How Do We Put Our Values in Our Art?

Laura Axelrod is on a tear lately.  Besides talking about her view of the economy, our nation and its bankruptcy and the impact of the aforementioned on the arts and culture (a view I largely share), she also raises the specter of whether or not its okay to just tell a story.   And how all of the craziness of what is going on economically might be reflected in our work as artists.

Let me just parenthetically add that i haven't talked about the economy a huge amount here on the blog simply because there are other bloggers who I read who are very good at discussing these issues and I'm not sure what I have to add on the subject.  Thanks to Laura, however, I'm starting to figure it out. All of those bloggers are writing about the economy from a political blogger perspective, and those of us who are interested in both arts/culture and politics have a voice to add to this conversation as well. And forgive in advance the somewhat clumsy and scattered nature of this blog post. Lots of thoughts + unsure how to talk about them = disconnected bloggyness.

And of course, artists do too, through their work. But... how?  That's the question. How do we integrate the issues of today into our work?  I mulled over some of these questions, or at least some of the other questions they ended up raising in a post last year titled "What Is Conservative Theatre", so you can check out some thoughts there on politics and theatre in general if you're interested.

As a director (and a largely freelance one at that) my position in all of this is a littler different from writers.  I don't in general devise work, so the script (With its relevance or irrelevance) has to already exist and someone has to already want to produce it.  As a producer I have a little more control, obviously, in that I can pick a more relevant script over a less relevant one, and try to do something that speaks to people's lives fairly directly. I would note, btw, that this does not mean Realism.  The Honest-to-God True Story of the Atheist isn't realistic in the slightest (in fact its second half is a kind of parody of late 20th century theatrical naturalism) but it speaks to a real issue that this country has spent a lot of energy mulling over-- Belief and our relationships to those who believe differently than we do.

I've also noticed in film how mainstream movies about working or lower middle class people and their issues are few and far between. In feel like in the 1980s, ecomomic and class issues were front and center, even in films I was watching.  The Goonies is about a group of children trying to save someone's house from nefarious wealthy people, Dirty Dancing's core conflict is about the class difference between its romantic leads, most of John Hughes' films have class issues at their core somewhere (I'm thinking particularly of The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful and Pretty in Pink). The class differences in Say Anything are front and center to the narrative. These were popular mainstream films.  Nowadays I feel like when working class and poor people show up, its largely in action or disaster movies and their class status is deployed as an instant-empathy device, like Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds or Shia LeBeuf in Transformers.  Juno and Little Miss Sunshine were both about characters on the low end of the economic ladder, but both were (comparatively) low budget indie films. Most movies I see previews for, hear about etc. seem to be about Doctors, Lawyers, bestselling authors, movie stars, People with Power. 

In theater the record is certainly better, but class and money and economic related issues rarely take front and center.  I wonder if part of this is due to how hard it is to talk about and dramatize those things non-naturalistically.  I'm sure that's one of the challenges. Another is whether or not people (and by that I also mean The Gatekeepers- artistic directors, funders, lit managers whatev) want to hear it.  

On the other hand... I'm also brought back to a conversation I had with someone out in Portland who was talking about how one of the overlooked wonderful things about art was its ability to provide escape.  She said that looking at great art can be like going out into nature, just having a space to kind of get away from the daily grind.  And it seems to me that this is in fact a vital part of some art. And that providing that escape (oh fuck it, let's just call it escapism) isn't necessarily bad. There can be art that's made simply to tell a good story and keep you captivated. And that art can also be made by people who do understand deeply how society works and want to provide us with some palliative care for awhile.

Is that problematic? Is that wrong?  To me, it only becomes a bad thing when its the only (or the major) thing on offer. 

Comments

[Aaron]

I think you have to consider the changing mediums, too. There was a time when theater was a means of relating oral history, and it was heavily repetitive for the sake of memory; when writing took that over, it slowly transformed into a form of cheap entertainment for the masses and as a means of something social to do; when film, then TV, and inevitably the Internet took that over, theater failed to re-establish itself, and that is where it has lost the majority of its audience (the same goes for reading). I don't think theater can exist as pure escapism: it simply isn't as good at distracting us as those other forms. At best, it can awe us with that perfect mesh of body, voice, and text, all operating at a concentrated level--three-ring circus in a can--but it doesn't allow us to relax like we can from the safety of our own couch. I think, then, that theater needs to acknowledge the audience, to use that live connection in a way that other media cannot: if it chooses to do so for laughs, or for catharsis, or whatever, fine, but it is for something more than escapism.

One of the first things I learned when acting was that you can't PLAY an emotion (at least, not if you want to be taken seriously): you have to take things action by action to do so, working on some partner (object, person, or invisible "other") in the process. The same goes for theater that would be escapism: it can't simply "be" escapism: it needs a solid foundational action, and it needs to partner with the audience. That's what does it for me.

[Alison Croggon]

Alice Walker said "Work is love made visible". If you live in the world and respond to it, if you have values, they will be reflected in your work. For good or ill.