This morning I watched a docudrama about the Rwandan genocide. In one scene a Huntu man, loyal to “the party”, is stopped at a roadblock and made to watch his Tutsis wife and their children being slaughtered in front of him; afterwards, the killers let him pass. Another scene has a group of school girls being mowed down in mass because they stood together and refused to give up the Tutsis among them. In both episodes I was brought to tears and driven to contemplate what my own behavior would have been under the same circumstances. In both cases I determined that I would’ve acted heroically. I would’ve given my life (with a fight, of course) to show solidarity with the others and hopefully reveal to my oppressors a little of their inhumanity, thus planting the seeds for change. That said, I don’t think I’m ready, and neither is anyone else, to pin an award for heroism on my chest and congratulate myself for hypothetical bravery and sacrifice. Feeling moved by a movie isn’t the same as being moved by real life—and acting hypothetically isn’t the same as acting in relation to other living things. At the same time, I don’t think life and fiction are completely separate, either. So what does it mean that I felt so moved by this movie, but when the Rwandan genocide was actually taking place I was mostly oblivious to it?
I belong to a theater group which practices elements of what’s called Theater of the Oppressed, a type of interactive theater designed to empower others to see themselves as subjects rather than objects within an imposed political system. Essentially, we try to pose the same kinds of questions I asked myself during the movie—what would you do in this situation and what would that accomplish? More than that, though, we want to show that art isn’t just a packaged reality to be passively accepted but a real “thing” to respond to and accept responsibility for—as the expression of a subject interacting with other subjects. As Samuel Beckett said, “it isn’t about something, it is the thing itself!”
In contrast, you have pornography. I read an interview of Susan Griffin yesterday, in which she condemned pornography as being deterministic. I quote: “The pornographers are very deterministic. They feel, well this is the way people are and we're just giving them what they need. But in fact that's not at all true. The culture is a human creation and we can make choices in what kind of culture we create, and culture has a profound effect on behavior.” I also found an excerpt from the book she was being interviewed about (Pornography and Silence: Culture’s Revenge against Nature) in which she says: “And let us remember finally that we cannot choose to have both Eros and pornography; we must choose between beauty and silence. (p. 249)” James Joyce distinguishes between art and pornography by claiming that art arrests the mind while pornography stimulates it. I think this is true. Moreover, I think pornography kills emotion while art heightens and at the same time transcends it. Beauty (in art or in nature) makes me feel more alive and more eager to take action—not action to satisfy a craving but action motivated by a feeling of relationship to and dependence on other living things—a feeling of thankfulness. To paraphrase Joyce, beauty enables me to see a thing as the thing that it is that can be no other thing or to see the other as autonomous and separate from myself, yet necessary to my existence. It makes me want to “act lovingly” as opposed to falling in love or giving love. It places the behavior, as opposed to the principle or concept, as the subjective essence. Pornography, on the other hand, turns experience into an object. It locks the experience down, pigeonholes it, defines it, takes away its freedom and determines it to be something. It suggests that your desires are determined rather than made, and that your desires are a part of you, when in fact they’re by definition separate and other and can never be possessed. In summary, art empowers us and makes us account for our freedom while pornography determines (makes us all the same—at one with the universe) and manipulates us.
But maybe I’m oversimplifying. Is the docudrama I saw on the Rwandan genocide artistic or pornographic? Or neither? On one hand it stimulated and made me want to do something. It prompted this writing for one (if you can call that doing). But I’m not so sure it was the movie that prompted me to write this or the discomfort I felt knowing that I could be so moved by a film when all around me real life tragedies are going on that I’m unaware of and unmoved by. Is art a replacement for experience? By vicariously experiencing these people’s sufferings am I protecting myself from them—denying responsibility for them? In art, aren’t we primarily living in the past or the future—in our imaginations instead of our hearts? Aren’t we eliminating risk from our experiences? I’m wondering if art doesn’t help us maintain our purity in the world by presenting us with clear-cut decisions which don’t require compromise.
While I’m writing this, there’s a movie called Speak playing on TV. I’ve seen it before and, like the docudrama on Rwanda, it moved me to tears several times. Speak is a pretty cheesy movie, though, and hardly what I’d intuitively call art. The bad guys are clear-cut stereotypical villains and the good guys are clear-cut stereotypical heroes and the victims are clear-cut stereotypical victims. And I think the docudrama on Rwanda is probably closer in substance and style to Speak than it is to Hamlet or War and Peace. The villains in both movies are easy to hate, and the choices represented in both movies are the kinds of choices we’d all like to have in real life, but can’t. Right now I’d like to go out and do something. I’d like to go out and give money to a homeless person, fight alongside a freedom fighter in the Third World, make an abused woman feel like she’s a human being—anything besides sitting here in front of my computer and bitching into a word processor. In short, I’d like to act heroically (even if only for appearances sake). But those heroic choices aren’t available. The homeless person I give money to might grow increasingly reliant on the generosity of others and view him or herself with less and less respect. The freedom fighter might use my assistance to replace one repressive regime with another. The abused woman might see my concern as yet another manipulation or come on. So how can I act in a way that really communicates who I am or want to be (and heroic isn’t how I really want to be but an egoistic fantasy, but that’s another subject)? Through art?
Doesn’t real life and real freedom require that we sully ourselves—that we act period instead of for the sake of principle? Doesn’t art preserve principle? Preserve our dignity and our selves as objects? In that sense, isn’t all art pornographic? Or can art avoid objectification by calling attention to itself as art, by maintaining its ambiguity and declaring itself as behavior rather than dogma? There is, naturally, an obvious difference between Deep Throat and Speak—between pornography and cheesy but well intentioned movies, that is. And there’s even a bigger difference between Sade (educated porn but still porn) and Shakespeare or Dante or Emily Bronte or Jane Austen or Rembrandt or Bergman or Bach. I think pornography deadens but art enriches. I think art enhances awareness and immanence. At the same time, it memorializes and kills. It replaces reality with language and ideology. It oversimplifies and delays action. It encourages myth and fantasy. And if we lived in a pure perfect world then there might not be any need for it, but that isn’t the world we live in. And if we want to live in the actual world, we have to tolerate ambiguity and imperfection and compromise. We have to pollute our images and we have to be willing to take risks. So art isn’t perfect, but if it empowers people to take action and to better appreciate natural beauty, as I think it often does, then it matters, even if in turn it risks the abstraction of real life. Art isn’t our salvation but neither is it our ruin. Some art works are more empowering than others and some works of pornography are less degenerate than others. If the world we live in is artificial then maybe it’s necessary to use artifice to get us out of that world, no matter how simplistic or even emotionally manipulative the art form might be. Art that exposes our cultural assumptions—that lifts the veil we cover nature with—that transforms us—is valuable and empowering. A docudrama reminding me of a genocide that took place while I was alive to help prevent it may not be Shakespeare but it is art and it is something that matters—and so is writing about it … I guess … maybe….
*****
There's no such thing as a compassionate person who doesn't act compassionate, as a thoughtful person who can't articulate her thoughts, or a villian who doesn't participate in acts of villiany. We are what we do. Period. Actions beget principles, not the other way around. And the same goes for emotions. If you don't have a heart, act as if you do, and you'll have one. Fail to act, and you'll be left with nothing except your purity.
*****
To know and not to act is not to know.
Ancient Chinese proverb
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20 comments:
Remember in New Mexico when we saw that exhibit on genocide and oppression? I still do.
Lisa
Yes. I don't remember the specifics of the exhibit, but I remember how awful I felt afterwards.
Me too. It made me feel horrible about doing something to enjoy ourselves when all that suffering I didn't even know about was happening all around me.
Lisa, who promises to leave better comments one of these days.
PS - Sara is resting her head on the edge of my laptop keyboard, between the keyboard and the screen. :0)
Thanks for your comments, Edjog. I'll be out of town for awhile, but I hope to respond when I get back. Happy Holidays.
I keep waiting for another entry!
Happy new year!
Lisa
P.S. I have a blog, too. I just didn't want to tell you because it's pretty self-serving, and I didn't want you to tell me as much. Still, it's not fair that I know where your blog is and you don't know where mine is, so I'm letting you know where it is, if you want to see it. - Lisa
I was thinking about similar issues about a month ago (though not in as much detail as you) after going to An Evening of Conscience at Kingsbury Hall. It was a celebration of the Brazilian photographer Salgado. Homero Aridgis (Mexican poet and novelist) and Terry Tempest Williams spoke along with Salgado all while Salgado photographs were displayed.
It was an amazing evening--I was moved to tears about the suffering around the world and moved to save our natural world as Salgado's new exhibit, Genesis, was projected with accompanying music.
But what did I do with it? Not much. I just went back to my everyday concerns. Your comparison between art, like my evening of conscience, and pornography is apt--all art *can* be pornographic in its application. And all art has the potential to merely memorialize, to use your words, and ultimately kill desire. As I read your justifications for, your faith in, art, it struck me how parallel they are to my justifications for imperfect organized religion.
For example you said:
If the world we live in is artificial then maybe it’s necessary to use artifice to get us out of that world, no matter how simplistic or even emotionally manipulative the art form might be. Art that exposes our cultural assumptions—that lifts the veil we cover nature with—that transforms us—is valuable and empowering.
Organized religion can also transform and empower, get us out of this world, even though it clearly oversimplifies and manipulates. I raise this not just because I thought about it as I read that section, but also because it provides one kind of answer to your dilemma about action. Whatever criticisms we might make about religion, I think it's clear many types of religion, certainly wester christianity, ask people to act. Religions ask us to act on our beliefs. Sometimes these actions are scary to me (hateful rhetoric about homosexuals or abortion docs) but still some of these acts are sublime--a visit to a widow, a plate of cookies during a crisis, a willing member who works hours a week with young people. Religious conservatives rightly object to bitching liberals sitting on their asses waxing philosophical (and I've often been one of these folks).
I think the intellectual left would do good to remember that, to manipulate your phrasing religion "isn’t our salvation but neither is it our ruin."
Hey Ron,
You make some interesting points, but, on the whole, I respectfully but very passionately disagree with much of what you said. First of all, I don’t think art and religion have anything in common, and I don’t have any “faith in art”, as you say. To me, faith is a tool of oppression. If I accept something on faith, then my experience, reason, and intuition are negated—in other words, the very things that make me a human being are made subordinate to dogma. Moreover, art is an aesthetic; there’s nothing there to be faithful to. Some genres, such as literature, might have messages, but, as a writer of political plays, I can tell you that overemphasis on message is the clearest way to deaden your impact (except in Satire, maybe). The aesthetic is always what counts, not the principle—and you can’t have faith in aesthetics. Second, while religion does indeed focus on action—on acting out your beliefs, it doesn’t typically beget actions of much worth (the Crusades, the Inquisition, the collusion with Nazis, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the subjugation of women, the torture of Jews, the molestation of altar boys, polygamy), and what tyranny it doesn’t beget it often supports (slavery, genocide of the Native Americans, Big Business, George Bush). That isn’t just coincidence. Religious people do bad things because religion is bad; it’s a model for persecution. Yes, Jesus may’ve said some good things, and so did Pascal and St. Francis and Mother Teresa and Erasmus and maybe even Joseph Smith, but the central premise behind all Christian religion is that the earth (and the body, instinct, animals, sex, women—everything connected to the earth) is evil. The purpose of Christianity—and I include Mormonism under that banner even if they don’t—is to rationalize conquest and submission—is to say that what you do or is done to you in the physical world doesn’t really matter, because only heaven counts—that’s where you’ll get your reward. No matter how fucked up things here on earth are, it shouldn’t concern you. It shouldn’t concern you because God doesn’t care about results—he only cares about faith (and obedience, which is basically the same thing). That isn't empowering.
All the same, I'm not dissing on religious people. I know plenty of "Christians" (you included) whose actions inspire me. But the institution and dogma of religion belong to power. I don’t care that religion could have been or could be something it isn’t. As it exists, it’s oppressive.
Hey Ron,
I deleted that last comment twice before finally deciding to post it. It occurs to me that my tone might seem a little disrepectful, and I don't want to come across that way (just resolute). I apologize if I wasn't as diplomatic as I should have been.
Blogs aren't for diplomacy--don't worry. You probably know this, but I already know and profess just about every critique of religion you have raised. And religion certainly has been oppressive. But to see only that (and you almost grant me this point by excluding me and a few others) in religion is to miss the point. If all of religion were that bad then why do so many find peace, purpose, inspiration? Are all these religious people just stupid? I'm always leery (and I know from taking this position myself) of a position that excludes the masses. The political left, particularly the academic left, does this all the time; it's the old false consciousness move: "just don't know that you are being oppressed." That's insulting.
And, as I indicated earlier, I thougth of religion *because* of your post--you use (go back to your language) religious based language. Now, I understand that one can use a certain discourse for one's own purposes, that religion doesn't own the word faith, etc. Still the similarities in how we talk about God and art are many and diverse--I think this says that there are similarities in what both arenas seek. Both seek another world; both seek the sublime; both seek to overcome the base. Certainly religion *can* be didactic overly literal but not always and that's not, in my opinion, what keeps most people going to church. Certainly some, and they drive me nuts, but not most.
To call all of Christianity oppressive is to vastly oversimplify and to undervalue how specific individuals work within institutional relgion, using it in ways unintended and in ways that reach the sublime.
I doubt we’ll come to any agreement here, Ron, but I’d like to clarify a few things, then I’ll give you the last word. One, I didn’t say all Christians are oppressive, I said Christianity is, so I’m not sure how I’m granting you your point there. I’m sure there were non-oppressive Nazis, too. That doesn’t redeem Nazism. A lot of people found peace, purpose, and inspiration in the dogma of Hitler (even well-meaning and seemingly caring people like Ezra Pound), but they were still perpetuating an oppressive ideology. Two, people DON’T know that they’re being oppressed. There’s no question about that. That’s what the early feminist movement was all about—getting women to perceive that being dominated is not a natural state of affairs. It took a lot of “consciousness-raising” before people could see that. The masses used to believe that the earth was flat and that their livers created and transported blood throughout the body. Does that mean Galileo and William Harvey were elitist snobs because they took “a position that excludes the masses”? The majority of Americans also still believe Sadam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Am I a snob if I prefer to go by the facts? What about those who challenged the divine ordination of the nobility in the Middle Ages? It took a lot of “consciousness-raising” during the Renaissance for people to buy into that. Third, unlike Christianity, art does not have a central dogma or a central purpose. Again, it’s an aesthetic; it doesn’t “seek another world” or “to overcome the base” any more than a sunset does. I would contend that the best art does precisely the opposite; it verifies the beauty of the natural world and discounts transcendence entirely. Finally, you said I undervalue how “specific individuals work within institutional religion, using it in ways unintended and in ways that reach the sublime”. If, by sublime, you mean other-worldly—as in being disconnected to the real world—then you’re right, I do undervalue it. If you mean that I undervalue the contributions to humanity that have been made by Christ, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King and other wise and giving Christians, then I think you’re wrong. But I value their actions, not their belief system or the institution they supported. I would say the same about my Christian friends—and cousins!
Well said, Edjog. Institutionalized religion, like shopping, is a great way to homogenize experience. It’s very reductionist. John Krakaw, in his book "Under the Banner of Heaven", writes about the pattern of development that most religions follow: a charismatic leader speaks directly to God and inspires a following, then some of the followers start talking directly to God, and, inevitably, God starts to contradict himself—or, worse yet, He contradicts the leader! And you can’t have that, so you set up a dogma—the “official” word of God, usually something far more moderate than the original version—to avoid further conflict. You can’t maintain a proper hierarchy, after all, if everyone has direct access to the Supreme Power.
Capitalism works in the same way. It says that you can’t have direct access to Nature. Instead, you have to go through the proper channels—a middle man. You can’t live freely on the land or eat what the Market doesn’t produce—in other words, you can’t do anything unless you pay for it—unless you sell your experiences (and your uniqueness) to someone else and join the system. The message: don’t trust your original-sinning, innately greedy self—put your faith (and your money) in The Man.
I was going to say "Amen to that," but....
I do not have the talent nor the time (if I had the talent) to refute all of these claims. And, in general I agree with most of the critiques each of you have made about religion. But I think these critiques can be made about any organization, any institution, any gathering of people. Of course you probably both agree with that. I'm thinking where we disagree is what to do with this knowledge, the knowledge that we live in a world where in order to create community we oversimplify and pretend we are more alike than we are.
Ultimately what I've decided (and I have to keep deciding this over and over as I wrestle through life) is to engage with what creates meaning in my life. While I recognize that this meaning is, to a degree, artifice, that's ok because all meaning is artifice, construct. For me it's a pragmatic decision about physical and emotional survival. The ritual of religion brings me peace; it works. And in my context (three kids, small community, a wife, a certain kind of disposition) I need all I can get. I still see much paradox, much oversimplifiction and when I can because I am in the boatk, as it were, I rock the boat. Those outside the boat will not rock it; they will merely be demonized.
Now one might say I'd give up anything to stay in the boat, for this peace (Shane's Nazis) but I don't think so; you never know for sure but no one knows for sure. It's not that I think I have you right and you guys have it wrong. I have it right for me and I assume you have it right for your situations. I actually quite respect individuals (artists, anarchists, wilderness "freaks") who choose to confront a reality wihtout traditional community.
Just this morning I was watching a documentary, Grizzly man. This guy lived with grizzlies and foxes for months at a time. He is by many standards crazy: in a high voice he would talk to the bears as if they were people, "Sorry, sorry but I don't like it when you do that." As you may know, he ultimately got eaten. I'm not ready to say his life was wasted; he died trying to connect with what he saw as meaningful.
Well, I'm off to read the Book of Mormon with my family. I know you'll both think that's naive and stupid. But I think I have a pretty good sense of what I'm up to.
Ron,
I don't think you're "naive or stupid", and I have tremendous respect for the sincerity of your choices.
I enjoyed reading all of your thoughts on this post. The depth of understanding and analysis by all of you impresses me. MY thoughts about religion are quite simple. If it "floats your boat" and doesn't interfer with my existance, more power to you. As far as my experience goes... when I was religious, was depressed and miserable. Now that I am free of it, I am at peace and happy. For me the results are enough. I am able to justify my atheism through reason an science, and my emotional well-being is testament that, for me at least, that reality needs no artificial help in order to make me moral and happy.
Trav
What? You let real-life experience influence your decisions? Rebel!!!
Shane,
First... scratch the second "that" in my last sentence. I need more sleep.
Second... you are a smartass............... Keep it up! =)
Trav
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