#logxx

This idea that attraction and happiness are intangible and easily obscured is one that is articulated in practically every female character of Utena, because Utena is willing to address what both Beauvoir and Ikeda were reluctant to acknowledge: patriarchy does not care whether a woman wants it or not. The girls of Utena are each dragged into the patriarchal apparatus, some joyfully, some kicking and screaming, but the outcome is always the same.

Art that seeks to be political has a twofold problem of interrogating itself both as a political entity and as art. The aim of the political writer is, of course, to communicate the politics in which they believe— for example, that the United States is founded on antiblackness. The aim of the artist is to produce an exemplary work within their medium, a task which requires interrogating the nature of the art itself, from history to the material conditions of its production. Art functions well only when it considers how these problems intersect, and art that recreates a political problem it criticizes fails in whole or in part as art.