Despite the seemingly large percentage of AT LEAST progressives who view Lenin favourably, how come there isnt any popular revolutionary fiction?
Capitalists control media and publishing and they’re class-conscious
Popular “revolutionary” fiction will either have the revolutionaries be arbitrarily evil, misguided, obnoxious or, most sinister and subtle of all, simply fight to recreate a staus quo that the story’s villain/s had destroyed prior to the hero’s journey
Either way, a story about characters fighting to control the means of production and destroy capital will never be allowed to gain widespread circulation
doesnt the basic structure of the hero’s journey shit basically guarantee a pro-status-quo ending?
in most explanations of the trope, it’s a circle. the hero lives in a bubble, the outside world intrudes, hero goes on a quest, stuff happens, they fix it, they go back to the bubble.
Yeah, the “end state” of the hero’s journey has the hero return to the beginning, but changed. The change is almost always individual wisdom, power, or perspective, though. Even Star Wars, which features a revolutionary struggle as part of the hero’s journey, is actually pretty pro status quo in-universe–they’re fighting explicitly for the restoration of the previous political system that was so corrupt and ineffectual it gave rise to Space Fascism.
Gave rise to space fascism twice, which is at least an accurate depiction of how Bourgeois Democracy, Round Two would go down
Yeah, it’s always about internal change and stopping the outside world from changing
There’s a lot of revolutionary fiction, the drive for revolution is constantly felt by the working classes, even if they don’t necessarily formalize it. However, what you may be referring to is the process where many works of fiction ultimately reaffirm capitalism and denounce radical change, such as Bioshock: Infinite. The Swerve is a great essay going over this, where radicals with the right ideas and good points have “evil points” added to them to try and conflate them, like massacring people with overthrowing banks.
The novel is fundamentally an individualist genre, and the rise of the novel coincides with the rise of individualism.
Even good examples get misread. Upton SInclair bemoaned the fact that, with The Jungle, he “aimed at the reader’s heart and instead hit him in the stomach.” The book ends with Jurgis’s involvement with communists as something of a deus ex machina that will help him and his fellow workers’ situation, but the book merely influenced food and drug safety and not labor rights.
There is a lot of good anti-colonialist fiction - Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, etc.
I wonder if collaborative fiction like SCPF etc could form a collectivist counter movement to novels?
Maybe! I don’t think it’s impossible to write a non-individualist novel, by any means - there’s just a degree of difficulty there that’s analogous to Truffaut’s insistence that you can’t make an anti-war film, because cinema inherently glorifies.
Most of the books I know of that address this question are still in my to-read pile but someday I’ll go on a binge.
Might not be exactly what your looking for but the Mars trilogy by KSR is really good and tackles a revolution thats pretty neat
I must be miss understanding the question because even slop like star wars and the hunger games are “revolutionary”
One Piece in the corner staring at you right now
What is revolutionary fiction to you?
Just read nonfiction? I appreciate the cultural relevance of nonfiction but books like Ten Days that Shook the Earth and Teamster Rebellion, etc., are more exciting and just as entertaining as any nonfiction.
That being said, I’m positive that publishers like Verso and Haymarket def publish nonfiction writers. Ursula LeGuin has some revolutionary fiction, the Dispossessed is a pretty good example.
As others here have said, the capitalist class is the one who funds media, and individual artists and writers struggle due to the brutal hand of capital. I’ve wanted to make some kind of revolutionary comic for a few years now myself, but I have rent and bills to pay, I can’t spend months or years working on a project that will most likely end up with less than a hundred viewers, I have to go with what “sells” and what sells is slop.
I’m working on a comic book like this right now. It’s meant to also be a guide on what communism is and how to organize. Was planning on just putting it online anonymously so no one can try to sue or blackbag me. Should be done in like… a year… or more…
I was wondering this after how amazing Andor was. Both it and Hunger Games were so popular, you think people would make more. I think there’s a real hunger for well-made, unapologetic revolutionary fiction.
I kind of wish they did their original run of 2 or 3 extra seasons after the first instead of trying to fit it all into season 2 with time skips.
I keep switching projects instead of focusing up to edit and refine. Sorry.
And my latest project is just anti-capitalist and only sprinkles pro-communist themes inherent to the world around it unfortunately. I simply must write about a warlock who does a 2007-style collapse of patron pacts.
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