Red Menace: Socialist Plot Or Alien Invasion?

Red Menace, RTomens, 2018

Red Menace was made quickly towards the end of an afternoon's (art) work and has since been well-received although my fear that it has been misinterpreted lingers on, as do the possible interpretations in my own mind. 

It's my own fault for creating red aggressors. Why did I do that? The answer is twofold: firstly, red is a favourite colour, secondly, I admit that the subconscious mind may have played a part. After all, how much really happens during the act of creation without the hand being guided by the hidden force? A question for psychologists.

The red shapes were first and foremost 'alien' to me, both within the scenario and, deliberately, in their form. I toyed with the idea of making them more solid-looking (adding depth and shadows), thus integrating them into the fantastical 'reality'. But I opted for flat planes, a decision to render them 'alien' in more ways than one. 

Red Menace is not a 'socialist' statement, so why are the rich being attacked? Simply because that is the joke I dreamt up; a refined occasion disrupted by violent objects. The main influences are mid-century American sci-fi B-movies in which it is generally thought that aliens often represented the real Red Menace (Russia) as perceived by the Cold War mindset. 

As meanings and possible interpretations loop back into themselves, what today may be considered a Corbyn-supporting assault on the rich as a visual joke references an era in which reds were under the bed, in the Hollywood studio and virtually every other art form as subversive threats to capitalism. To one viewer the reds today are a positive anti-Tory force, to another, a genuine 'menace' once again. If socialism in Britain is a spent force, made redundant by the complexities of reactionary post-Brexit/Trump politics, for many it is also more appealing for those very same reasons.

Equally complex are the politics of Revolutionary Russia regarding art. Or at least, they were to begin with before the Stalinist clampdown on art that did not service The Revolution. Freedom of expression was ground to dust under the iron heel of the new dictatorship. As the Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatoly Lunacharsky, put it: "From now on art for art’s sake does not exist. In the hands of the Proletariat art will become a sharp weapon of communist propaganda and agitation. In the hands of the proletariat art is a tool, the means, and the product of production." Art as a luxury of the bourgeoisie was no longer tolerable.

In recent times it's been suggested that the CIA as cultural manipulators indirectly backed the rise of Abstract Expressionism as a cultural weapon against Russia during the Cold War. By then Russian art as a progressive, influential force had long-since died and it did look as if the 'Free West' had won the culture wars. What began as an explosion of radical graphic design, constructivist art, architecture and theatre had been imprisoned by it's own revolutionary ideals and a government intent on enforcing them. What became a 'menace' to the West in turn managed to menace it's own artistic community. 

Well, Red Menace is open to interpretation, depending on where you stand, politically. For me it is still simply a joke, with a nod to both celluloid fantasies and the politics behind them.