Art can perform critique for audiences, letting them consume guilt-free.

Evidence

A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called ‘interpassivity’: the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 29

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Pfaller’s ‘interpassivity’ with a vivid concrete case — the disposable concept of the chapter.
• STORYSTEM: An environmental collapse satire that lets its audience feel righteous without changing: fertile setup for a comedic or satirical fictional character who consumes activist media as a substitute for action.
• XREF: connects to: Beautiful art can transfigure atrocity and thus justify suffering aesthetically; Art’s ethical function is to unsettle, not empower, the perceiving self; Attitudes toward aesthetic appearance determine positions on the guilt of art — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 559

Broader Connections

• Beautiful art can transfigure atrocity and thus justify suffering aesthetically #complicates (0.80)
• Attitudes toward aesthetic appearance determine positions on the guilt of art #expands (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 559
• Art’s ethical function is to unsettle, not empower, the perceiving self #qualifies (0.72)