“I have a certain sympathy with Mr. Mazel,” says Roger Kimball on OpinionJournal – Leisure & Arts. “I believe works like ‘Snow White’ are art largely by dint of definitional courtesy. Really, they are examples of propaganda masquerading as art. They poach on the prestige of art in order to have it both ways. Criticize the aesthetic vapidness and you get a lecture about how the artwork transcends the traditional artistic categories to interrogate the oppressive political structures of the status quo, blah, blah, blah. Criticize the moronic politics and you get a sermon about not reducing works of art to a simplistic set of objective declarations.” Mr. Kimball is managing editor of The New Criterion.
cultural practitioner / thoughts & essays