What Makes Art “Left Wing”?

I recently listened to Ross Douthat’s interview with the screen writer Tony Gilroy. The central question was whether Andor is a “left-wing” show, and more generally, the connection between art, politics, and ideology. It was a fascinating discussion. I’m hesitant to chime in too much because I’ve never watched Andor (I’m so out of the loop I hadn’t heard of it before listening to the interview). Nevertheless, the discussion got a little muddled, so I thought I would sharpen two distinctions made in the interview.

Gilroy took issue with Douthat’s claim that Andor is a “left-wing” show. He was even less patient with the idea that Michael Clayton was a “left-wing” movie. As I understood it, his argument was that the show was not political (or more specifically “left wing”) because it does not set forward policy positions or a blueprint for social change. Gilroy called himself a “moralist” focused on interpersonal relationships and character. On his account, for his work to succeed as art, he must have empathy for all his characters and give each a fair shake.

Douthat, for his part, agreed that this empathy was central to making good art, and he commended Gilroy for producing art that meets that standard. However, he felt that this didn’t prevent the show from setting forward an implicit ideology. On Douthat’s account, by leading us to root for revolutionary forces against a fascistic dictatorship, Andor communicates a left-wing perspective about social change and progress.

To Gilroy, in contrast, a person of any political ideology can be comfortable with the perspective he puts forward in Andor because his primary point is moral and focused on the at least ostensibly apolitical question of community. He makes a similar point about another of his works, Michael Clayton, which apparently has a pesticide company that has knowingly polluted a small town as its central antagonist. On this rendering, the film is less an objection to capitalism than a condemnation of immoral or misguided behavior (after all, who of any political ideology would root for a company that so clearly prioritizes profit over the health of the community).

Part of the confusion here might have to do with how we’re thinking about the term “politics.” Both thinkers agreed that the issue wasn’t about politics in the sense of specific candidates, campaigns, or platforms. As an entry in the Star Wars franchise, it would be a bit of a reach for Andor to attempt that.

Without saying it directly, Douthat seemed to be thinking of politics in a broader sense of underlying beliefs and assumptions that inform a socio-political worldview, arguing that Andor is political in this broader sense (perhaps “political but not of politics” as Adorno says in Aesthetic Theory). This is about one’s underlying vantage point regarding social progress, societal change, political violence, and the like.

Indeed, at least in the context of this discussion, a case could be made for there being at least three strata of abstraction in political thinking. All three have both characteristically left-wing and right-wing positions. The first, level one, would be broad ideologies regarding the good life and paths to the good life. The second, level two, would be the mid-level ideologies or quasi-ideologies that are the domain of the rival camps in contemporary American politics (“wokism,” “Trumpism,” etc.). Finally, a third stratum, level three, relates to specific policy issues or candidates.

To return to the show, it might be that Andor is political in the broadest sense of indicating general commitments about how to organize a way of life (level one) but not in the other more “applied” regards (levels two and three). Part of the confusion in the discussion might have then been because Douthat seemed to be thinking of something closer to level one while Gilroy was thinking of something closer to level two.

Furthermore, Douthat pointed out a second important consideration: the artist’s choice of villain or protagonist will inevitably express a broader idea than the characters themselves. On the one hand, Gilroy’s point stands that his aim is to cultivate empathy. On the other hand, fiction is about embodied characters in particular settings doing recognizable things. Seen from that perspective, one way to phrase this might be that among the infinite number of people my art could choose to cultivate empathy for (e.g., a middle-class clerk, a 1980s business executive, a struggling factory worker), the fact that I’ve chosen one over another indicates something about how I see the world and what I value--whether consciously intended or not.

This needn’t mean that the artist think that empathy shouldn’t be extended to other people or wouldn’t support art that cultivates empathy for another (perhaps even rival) person or group. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to make art that simultaneously cultivates empathy for all people at one time. The artist has to make choices, and those choices will say something about how they see the world. This might be a second way that Andor gestures toward an implicit political critique.

I’m sure both Gilroy and Douthat would agree that the connection between art and politics goes much deeper than what they had time to address on the podcast or I’ve said here. Hopefully, however, these distinctions help to clarify the stakes of their interesting discussion.