That said, let’s pretend that Orwell’s remark applies strictly to Victorian literature, it’s still wrong. I already brought up Alice in Wonderland. That’s a book from the Victorian era and isn’t propagandistic and, despite some jokes here and there having possible political subtext, isn’t truly political. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde has a moral but it’s not propaganda. You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a good argument in favour of claiming that it has a political message.

(Chapter Headings: Is Orwell’s claim better in context?)

Charles Dickens most definitely had political messages to his books. Even so, it’s unfair to equate a novel having a political message with it being propagandistic. As such, I’d be quite reluctant to describe Dickens’ novels as propaganda. Is it possible that Orwell’s essay has a good argument as to why I’m wrong about this? Maybe but I doubt it. So let’s look and see.

(Chapter Headings: Reviewing Orwell’s Essay Part 1)

Orwell begins his essay by establishing that he won’t be talking about Dickens’ personal life but the content of his novels which is a good approach. He then attempts to see where on the political spectrum Dickens’ books should be placed. That’s an entirely legitimate question to have. Orwell posits that “As usual, one can define his position more easily if one starts by deciding what he was not.” He suggests that Dickens’ books are less a critique of any political system than they are of the flaws inherent in human nature. I agree. I think A Christmas Carol is a good example of this. Scrooge isn’t bad because he’s a wealthy businessman, he’s bad because he’s a miser and misanthrope. After Scrooge’s redemption, he’s neither miser nor misanthrope but he remains a wealthy businessman.

At this point, Orwell objects to Dickens not acknowledging child labour outside of the semi-autobiographical David Copperfield. Here, Orwell is wrong as Oliver Twist grows up in a workhouse and it’s portrayed as being a living Hell.

Orwell also brings up that some Dickens books are critical of trade unions and of violent revolutions. Based on this, Orwell views Dickens as being anti-revolutionary which might be a good assessment though, as Orwell acknowledges in this essay, A Tale of Two Cities has the French aristocracy sow the seeds of their own demise. Orwell still posits that Dickens is no revolutionary on the grounds that Dickens doesn’t portray the revolution as “historical necessity.”

To elaborate, Karl Marx viewed events like the French Revolution as essential parts of history which had to transpire to bring about the eventual rise of Communism. That said, I wouldn’t consider refusal to view history through a Marxist lens to be the same thing as being fundamentally opposed to revolution. I would also point out that the early chapters of A Tale of Two Cities are sympathetic to the American Revolution. It seems that Orwell is oversimplifying Dickens to make him easier to categorise.

(Reviewing Orwell’s Essay Part Two)

Orwell then attempts to engage in class-based analysis of Dickens as a person, despite having claimed at the beginning that he was more interested in the content of Dickens’ books. Orwell then takes a cheap shot at H. G. Wells. Orwell observes that Dickens’ books often portray aristocrats pejoratively. He also praises Dickens on the grounds that they lack racism or as Orwell calls it “vulgar nationalism”. Orwell doesn’t attempt to reconcile this with the particularly unflattering portrayal of Fagin the Jew in Oliver Twist. (For what it’s worth, Dickens regretted the anti-Semitic overtones of that character).

(Reviewing Orwell’s Essay Part Three)

Orwell then criticises Dickens for having Pip be distrustful of the criminal Abel Magwitch despite Magwitch having helped him in the novel Great Expectations. While that is an accurate assessment of Pip’s reaction to Magwitch, I don’t find that to be suggestive of Dickens damning anyone who has ever committed any crime even one of necessity, like Orwell claims. Orwell also criticises Dickens for viewing getting married and having children as an ideal happy ending. I honestly don’t see a problem with that at all and it’s not clear to me why Orwell does.

(Reviewing Orwell’s Essay Part 4- Orwell’s reasons for calling art propaganda)

It’s then that Orwell anticipates that his readers will find his essay to be unfair to Dickens. He offers us the rebuttal that

“By this time anyone who is a lover of Dickens, and who has read as far as this, will probably be angry with me.

I have been discussing Dickens simply in terms of his ‘message’, and almost ignoring his literary qualities. But every writer, especially every novelist, has a ‘message’, whether he admits it or not, and the minutest details of his work are influenced by it. All art is propaganda. Neither Dickens himself nor the majority of Victorian novelists would have thought of denying this. On the other hand, not all propaganda is art. As I said earlier, Dickens is one of those writers who are felt to be worth stealing. He has been stolen by Marxists, by Catholics and, above all, by Conservatives. The question is, [[w]]hat is there to steal? Why does anyone care about Dickens? Why do I care about Dickens?”

(Chapter Headings: Why Orwell’s reasons are wrong.)

The first thing I find notable about this quotation is that Orwell says “whether he admits or not” and then attempts to substantiate this point by bringing up that several writers would admit it. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the latter end of his argument forgets the beginning. If it were truly a matter of “whether he admits it or not” then the existence of writers who acknowledge it would be irrelevant. It would make much more sense for Orwell to bring up specific examples of writers whose work has a message to which they don’t confess.

The second notable feature is that while he posits that every writer has a message, he doesn’t provide an explanation for why he believes it to be the case. Incidentally, Alice in Wonderland mocks the idea of every story having a moral by having the character of The Duchess go out of her way to connect every story or anecdote to a moral lesson even when no morals follow from the story to Alice’s frustration. Does the rest of the book have a broader moral? Not really. I know that there are people who squint very hard to see morals messages built into Wonderland but they aren’t there. There’s a reason that Caroll said his sole goal with the book was to entertain children and that he deliberately refrained from giving the story a moral so as not to make it less enjoyable for his intended audience.

I would contrast Alice in Wonderland with The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum which has a moral, which is to have confidence in yourself. So some writers have messages in their books and some don’t. Orwell is wrong to claim that “every writer” has one.

The third feature of interest here, and it’s a telling one, is the is the snuck premise that a book having a message is enough to qualify it as propaganda. That’s a premise with which I disagree. By treating it as correct Orwell assumes what needs to be proven.

(Chapter Headings: Possible objections to my argument)

Orwell then goes on to explain why he believes Dickens is popular but analysing Orwell’s analysis of Dickens’ popularity is not the purpose of this Matitya’s Musing. Now that we’ve established the context of the Orwell quotation, I stand by my response to it. The only possible rebuttal to my arguments is to claim that Orwell defined the word propaganda differently from how I would define it.

(Chapter Headings: What is propaganda?)

Personally, I have only ever heard people using the term “propaganda” when trying to describe something as deceitfully political. That’s also how I use it. Propaganda is a noun describing efforts at disseminating deceitful political messaging. It’s not a catch-all term for political messaging. There’s a reason I didn’t call the Utopian Socialist novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy “propaganda” in my review of it. By this definition, it is not even remotely close to true that all literature is propaganda.

(Chapter Headings: Other peoples’ definitions of propaganda)

Perhaps Orwell was using a different definition than I am so let’s look at some other definitions.

Dictionary.com defines propaganda as information that may be true or false but is always carefully selected in service of a political purpose. (I’m oversimplifying from the American, British, and cultural definitions that it offers but that’s the gist.) This definition would make all political messaging propaganda but even if I were to accept this as the correct usage then it would still not be the case that all literature is propaganda. Not all books have political messages. Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers the same definitions as Dictionary.com does.

That having been established, Wiktionary defines propaganda as

1) Agitation, publicity, public communication aimed at influencing an audience and furthering an agenda. And

2) Such communication specifically when it is biased, misinformative, and/or provoking mainly emotional responses.

(Chapter Headings: Matitya vs Orwell)

So now we have two definitions of propaganda. One is political messaging. The other is deceitful political messaging. There’s no doubt in my mind that Orwell was employing the former when he said “all art is propaganda” even though I use the latter definition. I doubt even Orwell would dispute that his thesis is untrue by the latter definition. I stand by my critique because his claim is untrue by the former definition as well. Not all literature is political. Not all drama is political. Not all art is political. Maybe Orwell meant his statement hyperbolically rather than literally but even if that were the case, hyperbole is supposed to be an exaggeration of something that is actually true. If most art were political then maybe I could accept that he was simply exaggerating from most to all but I’m not convinced that that’s true. In fact, I strongly doubt it is.

Using propaganda as a neutral term for political messaging broadens the word’s scope to the point of meaninglessness and as such, if the term propaganda is to remain useful, the claim that all art is propaganda is unequivocally false. And if you disagree with my definition of propaganda, the claim that all art is propaganda remains false.

My name is Matitya and this has been an episode of Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters.