Self-Censorship and The Purpose of the Arts

 Back in early December 2021, the New York Times had an article entitled "Writers Tackle the Challenge of Self-Censorship" based on a discussion of the topic sponsored by PEN America, an organization founded in 1922 in support of freedom of expression.

Long considered a basic right in the U.S. as enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, free expression is under threat from both the right and the left at present with writers of all description in the firing line.

This came to mind the other day when I read in the NYT a review of a book called "Authority and Freedom, A defense of the Arts," by Jed Perl. In it, Perl argues art should be freed from the notion that to be valid, it has to address prevailing sociopolitical concerns. 

The reviewer, American composer John Adams, who has had rare success with contemporary opera -- "Nixon in China" and "Doctor Atomic" -- faulted Perl for not giving any examples of art that sacrifices aesthetic authenticity for social relevance. 

"On wonders whether the real reason for his silence here is the now-familiar threat of being cancelled," Adams said. 

I, personally, wouldn't be all that surprised since I have been pondering, in the prevailing cancel-culture, cultural-misappropriation climate, whether I need to change the race of a character in my operetta "Patricia," a work in progress (and one that in all likelihood always will be).

While I personally tend to fall into the "art-for-the-sake-of-art camp," Adams clearly doesn't.

"It's unlikely that 'Authority and Freedom' will change many artists' minds about how they view their work. They will do what they want, and many, if not most, today are ablaze with an intensity not seen since the 1930s to make their art speak truth to power, to heal what they deem the rent in our social fabric," he said.

Perhaps Adams, on his part, can provide some examples of contemporary art that has successfully healed (my emphasis) as opposed to -- say -- addressed "the rent in our social fabric."  

"If you ask them," Adams continued, "they will tell you that art that doesn't address this sense of urgency is not just out of touch with the times, it is irrelevant."

My own sense is that if an artist creates something of exceptional aesthetic value, it will far outlast creations that are first and foremost in touch with the sociopolitical currents of their times although, to be fair, there are examples over the course of history that have successfully hit both targets.

The World of Ballet: Changes Coming to San Francisco

 Today's news: the San Francisco Ballet, the oldest ballet company in the U.S., has selected Tamara Rojo as its first woman artistic director, effective at the end of this year. But, given the long lead time needed for developing programing, just what she has in mind for the company won't be fully evident until the 2023-24 season.

According to a New York Times article, Rojo was rather vague on what that might be, saying only that she was interested in keeping ballet "relevant to a younger audience that sometimes has new values and principles" and that she would be instituting a system of "checks and balances" when it came to casting and dancer evaluations. The latter may be necessary in part because Rojo's husband, Isaac Hernandez, recently rejoined the SF Ballet as a principal dancer, providing Rojo with a built-in conflict of interest. The search committee asked "difficult questions" about that, the NYT said, but not so difficult as to rule Rojo out. 

Rojo also told the NYT that along with focusing on female choreographers, she would bring "new voices to interpret the classics."

In what was probably a foretaste of what is to come on that front, in her current position as head of the English National Ballet (not to be confused with the Royal Ballet), Rojo mounted a reimagined version of "Giselle" created by Akram Khan, a Londoner born to a family from Bangladesh. The choreography was infused with modern dance and Indian dance elements and the story was reset in what has been described as "present-day dystopia."  Instead of peasants, there are disposed migrant workers labeled "the Outcasts" and the underworld is full of "ghosts of factory workers who seek revenge for the wrongs done to them in life" instead of the traditional Willis -- the spirits of maidens betrayed by their lovers dancing in floaty white dresses.

What then will SF ballet audiences see?  Swan Lake set in a Superfund site? Or maybe Coppelia in a highly automated factory with a bunch of out-of-control robots astonishing the visiting children? 

Sunnie Evers, co-chair of the SF Ballet's search committee, told the NYT that the company initially contacted over 200 possible candidates as possible replacements for Helgi Tomasson, who has been the SF Ballet's artistic director since 1985. By last July, when the list had been narrowed down to eight: "we had three people of color and three women in that round," Evers said, adding "there is a lot of talk about ballet being dominated by white men, so I am thrilled we were not."

Well, that's pretty much where it's at these days if one spends much time reading the NYT.  When it comes to the arts, just who created something -- their gender, color and sexual orientation -- is more important than what actually gets created. In the case of Khan's "Giselle," one could argue it was a case of cultural misappropriation, but that is apparently only the case in a reverse situation -- a white artist making use of something stemming from a non-white culture. The Western canon, if not cancelled, is up for grabs.

Does it Really Matter Who Choreographs a Ballet?

 An interesting question that has arguably been around for a long time, but which has gained considerable currency lately, is: when it comes to a work of art, if it satisfies a viewer, does it matter who created it?

In other words, once launched, does a work of art (and similarly, a work of intellect) stand on it's own?

While I've written about this a number of times, the latest iteration comes from a comment made by the newly appointed artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, a woman named Hope Muir.

According to an article in the  July 22, 2021 New York Times, she was an unexpected selection and as a result, Roslyn Sulcas, one of the paper's dance critics, asked her what kind of artistic vision she presented to the ballet company's search committee.

"There wasn't a vision statement as such," Muir replied. "They gave the candidates a three-year programming exercise that included various anchor ballets that you had to incorporate, as well as making sure there was representation of female choreographers, Canadian choreographers, and Black, Indigenous and people of color choreographers in each season."

In other words, just who choreographed a given ballet is to be a more important consideration for the National Ballet of Canada than the quality of the piece. An alternative approach would be, leaving aside the so-called anchor ballets, considering each piece on its merits without knowing the race, color, national identity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. of the choreographer and let the chips fall where they may.

Muir said she found the National Ballet of Canada's requirement fascinating and satisfying "because when you look at ballet repertory, you realize that most ballets are choreographed by white men." 

Well, let's think about those "anchor ballets," one or more of which must be present in every season -- ballets such as "Swan Lake," "The Nutcracker," "Sleeping Beauty," "Giselle" and so on and so forth. Why continue to mount such time-worn productions?  Well, they sell lots and lots of tickets since the public continues to love them. Choreographed by dead white males (a major target of "cancel culture" movements), they in effect subsidize the efforts of all the others.

The more I read about it, the less worried I am about "cancel culture" -- in the long run, at any rate. 

Ultimately, in the eyes of those members of the public that appreciate the arts, individual works will stand or fall on their aesthetic merits. White male choreography -- perish the thought -- will be with us for some time even if contemporary white male choreographers appear likely to find themselves far from "privileged" in the prevailing circumstances. Indeed, based on Ms Muir's comments, when it comes to the National Ballet of Canada, white male choreographers still alive and working can pretty much forget it.

It's Hard To Cancel Culture When It's The Real Thing

 In the current war by various aggrieved populations against white, Eurocentric culture, one sees in particular a strong desire to "cancel" (as the prevailing idiom goes) anything and everything associated with white males. But it is not so easily done when a particular artifact is, in effect, the real thing.

A case in point is a recent New York Times story entitled "A 'Messiah' for the Multitudes, Freed from History's Bonds." Therein, the Times reports on how a Canadian entity named the Grain Theater in cooperation with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra has put together a version of "Messiah" aimed at celebrating the country's multicultural aspects and in some cases, grievances.

But hey, wait a minute. The music is still that written about 280 years ago by a white male, George Friedrich Handel, a German by birth but English by choice and eventually a British citizen. And for good reason: no one has since ever been able to do anything like it.

"Handel understands effect better than any of us -- when he chooses, he strikes like a thunderbolt." That's an English translation of something Mozart said in German. And Handel's genius in that respect is ever-present in 'Messiah,' written as a secular oratorio despite the fact that it tells the story of Christ.

So the Canadian version referenced above features, among other things, a Muslim woman in a head scarf singing "She (as opposed to 'he' [Jesus]) was despised" to reflect her own family situation. And so forth and so on.

Handel, by the way did not write the words to "Messiah."  Rather, they were assembled from the Bible and the Book of Common prayer by a wealthy, but largely forgotten Englishman named Charles Jennens. So changing them does not in anyway strike a blow at the composer. In this case, it doesn't even strike much of a blow at Jennens. Rather, the soprano mentioned above, Rihab Chaieb, alters some Biblical words she doesn't happen to think are important in order to co-opt Handel's achievement for her own purposes.

"My reinterpretation of the 'Messiah' is about feeling despised and rejected as a first-generation immigrant in Montreal." she told the Times. "But by taking Jesus out of the equation and making it more personal, I have reclaimed the 'Messiah' as my own." In other words, "it's all about me" which is pretty much the mantra of the present.

I suppose she could have written or commissioned new, more politically correct or "woke" music, based on the racial, cultural or sexual status of the composer,  for her sentiments rather than relying on some old white male melody, but one suspects the impact would not be quite the same.

When an Artist is a Celebrity, Role Confusion Can Result

 When an artist becomes sufficiently well known, he or she acquires an additional identify: that of a celebrity and suddenly that person's persona is as important if not more important than the art.

Such appears to have happened with respect to German artist Neo Rauch, the subject of a Nov. 11, 2020 New York Times article on a topic that has gotten a lot of interest in recent years: the apparent rise of a new right wing movement in Germany.

What triggered this was an incident last spring in which a German art historian named Wolfgang Ulrich argued that Rauch was contributing to the country's right-wing drift because Rauch had made public statements criticizing political correctness. The operative word was "statements" -- as opposed to, for instance, "paintings," which is Rauch's artistic medium.

Lets think about that for a moment.  If Rauch had not become a prestigious artist thanks to the quality of his work (The New York Metropolitan Museum has given him a solo show), no one except perhaps persons in the immediate vicinity of his remarks, would have cared in the slightest what he had said. But as a celebrity, those words were another matter.

Ulrich, the art historian, seemed to realize he was walking on thin ice because, according to the NYT article, he went on to claim that Rauch's alleged right-wing sentiments were reflected in his art as well because the surrealist worlds he creates on canvas constitute refuges from "a contemporary society he hates." In other words, there is nothing obviously and explicitly right-wing within them.

In view of his contention, one wonders if Ulrich would thus conclude that every person who plays an on-line fantasy game, often taking on another identity in the process, is doing so as a means of taking similar refuge and thus has right-wing inclinations as well?  I don't think so.

Ulrich's apparent failure to be able to point to any explicitly right-wing leanings in Rauch's paintings squares with prevailing views among art critics generally. While the paintings have been interpreted as signaling a sense of alienation, they haven't been identified as pointing in any particular political direction as an alternative.

Wikipedia, for instance, quotes art historian Charlotte Mullins as saying that while the paintings suggest a narrative intent, closer scrutiny immediately presents the viewer with enigmas: "Architectural elements peter out; men in uniform from throughout history intimidate men and women from other centuries; great struggles occur but their reason is never apparent; styles change at a whim."

According to the NYT article, Rauch's work "is known internationally for paintings that blend elements of Pop Art, Surrealism and Social Realism."  They "feature dream-like groupings of figures in garish colors, assembled into horrific or comic scenes."

An example is below:

 

A couple of years ago, Rauch told a major German newspaper he objected to political correctness because it reminded him of the authoritarian regime of former Communist East Germany, where he was born. He also said everyone should be wary of the current "cancel culture" movement.

The point of all of this is: shouldn't one view the flap over Rauch's comments as more in the nature of concerns about the influences a celebrity (in our celebrity-driven culture) might have on what others think rather than anything having to do with art?

 

 

U.S. Minorities Seen Needing Control Over Production

Viet Than Nguyen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Sympathizer" and not an uncontroversial character based on what I have previously written about him, has expressed a somewhat Marxist view of what U.S. non-white minorities need to do to get their stories told.

They need to acquire control over "the means of production," he told the Los Angeles Times.

“If you come from a so-called minority, let’s say me as an Asian American, you live in a condition of narrative scarcity: almost none of the stories are about you. ... If Black people and other people of color and other minorities don’t control, or don’t have control, over the means of production, they really don’t control their stories. They are subject to the whims and mercies of people more powerful from them — the producers and the owners — who can dictate what kinds of stories are told,” Nguyen said.

The author appeared to be talking mainly about film and other expensive forms of story telling as opposed to writing, but his point is nonetheless in the tenor of the times: a perceived need to end "white privilege" and to even "cancel" the culture associated with it.

But it seems a little behind the curve. There doesn't seem to be a pronounced shortage of stories involving or about minorities at present. Rather, perhaps all too belatedly, there seems to be a determined push toward greater diversity with respect both to the nature of the stories being told and who is telling them. For evidence of that, consult the arts sections of major American newspapers and magazines on regular basis.

Just one example: the leading candidate for this year's Tony award for the best play on Broadway (before theaters closed for the pandemic) is "Slave Play" by Black playwright Jeremy O. Harris.

Flannery O'Connor as a Displaced Person

 Earlier this year, Loyola University Maryland removed the name of author Flannery O'Connor from a residence hall, making her in effect a displaced person.  I mention that because I recently read her story "The Displaced Person" for a literary seminar and will have a couple of things to say about it.

O'Conner, a Catholic who died in 1964 at age 39, repeatedly used the word "nigger" in her stories set in the South because that's how the characters she was writing about often referred to Black people back then. But that is not what purists in the age of Back Lives Matter/Cancel Culture have found to be the subject of concern.  Rather, some comments she made to friends in personal correspondence that has become public have been deemed to show that she was a racist.

In the age of Cancel Culture, the significance or worth of a piece of art is determined far more by the racial/gender/sexual orientation of the artist than by the attributes of the object in question. One only need to read the arts pages of the New York Times in the current times to see how that works. To my knowledge, there has been no outcry against O'Connor's published novels, stories and essays. Falling into the now highly unpopular genre of literary fiction, they are not what one would call "page turners" and perhaps are now not widely read.

But on to "The Displaced Person," a story set in the American South in the wake of World War II that was first published in 1955. It centers on two women: Mrs. McIntyre, an older widow who runs a farm, and Mrs. Shortley, who, with her husband, works for Mrs. McIntyre as do two Black men.

The displaced person is a Pole who, with his wife and two children, have been, through the offices of a local Catholic priest, placed with Mrs. McIntyre who has apparently sought to have them on the view the man may be a better worker, and less expensive, than the help she has been able to hire locally. This is cloaked in humanitarian considerations, leaving Mrs. McIntyre somewhat confused about her own sentiments.

But readers are introduced to the situation first and foremost through the eyes of Mrs. Shortley and what she sees corresponds to prevailing currents, and especially since Donald Trump ran for President on an anti-immigrant platform. Although there is some rather nobleness-oblige-type sympathy for those trying to flee horrible circumstances abroad, and some thought that immigrants can be useful (especially in high-tech and agriculture at present), they are "not us" and if not a potential drain on government resources, a threat to the employment and wage levels of existing Americans. They are also viewed as source of cultural and social disruption and even an outright threat of one sort or other -- potential terrorists if they come from certain countries or subscribe to certain religious beliefs, or "rapists," drug dealers, etc, if they arrive from elsewhere. 

And sure enough, the displaced Pole, despite or perhaps because of his admirable work ethic, is soon viewed as a threat, even by Mrs. McIntyre. It's a good read.

Flannery O'Conner is generally identified as a member of the "Southern Gothic" school of fiction and one characteristic of that style of storytelling is the employment of grotesque characters or situations to shed light on the human condition by, in effect, amplifying certain of it's characteristics.

In "The Displaced Person," the grotesque appears most notably in the sexuality of the two women mentioned above.  This is most explicit with respect to Mrs. Shortley, clearly not a particularly attractive women. "She stood on two tremendous legs, with the grand self-confidence of a mountain, and rose, up narrowing bulges of granite, to two icy points of light that pierced forward, surveying everything." 

What gets Mrs. Shortley's sexual juices flowing?  

One day, in the story, she encounters her husband smoking a cigarette in the cow barn, which, she warns him, he shouldn't be doing.  "There was about a half an inch of cigarette adhering to the center of his lower lip. ... Mr. Shortley, without appearing to give the feat any consideration, lifted the cigarette butt with the sharp end of his tongue, drew it into his mouth, closed his lips tightly, rose, stepped out, gave his wife a good appreciative stare, and spit the smoldering butt into the grass. ... This trick of Mr. Shortley's was actually has way of making love to her."

This stunt, it turns out, was the manner in which Mr. Shortley had courted his wife. He didn't give her anything pretty, but sat on her porch steps smoking. "When the cigarette got to the proper size, he would turn his eyes to her and open his mouth and draw in the butt and then sit there as if he had swallowed it, looking at her with the most loving look anybody could imagine." 

"It nearly drove her wild." 

What about Mrs. McIntyre?  When she was 30, she married a 75-year-old man after working as his secretary for a few months "because of his money, but there had been another reason she would not admit then, even to herself: she had liked him."

Known as "the Judge," what was he like?

"He was a dirty, snuff-dipping Court House figure ... His teeth and hair were tobacco colored and his face a clay pink pitted and tracked with mysterious prehistoric-looking marks as if he had been unearthed amid fossils. There had been a peculiar odor about him of sweaty folded bills ..."

"The three years that he lived after they had married were the happiest and most prosperous of her life, but when he died his estate proved to be bankrupt."  Despite having married him in part for his money and getting left with nothing but a mortgaged house and 50 acres from which the timber had been cut, Mrs. McIntyre had buried the judge on the property and preserved his home office untouched through two subsequent marriages, one to an alcoholic and the other to a man who ended up in a mental institution. She didn't hold it against him. Other considerations had evidently been more important.

While O'Connor provides no details of Mrs. McIntyre's sex life, one can easily imagine that what turned her on was equally grotesque to that of what stimulated Mrs. Shortley and perhaps that is one reason that of all her hired help over the years, Ms. Shortley was the person Mrs. McIntyre got along with best.