Oh, The Drama

Courtesy of Sheila, we have a marrrrrrvelous essay from Mitch over at Shot in the Dark about the nature of art and conservatism.

{...}a question I run into a lot when I talk about art with conservatives; what are music, literature, visual art, drama, dance and all the other kinds of art supposed to be?

Because if it's supposed to be a recitation of people doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons and getting the right results, most of Western art - literature, visual art, film, opera, drama, and of course music from the classical to today - would be very different.

Let's review some of the classics of Western art through the lens of the "Do The Right Thing" school of criticism:

• Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" - "Criminy. Enough with the hubris! Brutus and Antony - hire a friggin' lawyer and settle your grievances like normal people! You're acting like MoveOn.org here!"
• On The Waterfront - "Jeez, Brando - have you ever heard of the F B Freaking I?"
• Anna Karenina - "You slut! You freakin' skeeze! You see how much trouble you'd have saved yourself if you'd have just followed your bleepity-blank wedding vows? And we're supposed to feel sorry for you?"
• Iron Chef - "What's with the frou-frou presentation? Just plop the stuff on a plate while it's still hot!"
• Huckleberry Finn - "Look, just get Jim the Slave to the north! Stay on the river, do what you have to do, and move on!"
• Don Giovanni - "Well, duh! Giovanni and Leporello, if they were rational people, would repent for murdering the Commandant before he drags them to hell. Duh!"
• Picasso's Guernica - "OK, the Spanish Civil War is over, and if the commies had won Picasso would have never painted it. Why do we care about this painting anymore?"
• Moby Dick - "So Ahab would risk everyone's life because he's pissed at a whale? Where are his priorities?..."
• Casablanca - "Jeez, Rick. You know that giving Lazlo the letters of transit is the right thing to do. Cut the dramatics and just do it!
• Crime And Punishment - "Why spend a whole novel on a snooty pretentious little artiste who thought he was so superior to the people arround him that he could justify hacking his landlady to death? String him up and be done with it! Fifty pages at the most!"
• War And Peace - "WHY ARE YOU SLEEPING WITH DOLOKHOV, you stupid IDIOT?"
• Rocky - "Jeez, he's working as a knee-buster for a loan shark! If he'd just gotten his crap together and taken a computer programming course and gotten a job and some stock options, he'd be rich right now, and his nose would still be straight!"

Art, in whatever form, among many other things is about places and times and situations that you aren't in, getting inside minds other than your own. Sometimes the place is somewhere you've never been; sometimes it's a different view of where you are now. Sometimes the mind is that of someone intriguingly, frustratingly, even horrifyingly different than your own. Sometimes the situation is mundane, or glorious, or wrenchingly horrific.{...}

Sheila throws in her own two cents:

{...}There's a strain of conservatism that gets impatient with human weakness. Half the blog-posts I read out there (and many of the blog posts I write myself!) link to some human-interest story, and the bloggers comment is: "GET OVER IT." or "STOP WHINING" or "GROW UP". "Pull yourself up by your boot straps." "Don't complain. Just suck it up, and do better next time." Etc. There is a lack of patience with indecision, frailty, weakness. Again: I understand where they're coming from, theoretically, and I feel that way myself at times - but NOT when it comes to the role of art in society. No.{...}

While I would disagree (barely) with Sheila that bloggers like myself do not possess a lack of of patience regarding human frailty, but rather are impatient with stupidity, the girl's (and Mitch) got a point when it comes to art: in art you need a struggle to produce anything worthwhile. You need drama. Drama produces good stuff. As all those actors who are in hock to TNT for their daily bread love to remind us, drama is conflict. Anything else is the equivalent of watching paint dry.

Further ruminations and one whopping leap of the imagination after the jump.

To add my own two cents worth and take it one step further: it's been my observation that it's the "Get Over It" crowd, as Sheila calls them, that's also behind every move to tell me what I can or cannot see, watch or read. They are, indeed, impatient with human weakness. They see art as glorifying all that is wrong with society. If you've got a teenage daughter who's pregnant, well, that boy probably had something to do with it, but really, it's because there's too much sex on tee vee that's the problem! We've got to do something about it! They're going to tell you what will make you a better person and that's to stop with the drama and get thy nose to the grindstone. They've got the recipe for salvation, right here, right now, and they want you to follow it. And in the process all sorts of works of art are banned because they don't think it's good for anyone.

I'm a big believer in being able to judge for myself. Some of these people would not have it that way. They'd force me to take their word for it. And that annoys me more than I can say. Why did I bother going to school for seventeen years if not to make myself worthy of being able to judge what I will allow in my life? Why should my entertainment choices as an adult be limited because of what someone else thinks is right and wrong? I'm more than capable of choosing for myself. But more importantly, I'm not scared to watch or read or view something that might disagree with my worldview. I believe that having your worldview challenged on a regular basis is a good thing.

I think this is the rub for many conservatives, even though they would deny it to the death.

It's often said that if your faith is strong, it will be able to withstand challenges to it. I believe this crosses over to someone's level of intelligence and their beliefs as well. As such I believe an awful lot of conservatives are scared that they will see something that they will find value in something they supposedly shouldn't. Hence they don't bother reading books their pastor has told them are bad. They don't bother watching movies that are "dirty." They don't go to view art they think is controversial from watching a newscast specifically designed to muckrake. They take someone else's word for it, so they can stay complete and faithful to their worldview. In and of itself, this behavior is fine. If you don't want to see something, that's no skin off my nose. Your world will be smaller for it, but, again, if that's what you want, fine and dandy. You'll get no hassles from me. The problem comes in when someone takes it one step further and tells me that I shouldn't be able to see something and makes active, legislative moves to ensure that outcome. This would include contacting the local library board to make sure a book is banned from the shelves. This would include lobbying Congress to legalize copyright law violations because they don't like Hollywood's product, but yet want to see it anyway, sans objectionable material. This would include picketing art displays and harrassing people who would like to see said display. This sort of behavior is full of fear. It reeks of fright, but moreover it stinks of a lack of confidence in the would-be banners' own beliefs.

It's the intellectual equivalent of the Dark Ages. Remember that period of time from history class? Holy Mother Church preached in the pulpits that this, that and the other was wrong, and as such, it was time to shut out what the Church believed was evil and corrupting. The Church, back those days, had the power to make this happen. They burned people at the stake for witchcraft. They charged people with heresy. They scared the ever-living crap out of people who were afraid of going to hell. The Church stifled dissent and we had a thousand years worth of darkness in western civilization as a result. The only art that was worthwhile in those days was what monks produced when they copied over the Bible. There was very little philosophy, poetry, science or math during that age, and we were---give or take a few hundred years---a thousand years behind when the Renaissance came to pass. Why was humanity subjected to the Dark Ages? Because the Church thought it would lose the moral high ground if it was challenged. The Church didn't have faith in itself to keep up with the progress of society it, ironically, had played a part in pushing forward. They pretty much threatened everyone with thoughts of hellfire and damnation to keep them obedient. Which, as we all know, is not a great way to bring someone around to your way of thinking. Coercion and threats do not work. Reasoned discourse, on the other hand, works wonders.

A free society requires that dissent be made available in all things, not just politics. It never ceases to amaze me that some bloggers with one breath glorify in the wonders of western civilization and all that it's made possible, and worry about the threat to it from Islamic fascists, thenwith the very next breath, declaim that there's something horrible about this movie, this book, this article, this piece of art, and that this will be the thing that sends us all to hell in a handbasket. They say all of this without realizing that one is not possible without the other. Western civilization, for better or worse, is what is today because a variety of options were presented and people were allowed to choose. That some people would take us back to the Dark Ages, to a time when no one was allowed to choose, because they're afraid anything they deem to be bad would send the whole of society packing is not only ludicrous, but insulting to western civilization as well. It ignores our traditions just as wholly and insultingly as an Islamic fascist does when they cry out about everything they deem wrong with our society.

This is what frightens me---and it frightens me just as much as Osama Bin Laden's ranting about what's vile with our culture---that someone who's been a direct beneficiary of all that western civilization has to offer, refuses to see it's all about choice. Having it, pondering it, and exercising it. Because if they can't see that, what good is western civilization in the first place? Why does it need to be defended at all? If Kid Rock threatens your beliefs so much that you would have his music banned---and have him banned from performing at an Inaugural----we've got a serious problem on our hands, and we will all suffer for it.

Posted by Kathy at April 18, 2005 11:39 AM