The implications of that article are pretty dangerous.
It's one tiny step removed from plain claiming some (Russian) authors should be canceled or not read because there's some folklore surrounding their importance for the construction of the national identity, and/or they defended some nationalistic ideals, and/or school children are taught silly nonsense about them.
Not many classic authors in any language would survive that filter.
Why, if we were to bar pieces of culture because school children are taught silliness about them, not much of the culture of the English-speaking world would survive!
I get that the current trend is to abhor anything Russian -- and also, that the current situation has not made it easy to sympathize with Russian-ness -- but really... this kind of articles is positively Orwellian.
Nothing good can come from ignoring/banning/canceling classic authors.
I see your point and I agree with most that you wrote. I don't believe the article I linked to is dangerous, though. It clarified many things for me (not to mention putting Brodsky in a new context, personally I found it quite shocking).
I remember watching the Chinese movie Hero (2002), sponsored by the state. The main premise of this beautiful movie is that dictatorship has its value that must be respected, and only people with deeper insight can understand it. Banning such works serves no purpose, but it's important for people to learn to spot manipulation and propaganda.
I sure hope they never ban "Hero", it's one of my favorite wuxia movies! I don't see it as propaganda at all, regardless of the ambiguous interpretation of its ending.
As far as I can see it has many people from Hong Kong in its cast -- including the awesome Maggie Cheung -- and the production company was from Hong Kong. Regardless, I don't consider "sponsored by the state" to be a naughty word, nor do I consider "fully privately sponsored" to be a badge of honor.
** Spoiler alert - don't read further but watch the movie instead! **
The whole movie is about the assassination attempt (OK, there is love and beauty and music, but the main plot is that). The main protagonist of the movie doesn't kill the emperor though as he understood what another character meant: that the emperor must not die, as the peace is possible only by uniting various ethnic groups by him.
On the surface, this kind of reasoning seems acceptable. In practice, though, forcing peace in this way just brings suffering and is a weak justification of imperialism. Look at the situation of Uighurs and Tibetans. A federation of states, in an integrated form like the USA or weaker like the EU seems to work much better in terms of benefits to their citizens than authoritarian empires in Chinese or Russian style.
I think that's reading too much into the movie. It's not an apologia of modern day China, it's a wuxia fable about imperial China, and the message of unity is not a bad one.
> A federation of states, in an integrated form like the USA or weaker like the EU seems to work much better in terms of benefits to their citizens than authoritarian empires in Chinese or Russian style.
That's a lot of baggage to unload into a wuxia movie. It's a movie, a folklore fable more in the style of a Chinese Rashomon (to which it's been compared) than a way to introduce political discourse. I wouldn't overanalyze it, just like I don't watch samurai movies to criticize them because Japanese feudal society wasn't democratic.
I can guarantee you "Hero" is not communist propaganda. I thought we were past this level of paranoia with the Cold War over.
Well, I had to look at the WP page just to check if I'm imagining things and nobody else thought about this (mind you, I'm a great fan of wuxia, and Hero is one of the best movies I've ever seen, with each minute being extremely satisfying on all levels). It turns out there are others[0]:
> Nevertheless, there were several film critics who felt the film had advocated autocracy and reacted with discomfort. J. Hoberman of The Village Voice deemed it to have a "cartoon ideology" and justification for ruthless leadership comparable to Triumph of the Will. Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post wrote an otherwise positive review but concluded: "The movie, spectacular as it is, in the end confronts what must be called the tyrant's creed, and declares itself in agreement with the tyrant."
It's one tiny step removed from plain claiming some (Russian) authors should be canceled or not read because there's some folklore surrounding their importance for the construction of the national identity, and/or they defended some nationalistic ideals, and/or school children are taught silly nonsense about them.
Not many classic authors in any language would survive that filter.
Why, if we were to bar pieces of culture because school children are taught silliness about them, not much of the culture of the English-speaking world would survive!
I get that the current trend is to abhor anything Russian -- and also, that the current situation has not made it easy to sympathize with Russian-ness -- but really... this kind of articles is positively Orwellian.
Nothing good can come from ignoring/banning/canceling classic authors.