Plato and Hollywood
by Tibor R. Machan
In his most famous dialogue the ancient Greek philosopher Plato has his main character, Socrates - his own teacher who never wrote down his thoughts but whose ideas infused all of Plato's writings - construct the ideal community. It serves many purposes, among them to understand human psychology and morality. The ideal city is to be structured like the human soul and it can be used to see in large form how that human soul is best harmonized.
Many since have argued about just how to understand Plato's major work, among them some who say, rather convincingly, that it is a kind of model to highlight what is most important in human life, including in politics. Plato makes it clear through Socrates that his community is a kind of fantasy, an impossible ideal, a utopia that cannot actually be put into effect but merely used to keep certain important values in mind. Thus, for example, politics must always be reasonable and never dabble in the fantastic. It is thinking, not wishing or hoping, that should guide the development of public policy and law. That's what the philosopher king represents.
It is in this light that one might best understand the fact that in the Republic the arts are censored, children are brought up communally, as well as other strange features of community life. They are all pointers to what must be kept in mind as one thinks about community life. But the Republic is no blueprint, only a model or pointer.
I was thinking about Plato's cautionary tale about the arts during the recent California recall election campaign because once again, Hollywood, the land of fantasy, and politics, which is supposed to be concerned with practical life, were brought into very close proximity. Hollywood is, of course, the center of the bulk of popular fiction - probably more people around the world are entertained via Hollywood movies and television that by any other means.
Moreover Hollywood, however pedestrian much of its art may be, has this in common with many other creators of fiction: most of those who make it big in the movies as actors, directors, writers and such tend to be sympathetic to one or another kind - mainly Left Wing - of utopian politics.
Plato's warning about the arts is very apropos here: He seems to have believed that a serious danger of the arts - especially the written ones, such as poetry and drama - is its substitution of fantasy for what is realistically possible in life and society.
Art does not concern itself with truth so much as with imagination, wish, and hope. A fictional character can always embody elements that in reality cannot really co-exist successfully, such as a people who function well in life but also despise money or commerce or ambition. In the movies we can have heroes who are willing to throw away their lives, while in real life no one who does not value his own life can really be very helpful to others. In the novel one can imagine that everyone on earth can be loved equally intensely, whereas in real life one can have serious, meaningful love only for a few people, ones whom one knows and with whose circumstances one is thoroughly familiar.
I remember a TV show I used to check out now and then but really disliked for its relentless dabbling in fantasy, starring Jack Klugman, called Quincy. The main character was a forensic scientist who hated everyone who wasn't like him, a dedicated public servant. It was people in business, especially, who were the target of his ire. I used to wonder whether the writers on this show ever realized that their own work would not exist if it were not for dedicated professionals who handled the business end of the production, the bottom line, with the utmost savvy. I wonder this about all my colleagues in the academic world, who despise capitalism and commerce, while having no problem about being published by companies that are certainly businesses, first and foremost; or going to the library on campus which was built from money contributed by some big corporation; or, indeed, being paid salaries coming out of the taxes of people doing business in their communities.
But in fiction none of these realities need matter. One's heroes and one's villains can be pure figments of the imagination, with politicians and educators and other service oriented folks depicted as saints, while those in business as monsters. It is perhaps this element of Hollywood that has managed to infect the thinking and attitudes of those like Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, Barbara Streisand, Tim Robbins, Al Franken, Rob Reiner and hundreds of others who are wealthy men and women but despise money; who function successfully in a capitalist entertainment market, often extending themselves into other fields like politics or popular writing, while also decrying concerns about the bottom line which is the bread and butter of successful business.
Ironically, Plato himself didn't think highly of commerce, at least if we take seriously his idealized view of society. But perhaps Plato's warning needs to be applied to his own works and heeded more than it has been: Do not trust the arts to teach about what is true! Put them where they belong, in the realm of the fantastic. And don't be seduced by their sweet music into thinking that what political reality requires is their kind of dreamy imagination.
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