It is actually possible to write good platform art - putting the poltics first and the art second. It simply requires that you have tremendous talent as an artist and that politics be your overriding passion. George Bernard Shaw . Brecht, sometimes. Lorraine Hansbury. Sean O' Casey. Brendhan Behan. But these are exceptions to a mostly correct rule.

Okay, that's bad..I didn't get far before I abadoned it.

I dunno, Gar. I'm rereading Grapes of Wrath right now, and while it's definitely a political novel, it's first a novel. It's a story about people. Even Animal Farm and 1984 and Brave New World were about people first. (Well, okay, AF was about animals first.)

If I can't see the people for the politics, you're going to lose me. I won't care. Political essays I can get elsewhere, and unless they're wrapped pretty seamlessly into the narrative and driven by character and plot, they're just going to piss me off.

It's a story about people. Even Animal Farm and 1984 and Brave New World were about people first.

As is a lot of politics. I think it's possible to make good art with political motivations, but you have to be a really really really good artist to do it.

I'm with Suela on this one. Great political art may have a platform, but the reason it works is that it is art first, politics second. Always.

My problem with political art is that it's so fricken obvious. Even the stuff that works reasonably well as drama can tend to come off as, I don't know, yelling at the reader rather than persuading. And when the author is yelling at her reader, it sort of cheapens all that perfectly good drama the reader just waded through.

Then again, if it were better art, the ideology wouldn't be so obvious, huh? So, what they said. (Although, note for the record, I don't count Orwell in among those great political artists. He was a great political whiner, but I never saw much art outta him.)

And by platform, incidentally, I meant anything from "Abortion is bad!" to "Abortion is a woman's right!" to "Eat vegetarian!" to "Buffy sucks!" to "Buffy rules."

If one has some sort of overriding agenda, it's gonna override.

Now, of course, I'm perfectly okay with platforms like, "Boy, wouldn't Wesley/Connor be messed up, yet hot?".

Now, of course, I'm perfectly okay with platforms like, "Boy, wouldn't Wesley/Connor be messed up, yet hot?".

A tangle of thin, pale limbs, angry blue eyes, and dark haired goodness, even.

That's a Special platform.

Isn't that the Special Platform where one catches the train to Special Hell?

Platform 13.666, in fact.

It's a rather full train.