A few weeks ago, I wrote an article originally entitled “Art is not an Instrument of Social Change,” and after some well-pointed comments from Aaron Varner and Nate Wagner, it became pretty clear that I’d not thought through my arguments nearly so nuancedly as they require. And so this article is another cut at the topic.
As I’ve thought into why I so vehemently tend to oppose any idea that changing symbols can change reality (look back at this article on Silent Sam or these thoughts on Confederate symbolism in general), I’ve realized that I’ve done so mostly out of a misplaced sense of justice: Focusing attentions primarily on symbols is the defeated last gasp of a supremely confused iteration of the left wing, one that absurdly thinks it can be revolutionary and also anti-oppression, and I’ve somewhat stupidly tried to contribute to swinging the pendulum back toward more meaty matters.
Problem with that is that I’ve been working toward the viewpoint that symbols don’t change reality, they only reflect it. Go ahead, giggle a little.
That idea is ridiculous, I realize. I won’t defend that realization: If either of us actually thought symbols had no influence, I wouldn’t be writing this, and you wouldn’t give a half-shit about reading it.
No, the argument I should’ve been making is far more ethics-based: There should be a space for apolitical art, because apolitical art can exist, despite the dominant idea, based on the same “society of the spectacle” I talked about in the other article, that it can’t.
We’ve got to be real careful, though, what we’re thinking about when we say “apolitical art.” I don’t mean art that can’t be thought about politically. That would be an indefensible limit for me to place on your thoughts. I mean art that is not intended to be political. Art that tells the story of a real person’s life rather than the story of some “impossible generalised man” (CTRL+F those three words in the link), someone who creates “as a man” or “as a woman” or “as a person of color.”
Y’all know what I’m talking about. “Thinking outside the box” is such a generally accepted value that it’s reached horrendous levels of cliché, yet somehow most arts and artists ardently reinforce the merits of the boxes we talk about thinking outside of.
Think Rupi Kaur, a caricaturishly perfect manifestation of what Vladimir Nabokov called “poshlost”: Simple but actively unoriginal, nothing you wouldn’t see on a sign at your average middle-class protest. The poetry of someone who read an e.e. cummings poem once but reads Huffpost every day because it’s so #relatable.
Or think of what poetry slam culture has become: Everyone competes to see who can agree the hardest with the politics of the audience. If you agree really hard, your poem is “powerful.” Bonus points if you manage to agree while retaining a #subversive aesthetic.
Rupi Kaur is a bestseller. Slam poetry is wildly popular and growing. Only two types of art, but indicative of the sort of climate that requiring art to be political creates: Artists, knowing they’ll never make a career without the correct politics, sacrifice themselves to the dominant rhetoric, and so even if we want art to do some political good, we’re thwarted because the art ends up reflecting not the life of a person in the world but rather the life of the world in a person.
So really, it’s not that art can’t be an instrument of social change. That conclusion was a bit short-sighted, and it rooted partly, I think, in my taking part in that same phenomenon of self-denial: Honestly, apart from any philosophical considerations, I just love good art.
And if we expect art to be political, claim that it can’t avoid politicalness, and judge it according to its political values, it simply becomes another political tool, subject to the same relatability-porn value metric on which we judge straightforward political statements.
