Tuesday, January 10, 2017

The Artist's Place in Politics


 A few nights ago, at The Golden Globe awards, Meryl Streep became the latest in the long history of artists speaking out courageously against oppressive power. Her actions come in the recent context of a singer resigning from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and dancers from The Radio City Rocketts fighting for the right to not perform at the inauguration of a president who’s character flaws trouble them. It comes in the context of a performer addressing the Vice President elect after the conclusion of a Broadway performance of "Hamilton" to let him know that they were alarmed and concerned about whether the new administration would protect their rights, along with hopes that what they had presented in the show would have a positive effect by inspiring some good in Mr. Pence.
 Each time an artist speaks to power these days, we hear a chorus of supporters of the establishment saying that the time and the place was not appropriate, or that an artist using their position to speak out for what they believe in, is, in itself not appropriate. There is immense pressure to silence the artists. Why?
 Artists are communicators. The most artistically successful individuals didn’t come to the arts because they like to put on costumes or because they like the sound of their own voice, they come into the arts because they have something to say and their desired method of communication is through something beautiful that transmits their ideas, not just to the mind, but to the heart. Wouldn’t it be natural for professional communicators to speak out?
 Make no mistake, ideas communicated through the arts and by artists are very powerful. Why else would those who oppose these ideas become so terribly concerned and rush to silence people?
 Are the arts a mirror or do artists have the power to nudge society in one direction or another?  Is there such a thing as non-political art or is all artistic expression inherently political? What is the artist’s responsibility when the social environment takes a dark turn?  These questions have been on the minds of  many artists these days in America who clearly see what is going on.
 Let’s take a little walk back in history. From the inception of art in western society it has been used to promote a social agenda, namely that of the church and of the monarchy/aristocracy. Leaders recognized the power of artistic expression to reach both the mind and the heart to inspire awe and to aggrandize. In this context it is clear to see that that arts have been used to glorify the establishment, but what is the artist’s place when he or she feels that they want to facilitate social change or to stand against what they consider to be a negative or dangerous force in society? Artists have always used their power to subvert and deliver messages in a manner sometimes so pleasing and so disarming that a recipient who otherwise might not be accessible remains open to these ideas.
Clearly these are two sides of one coin. Art is, and always has been political.
 I believe that artists have a responsibility to lead. We are the thinkers. We are the creators. The public has a trust in us and we must not betray them. We must not use our power to glorify something harmful. We must not normalize the abnormal and we must recognize that our mere presence has to power to do so. We should not use our skills to create beauty to anesthetize the population of a culture that should be awake and standing up for itself.
 We must always think about our legacy not just short-term goals. We should take inspiration from the legendary actress Marlene Dietrich,who was a favorite of both Hitler and many of those who were powerful in the Third Reich.  According to the Holocaust Research Project “While in England in 1937 filming ‘Knight Without Armour,’ she was approached by the German Ambassador to Great Britain, Joachim von Ribbentrop, with a personal and generous offer from Hitler to return to Nazi Germany. She refused this offer, and subsequently as a result of this her films were banned in Germany” She could have taken the easy path and become part of her country’s propaganda machine. If she had done so her career would  now be a little ugly footnote in history. She would have been an actress who gave comfort to those acting with the force of evil. Instead, according the the NY times,  “In the late 1930s, Dietrich created a fund with Billy Wilder and several other Germans to help Jews and dissidents escape from Germany. In 1937, her entire salary for Knight Without Armor (450,000) was put into escrow to help the refugees.” She indeed became a shining beacon of courage and  decency and thoughtfulness.
 As artists we have to make wise, moral and socially informed choices. Making decisions that seem to be in our own short-term self interest but not in the spirit of the good of humanity is not in the spirit of art.
 A few years ago I was invited by a suburban woman’s art group to participate in an art show that was sponsored by Bayer Corporation.  The women were to submit their work to be displayed at the corporate headquarters with the stipulation that none of it be political art. I instantly objected, given the history of the company which can be traced directly back to Nazi Germany, as well as on the grounds of the awful things they continued to do in the present day.  My objections were greeted mostly with annoyance by the other artists, some of them also Jewish, who were eager to adorn the walls of the corporation that used Jewish slave labor and created Zyklon B gas used to murder people in gas chambers and was presently producing Imidacloprid which is threatening life on the planet by killing off the world’s bee population.  It was very disappointing, but somewhat typical of people engaged in art in a less than mindful way.
 Now why would a huge international corporation be concerned about an artist presenting a political idea on its walls? What would have happened if all the artists decided to all just create paintings of bees for that exhibition? Would that have caused the employees of Bayer walking past in the their corporate headquarters to start to THINK? Bayer feared political statements through art because they felt that people, impervious to the copious raw data on their wrong doing could be stimulated and moved by artistic expression in a way that was dangerous to them.
 When Meryl Streep gave her speech the other night at The Golden Globes when she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award, the great actress, when addressing her colleagues went straight to the heart of the nature of the art of acting and an artist’s place in politics.  She said “we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy".
 The training that our great American actors receive in order to portray the rich characters we see on stage and screen, by its very nature turns them into empathetic human beings. One of the most influential American method acting teachers, Sandford  Meisner defined acting as behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. So an actor lives “There but for the grace of god go I” every time they bring a character to life.   Streep said “
An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us, and let you feel what that feels like.” right before she detailed the atrocious act of mocking and bullying a disabled reporter  done by a rich and powerful man seeking a powerful office. This act  done by a man devoid of empathy affected Streep in a very deep way because she truly understands what empathy is and how it can be developed and how the opposite can also be learned. “ And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose.”
 We might not have careers is notable as Marlene Dietrich or Meryl Streep, but we must nevertheless highly value what we what we do and be who we are. Make no mistake. we are living either through a turning point in American history or a brief dark period which will be examined carefully in the future. When the next generation and the following ones look back upon us, we want to be on the right side of history. For me that did not include adorning the walls of Bayer corporation and it did not include accepting an invitation to perform for Barbara Bush, as mild as she seems now in the current context, when I had the opportunity to do so. In the 1940s my mother toured the country with the Rodgers and Hammerstein Company's production of Annie Get your Gun" When the tour went through Alabama some locals spotted my mother and her friend chatting with African American cast members at the stage door and word got out to the local community that this was an integrated show. Rodgers and Hammerstein were told that they could not proceed with an integrated cast. They decided to leave town and the citizens of Alabama learned that others would not abide their racist ways.
 Your decisions are your own and they reflect upon who you are as a person and as an artist and what you feel you were put on this earth to accomplish.  No matter what anybody says to you, you have the right as a citizen to speak out about what you feel is right and you don’t give that up when you become a performer.  Furthermore, if you consider yourself to be an artist not just an entertainer or a trained circus animal, you have the right to express your ideas or even perhaps the responsibility to do so.