Hear This Hammer Ring
Don’t you hear this hammer ring?
I’m gonna split this rock
And split it wide!
When I split this rock,
Stand by my side.
- Langston Hughes
When we first began organizing the Split This Rock Poetry Festival about a year and a half ago, I told people that we’d chosen the date to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I can’t tell you how many asked us, “Oh, do you think the war will still be going on then?”
My first reaction was, “What are you smoking?”
But slowly it dawned on me that many people did not recognize what had happened in our country after September 11. Of the three wars the Bush administration is currently waging, the U.S. public is selectively aware of only the one that is devastating the country of Iraq, killing countless Iraqi civilians and thousands of U.S. service members. The public has a growing awareness of the administration’s second war - on U.S. foreign policy. The Bush administration and its neocon theorists have committed us to worldwide, perpetual, preemptive war. They have made the notion that we can bomb our way to “security” the main tenet our nation’s foreign policy.
The third war, however, has gone virtually unnoticed. The administration is at war with language.
Word War III
In this new paradigm the word is no longer valued for its power of negotiation, diplomacy, understanding, but only for its power to control, to pacify. It’s an age-old technique, to repeat the same flattened phrases over and over until they become accepted wisdom. But with a complicit mass media, propaganda is easier than ever to perpetuate. The latest “spin”: The surge is working. The surge is working. The surge is working. Repetition does not, however, change the facts on the ground.
Which is why we need poetry now, more than ever. We need poets to tell the complex human story. Poets cut through the fog of propaganda and remind us of the real consequences of our government’s actions. As the poet and essayist Martín Espada, who will be reading on the opening night of Split This Rock, says, we need poetry to give politics a human face. Poetry reminds us of what matters. It wakes us up. With its immediacy and idiosyncrasy and great heart, it shakes us from our despair.
Poets have taken up this challenge, uniting against the war in Iraq with unprecedented public action. Split This Rock originates in the Poets Against War movement, spurred by the leadership of Sam Hamill. Here in the capital city, DC Poets Against the War has been active for five years, reading at demonstrations, in schools, churches, libraries, community centers, night clubs, and cafes. We’ve published two anthologies and organized poets’ delegations to march in the national peace demonstrations, carrying lines of poetry through the streets of Washington.
As this election year approached and we were hearing more about the powerful activism of poets all over the country, we decided the time had come to step it up. Uniquely situated here in the nation’s capital, we felt it our obligation to provide a national forum that could bring poets together, celebrate and publicize their art and their activism, and build bonds across differences of geography, age, race and ethnicity, social class, gender, sexuality, physical ability, and poetic style. We hope to make Split This Rock a regular event - every other year, perhaps - and to nurture and support this nascent community that is just beginning to be born.
Poetry for Change
Split This Rock calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of activist poets. The festival will explore and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for change: reaching across differences, considering personal and social responsibility, asserting the right to free speech, bearing witness to the diversity and complexity of human experience through language, imagining a better world. It will feature readings, workshops, panel discussions on poetry and social change, youth programming, open mics, films, parties, walking tours, and activism. “The coming together of progressive poets in March 2008 underscores the fact that the circle of hope has not been broken,” says poet E. Ethelbert Miller. “Writers will come to Washington, not with their dirges but their jubilees.”
Some of the most prominent and important poets writing in the United States today will be featured, including Jimmy Santiago Baca, Robert Bly, Dennis Brutus, Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty, Martín Espada, Carolyn Forché, Sam Hamill, Galway Kinnell, E. Ethelbert Miller, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds, Alix Olson, Sonia Sanchez, and many more. These poets are part of a great tradition of poetry that is not apart from the world. They bring their whole selves to poetry, their observant selves, their compassionate selves, their visionary selves. They are our heroes.
Split This Rock honors and celebrates this tradition, which in this country alone stretches back at least as far as Walt Whitman’s wild, democratizing verses. Even while poets invent new ways of revitalizing our language and imagining other worlds, we are all Whitman’s nieces and nephews:
In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.
In a Courtyard
Fifteen years ago, I discovered how a poet’s words can indeed be a hammer against the rock of injustice. Sharon Olds’ poem “Solitary” describes a powerful act of solidarity with the Korean poet Kim Chi Ha. Sentenced to life imprisonment under the Park Chung-Hee dictatorship in South Korea, Kim spent many years in jail, several of them in solitary confinement. Many poets and writers around the world campaigned for his release. Poet Muriel Rukeyser visited South Korean in 1975 to bear witness. Kim was freed in 1980, several months after Rukeyser’s death.
SOLITARY
for Muriel Rukeyser
I keep thinking of you standing in Korea, in the courtyard
of the prison where the poet is in solitary.
Someone asked you why not in the street
where you could be seen. You said you wanted
to be as close to him as you could.
You stood in the empty courtyard. You thought
it was probably doing no good. You have written
a poem about it. This is not that poem.
This is another - there may be details
wrong, the way variations come in
when you pass on a story. This is a poem
about a woman, a poet, standing in a courtyard,
feeling she is probably doing no good.
Pass it on: a poet, a woman,
a witness, standing
alone
in a prison
courtyard
in Korea.
From these acts of solidarity - sometimes solitary, sometimes in concert with others - Split This Rock was born. The festival celebrates the achievements of Whitman, Rukeyser, and Olds, the vision of Sonia Sanchez, June Jordan, and Etheridge Knight, the courage of those poets who have gone before and of those we are lucky to still have with us.
From March 20-23, poets and activists will descend on DC, a city of the most crazy-making contradictions in American life. It is the seat of imperial power, a symbol of wealth and autocratic strength all over the world. But it is also the city with the greatest disparity of wealth of any in the country; the highest child poverty rate, the highest HIV infection rate, the highest adult illiteracy rate. And it is also a city of beauty, of liveliness, of warmth, of hope, grappling endlessly with despair, like poetry, our home. Writers “of every hue and trade and rank, of every caste and religion,” to quote Whitman again, will flood our crazy city with poetry and make a beautiful ruckus.
FPIF contributor Sarah Browning is director of the Split This Rock Poetry Festival and coordinator of DC Poets Against the War. She is the author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works, 2007) and coeditor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology (Argonne House Press, 2004). A recipient of an artist fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities and a Creative Communities Initiative grant, Browning hosts the Sunday Kind of Love poetry series at Busboys & Poets in Washington, DC.
Copyright © 2008, Institute for Policy Studies
Good to see more activist poetry! After over a decade of publishing the Blue Collar Review and other radical poetry trhough Partisan press, it is gratifying to see more reality based radical poetry taking back the culture and moving people in a progressive direction.
Standing
alone
is what
poets do
together.
this no war
WAR
spills plates of food
from these tables
and books, medicine too
next the house
and my torn rags
burning fire
no one listening
all while others die
dont you get it?
hello?
Hey Poets… someday folk singers songwriters and poets will unite and celebrate together… jump outta this Power Elite stovepipe … Poets go here and songwriters go here but don’t get together because your call for revolution will not be drowned out in the walls of your stovepipe…
Pete Seeger suggests lots of creative made peace symbols in DC and
If you are going to stand for harmony in DC, blow the minds of the arial photographers and get in a circle and “Y” in the middle… and you will be speaking the poetic language of Humanity in the image of the peace symbol that will be caught from helicopters and beamed around the world.
Justice brings peace and poetry brings Justice… When will they ever learn…
Love
Good prose will do the trick, too. Unfortunately, it doesn’t beep, buzz, vibrate or blink.
As a published poet myself, I honor the impulse but deplore the degradation of poetry to propaganda.
Poetry, like all art, transcends dichotomies like War/Peace, Hate/Love, Right/Left.
Poetry crystallizes the human condition, whether its subject is the bomber pilot or the casualty on the ground.
The paradox, of course, is that by being supremely human, poetry is ultimately political.
Because it reminds us of our common ground. That we all live, eat, breath, f*ck, work, play, and die.
The Hughes snippet at the beginning is an excellent example, as it speaks to the yearning for transcendence, transformation, and liberation on the internal individual level as much as the external “political” level.
Poets and prose unite!
This world will be saved by a million small things.
(I stole that from Pete)
I hope that this festival is a success…
These days what ever we do is political…even if we rebel by turning inward and isolate our individual person, that is a political act because your thoughts will effect those around you.
Political is a dirty word thrown around the most by …Politicians…
Sometimes the minders want us to not take politics serious since they don’t want the public in on their insider secrets…
How Empires Fall and UFO’s save us from ourselves..
According to the prophecy
Time to take to the streets; with giant puppets, poems, theater,& and song. Just be there!
ARTIST GENERAL’S WARNING:
Too Much Depend$ Upon
The Red Bandwagon
Glazed With Bloodshed
Beside The Gray Chickenhawks.
http://artistgeneral.com
…you rarely see the killer’s face on the evening news,
but, please try to remember this:
All the bombs are in the hands of terrorists!
‘Crack Coke’ for the Masses
Welcome to the new dark ages.
Welcome to jihad and the chosen who
Welcome to the opiate…. the pie high sages.
Welcome to fundamentalists everywhere,
No matter which jealous God they spew.
Marked in by the corporate few
The divide and conquer crew.
Arm the jihadists
Arm the likudists
Arm insurgents everywhere
It’s all good for the corporate few.
Welcome to the compassionate baby burning crew,
The same few who have a monopoly on God’s wrath,
the same non-being corporate crew who push
war profit for the us(US), the few.
Welcome to the wrathful God
For who, we’re the chosen, the many few
The who,.. who push war profit
For my prophet (profit) told me to.
Welcome to the new dark age crusade,
The under god, …. Born again bombers
Have ‘endarkenment’ for you.
Welcome to the Ghengas Khan of the shining city on the hill.
So enlist and you’ll have virgins too.
Pass on depleted U
So you and your kin
Can enjoy the rapture too!
Welcome to the new dark ages
Welcome to the opiate of the people
Welcome to the jihad and the chosen who
For your profit (Prophet) told you to.
Language is huge in the debate between peace and war.
Is it a war or an occupation?
Is it torture or intense interrogation?
Is it criminal behavior or patriotism?
Is it surrender, defeat, withdrawal…
…or is it a new strategy for victory?
John Trudell - How does tomorrow dream
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUdftDH70TQ
Survival of fittest is the
nouminal thread
breathes memory
rock mineral
electrobiochemical
pulse brain planet
breathes memory
pre profit penultimate symbol
the greatest love never dies
scapegoated sacrifice
atavistic death device
no is yes and thus suffice
attenuated mortem
sigh and slip
from its grip
breathe and rise
renergize
the myth of the greatest love
Hey, coyotebreath, chillax
We need all the art we can get, in any venue, ANY venue.
I love it that poetry has erupted in these forums.
And here’s one for the kids -
The Cupcake War
Volleys of curses
and frantic calls for the nurses
are some of the sounds of the Cupcake War.
Some 4th and 5th graders
turned themselves into haters.
We named it the Cupcake War.
Friendships lay dying,
people stand in groups crying,
each afternoon of the Cupcake War.
Many have damages resulting
from the wounding and insulting.
Kids get hurt in the Cupcake War.
Both sides from the beginning
fought for ultimate winning.
On and on goes the Cupcake War.
We were blind, ignored the warnings.
Those of us left here are in mourning
for what we lost because of the Cupcake War.
That’s right, er, correct! Someone find a sour apple tree.
The press not much the world reveals with cheap words clever false appeals. Much life that matters now – forget. Most news goes elsewhere – no regret –
or slants twists lies omits distorts – by corporate will – sheer force – directs slick chatter from sleek ruling courts thus base and gullible infects.
The economic system fails to fill life’s gaps – it fills grim jails as corporate suits work to disguise the coins they steal from dead men’s eyes.
Neglect that which small profit gives – elected representatives – owned by vast wealth – are sternly told. Despair and trouble soon unfold.
—–
Claude McKay, “The White House” -
Your door is shut against my face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent.
Langston Hughes, “Harlem” -
What happens to a dream deferred?
…does it explode?
James Baldwin, “Staggerlee wonders” -
My days are not their days…
My ways are not their ways…
I don’t think they dare
to think of that: no:
I’m fairly certain they don’t think of that at all.
Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock” -
The biggest News I do not dare
Telegraph to the Editor’s chair:
“They are like people everywhere.”
The angry Editor would reply
In hundred harryings of Why
—–
More Liberation Lit at http://liblit.org
Most poetic thing I ever read about war was from a physicist (Freeman Dyson):
“In war, how you fight is eventually more important than why”
NO MORE
No more blood for oil and lies of corrupt politicians
but prayers for the dead and wounded
Iraqi civilians and soldiers and American men
and women who have become the victims of
an unjust war.
No more blood for profiteers of global corporations
and privatization of governments and armies
but food for the starving and tools for sanitation
to repair the contaminated water systems and provide
medicine to the children suffering from uranium poisoning
and the trauma and terror of bombs dropping.
No more imperial domination but the proper funds to
rebuild a war torn nation and the voices of democracy to
uphold our constitution.
No more wars and no more tears
Let us bring peace through diplomacy and compassion
rather than acts of aggression and fear.
“The Trouble With Our State”
By Daniel Berrigan
The trouble with our state
was not civil disobedience
which in any case was hesitant and rare.
Civil disobedience was rare as kidney stone
No, rarer; it was disappearing like immigrant’s disease.
You’ve heard of a war on cancer?
There is no war like the plague of media
There is no war like routine
There is no war like 3 square meals
There is no war like a prevailing wind.
It flows softly; whispers
don’t rock the boat!
The sails obey, the ship of state rolls on.
The trouble with our state
–we learned only afterward
when the dead resembled the living who resembled the dead
and civil virtue shone like paint on tin
and tin citizens and tin soldiers marched to the common whip
–our trouble
the trouble with our state
with our state of soul
our state of siege–
was
Civil
Obedience.
To Those Who Have Gone Home Tired
After the streets fall silent
After the bruises and the tear-gassed eyes are healed
After the concensus has returned
After the memories of Kent and My Lai and Hiroshima
lose their power
and their connections with each other
and the sweaters labeled Made in Taiwan
After the last American dies in Canada
and the last Korean in prison
and the last Indian at Pine Ridge
After the last whale is emptied from the sea
and the last leopard emptied from its skin
and the last drop of blood refined by Exxon
After the last iron door clangs shut
behind the last conscience
and the last loaf of bread is hammered into bullets
and the bullets
scattered among the hungry
What answers will you find
What armor will protect you
when your children ask you
Why?
Copyright © 1977 by W. D. Ehrhart
Rootless, Samisdat, 1977
This poem is currently published in
Beautiful Wreckage, New & Selected Poems, Adastra Press, 1999
––
When the barricades go up they will not be manned by poets. Poets will stand in the background and dream their dreams and their pretty words will ebb and flow, harmlessly.
We do not need poets now! At this time in the world’s history, in America’s history, we need men of action, men with vision, men prepared to die for what is right, for justice, for equality, for freedom.
Later, the poets can joyfully gild the lily!
www.dangerouscreation.com
“When the barricades go up they will not be manned by poets. Poets will stand in the background and dream their dreams and their pretty words will ebb and flow, harmlessly.”
Not the poets I know!
For the Birds
Here where night
has been banished and
the stars are in exile
Here where silence
is as much a stranger
as your neighbor
Here amid the furor
of false patriotism
where death is unleashed upon the world
Here in the darkest hour
among flags and ribbons
Here the birds sing
oblivious
in the new budding trees
knowing
that even in the heart of darkness
spring is inevitable
And we
who stand against the taunting jeers
at the ragged edge of the abyss
can only hope
they are right
Al Markowitz
We need activists from every realm. Thank you, poets.
http://www.ryanhartman.wordpress.com
Good poetry transcends politics. Reducing human life to politics and war is part of the fascist impulse.
Pretending poetry, or any considered creation, is not political is sheer ignorant (to put it poetically) or a lie. Pretending poetry is not political is itself extremely political, as poem or otherwise, extremely ideological.
“Faith” is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see —
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
-Emily Dickinson
Most of the literature of the world has been propagandistic in one way or another…. In a word, the revolutionary critic does not believe that we can have art without craftsmanship; what he does believe is that, granted the craftsmanship, our aim should be to make art serve man as a thing of action and not man serve art as a thing of escape. - V. F. Calverton
http://liblit.org
“Most of the literature of the world has been propagandistic in one way or another…. In a word, the revolutionary critic does not believe that we can have art without craftsmanship; what he does believe is that, granted the craftsmanship, our aim should be to make art serve man as a thing of action and not man serve art as a thing of escape.
“That the attempt to be above the battle is evidence of a defense mechanism can scarcely be doubted. Only those who belong to the ruling class, in other words, only those who had already won the battle and acquired the spoils, could afford to be above the battle. Fiction which was propagandistic, that is, fiction which continued to participate in the battle, it naturally cultivated a distaste for, and eschewed. Fiction which was above the battle, that is fiction which concerned only the so-called absolutes and eternals, with the ultimate emotions and the perennial tragedies, but which offered no solutions, no panaceas — it was such fiction that won its adoration.
“…except in the United States, revolutionary critics have often been harder taskmasters from the point of literary quality than aesthetic critics….
“The revolutionary critic should demand as much of the art he endorses as the reactionary. …[great revolutionary] films are great not because they are [only progressive in ideology] but because they are great first in their formal organization, and then greater still because of the social purpose which they serve.
“The revolutionary…critic does not aim to underestimate literary craftsmanship. What he contends is simply that literary craftsmanship is not enough. The craftsmanship must be utilized to create objects of revolutionary meaning. Only through this synthesis does the revolutionary critic believe that art can serve its most important purpose today. Revolutionary meanings without literary craftsmanship constitute as hopeless a combination from the point of view of the radical critic as literary craftsmanship without revolutionary purpose. …most of the literature of the world has been propagandistic in one way or another, including even that of William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw….”
“This much should be clear, however, and that is that [revolutionary] writers are not to be confused with literary rebels. Literary rebels believe in revolt in literature; left-wing…writers believe in revolt in life…are more interested in social revolt than in literary revolt.”
“Unlike Ibsen, [revolutionary writers] do not ask questions and then refuse to answer them. Unlike the iconoclasts, they are not content to tear down the idols and stop there. Their aim is to answer questions as well as ask them, and to provide a new order to replace an old one. Their attitude, therefore, is a positive instead of a negative one.”
Let’s not confuse art and propaganda.
When any form of art is crafted to send a message, communicate a position, or elicit a desired response in the audience — that is, when art is used to convince or persuade — it ceases to be art and becomes propaganda.
Propaganda may rely on the same “craft” as art, but that doesn’t make it art.
If George Bush assembled his lies in iambic pentameter, would that make them true? Would that somehow redeem them?
If artists become propagandists, does that automatically mean we are speaking truth? Or do we not become liars ourselves? Just another special interest group with an agenda?
Isn’t art supposed to transcend politics and remind us instead of the experience of being alive? Doesn’t bending art to a political end somehow demean art, not to mention the artist?
I’m not saying don’t be creative, don’t make giant puppets, don’t engage in the theater of the protest. In this case, we are using creativity to express a point of view, even outrage. But in this case, the art is the protest or demonstration itself, and the poetry and graphics and puppets are multimedia serving the event, like texts and images in a theater production.
Splitting hairs? Maybe.
How to reconcile this idea with the idea that all art is political? Think of it this way: the impetus must be pure of political ulterior motives but the consequences are unavoidably political.
Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath not as diatribe against the social conditions of the time, but rather as a paean to the grit and strength of individuals suffering the worst of economic hardships. He was telling their stories, not railing against injustice. Was injustice invoked? How could it not be?
The book had a huge social impact and significant political consequence. But those consequences were NOT the intention. The intention was to tell a story about the human condition.
Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn said, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.” But that didn’t stop him from making movies from books like Grapes. Because he saw a good story first.
Regarding “revolutionary” art or literature, I would posit that all true art or literature is revolutionary not by intentional design but by its psychological impact. When a piece of art succeeds, it awakens us to our humanity. It obliterates time and forces us to confront our present condition.
And once so awakened, who can consciously accept genocide and military aggression, let alone pull a trigger themselves?
Regarding “revolutionary” art or literature, I would posit that all true art or literature is revolutionary not by intentional design but by its psychological impact. When a piece of art succeeds, it awakens us to our humanity. It obliterates time and forces us to confront our present condition.
And once so awakened, who can consciously accept genocide and military aggression, let alone pull a trigger themselves?
The best poetry is not always propaganda but
the best propaganda is always poetry.
Shakespear was political. Those who seek to separate the political impulse from “pure art” are not doing either any favors and in reality know not of whaty they speak.
Culture is the medium out of which we act. It defines us. It shapes our thoughts and thus our actions. There really is no such thing as apolitical culture. We poets write from our experience in the real world. If we are politically aware that awareness will manifest itself in our art not because we create our art around for the purpose of convincing others but because we are being honest and writing about what matters.
You hit the nail on the head, Jaded.
“If we are politically aware that awareness will manifest itself in our art NOT because we create our art around for the purpose of convincing others BUT because we are being honest and writing about what matters.” (emphasis added)
(A lot of the poetry on your site succeeds on this level. I very much enjoyed “Loose.” It’s all about the human condition but rich with social and political implications.)
Shakespeare may have been politically aware (in fact, astute) but he was no activist and certainly not a propagandist by any stretch. A recent biography argued that he was a Roman Catholic/Papist keeping his head down even as he served at the pleasure of the daughter (Elizabeth) of the man (Henry VIII) who essentially expelled the Roman Catholic Church from England.
THE SECOND SUCCUMBING
–Apologies to W.B. Yeats / The Second Coming
Turning and Spinning in the Widening Mire
The Congress cannot hear the Precedent;
Things fall apart; the Party cannot hold;
Sheer Conarchy is loosed upon Democracy,
The freedom-gouging tide is loosed, and everywhere
The Standing of America is downed;
The best convictions are too polite, while the worst
Are full of obtuse intensity;
Surely some Reason is at hand.
Yet there instead, the Patriot “Act”!
The “Patriot” Act!
Hardly are those words out
When an Orwelled image out of Posse Comitatus
Troubles my sight:
Somewhere in the martial curfews of this seminal Treachery
A shape with Oz-lion body and the head of a borne-again fool:
An ‘Aye’ blank and clueless as the GOP itself
Is moving its leaky Trojan Agenda, but who knew?
While overhearing guffaws & careless cheering
from the belly of the beast, that all about it now should
gather threats of patriotic fillibuster, lighting & passing torchfire.
…Wounded cowardice drops again; but indignant courage
finds unexpected stride, in the edifying irony
that a Sitting President was on his Game after all,
as if afloat, fishing! entirely untorn,
glued from National Nightmare to “My Pet Goat.”
And what Hellbent Vision Thing,
its Truthless Power come round at last,
$louches towards Liberty to be Borne?
~AG Masley
Jaded Parole
I really like your website, “the Blue Collar Review”. It has a very powerfull and healing message. It dosn’t hurt my head to read it..
Pretending poetry, or any considered creation, is not political is sheer ignorant (to put it poetically) or a lie. Pretending poetry is not political is itself extremely political, as poem or otherwise, extremely ideological.
I disagree.
There’s a difference is between saying art, or life, has a political aspect and saying it is political. One makes life the basis of politics, the other makes politics the basis of life. I, personally, value art more than I do politics. I would rather make the latter servant of the former, and of life, than vice versa. Propaganda is manipulation, art should be communication. Or beauty. Or truth. Or, hell, fun. That’s not a bad word!
Politics, as it is currently practiced, is manipulation and war by other means. There should be things free of that. It’s not wrong to remove the political frame from our mind now and then, as politics is not everything. Look at the stars in the sky. They are not political. And that’s good.
Art should be against the rule of politics.
Apart from all the begging the question, ostensible hair splitting, false or mis-comprehension in the discussion above, it is uncontroversial that art has various effects in the world. Some of those effects are unpredictable, but many are very predictable. How much so? The government and corporations and others continue to go out of their way to censor art and art production, and always have.
See Michael Weldon, interviewed by Ryan Lambie:
“DoG: On your website you say that movies are more politicized now than at any time since WWII or the Cold War. Could you give any examples?
“MW: This is a huge topic. Many movies, producers, and production companies, and some studios, stars and directors have close ties to the American DOD (Department Of Defence), arms dealers (American and Israeli), oil companies, and/or the ruling Republican Party and neocon Bush backers. The Hollywood/D.C. connection has existed for a long time to some extent but it’s stronger now than ever. After 9/11 Karl Rove met with studio heads and top producers and directors and convinced most of them to be part of the war on terror and to be more patriotic and pro FBI, CIA, Armed Forces…
“If an American movie features spies, the military, and military hardware and does not explicitly criticized the government and the Iraq war – it has the full cooperation of the DOD. Some of our tax dollars actually go to providing military planes, boats, weapons, soldiers, advisors… to pro military movies that we pay too much to see – then go buy DVDs of! Many major movies have government agents and agencies right in the credits if you know where to look. Even most people who look back at WWII era movies or early Cold War era movies and realize that they were propaganda, don’t realize what’s happening now….
“This is equally true with American TV. The majority of today’s popular drama shows (many produced by Jerry Top Gun Bruckheimer) glorify government agencies and agents, while stealing crazed psycho killer plots and autopsy gore from mostly cheap and obscure horror movies. Some like the Rupert Murdoch-backed 24 (Dick Cheney’s favorite show) exist pretty much to keep us scared, voting Republican, and to justify torture. I could go on about politics on channels owned by Fox, Disney, Viacom…”
http://apragmaticpolicy.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/karl-rove-and-dick-cheney-in-hollywood-and-tv-at-taxpayer-expense/
Artworks are not some magical substance somehow removed from moral and political arenas. Sorry, they aren’t stars in the sky. People make them, so they are in a realm of morality and politics, all of them. Again, not all effects of aesthetics and of artworks as a whole can be predicted but many effects can be. Much better that the predictable effects of various artworks be progressive and revolutionary rather than bigoted, oppressive, or supportive of an unjust status quo.
Victor Hugo’s extremely popular and innovative great partisan novel Les Miserables (easily one of the greatest of all novels) for example, outraged the political, religious, and social elite of his day - to good effect and wide popular appeal (helped by the fact that he was already famous throughout France and beyond). The privileged establishment disliked it (today’s corporate/academic/religious equivalent}, to put it mildly. Hugo’s novel remains greatly formally innovative, and is exceptionally aesthetically accomplished in its verbal dexterity and encyclopedic detail, among many other artistic qualities. In response to Hugo’s novel, Robb notes:
“The State tried to clear its name. The Emperor and Empress performed some public acts of charity and brought philanthropy back into fashion. There was a sudden surge of official interest in penal legislation, the industrial exploitation of women, the care of orphans, and the education of the poor. From his rock in the English Channel, Victor Hugo, who can more fairly be called ‘the French Dickens’ than Balzac, had set the parliamentary agenda for 1862.
“One can also see the effect of that ‘haunting and horrible sense of insecurity’ identified by Robert Louis Stevenson as the root of the novel’s power:
“The deadly weight of civilization to those who are below presses sensibly on our shoulders as we read. A sort of mocking indignation grows upon us as we find Society rejecting, again and again, the services of the most serviceable…. The terror we thus feel is a terror for the machinery of law, that we can hear tearing, in the dark, good and bad between its formidable wheels.
“This is the touchstone of all adaptations of Les Miserables, musical to cinematic; to turn Javert, the tenacious respecter of authority, ‘that savage in the service of civilization’, into the villian of the piece is to deprive the novel of its dynamite, to point the finger at a single policeman instead of at the system he serves.
“For those who recognized Hugo’s black-and-white vision as social reality seen from underneath…Les Miserables was a moral panacea, the Bible of popular optimism. It stood for faith in progress and the end to misery of every kind….
“The ‘dangerous’ aspect of Les Miserables is almost as evident today as it was in 1862. If a single idea can be extracted from the whole, it is that persistent criminals are a product of the criminal justice system, a human and therefore a monstrous creation; that the burden of guilt lies with society and that the rational reform of institutions should take precedence over the punishment of individuals.
“Written for the masses, Hugo’s novel placed itself at the side of the individual. It was history from the point of view of the scapegoat…”
Both status quo and libratory art are legitimate forms of art, not least at the highest aesthetic levels and to potentially great levels of popularity. The evidence for this is overwhelming, though often denied, slighted, disregarded in the case of partisan art, which is easily among the most libratory and often the most vital and most profound and lively type of art there is. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is another example. Many more here: http://apragmaticpolicy.wordpress.com/
Artworks are not some magical substance somehow removed from moral and political arenas. Sorry, they aren’t stars in the sky. People make them, so they are in a realm of morality and politics, all of them.
I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree. Art is not contained by the realm of politics, though there are overlaps and both often affects each other. Most absolute (non-programmatic instrumental) music, for example, is outside the realm of politics. There are other examples. Morality may (or may not) contain all human activity, but politics is a much smaller arena. Now, if you want to say morality contains politics, I think there are many in the pro-choice movement who will disagree with you.
Do understand, I’m not arguing no art should be political. But I think art should be the master, and approach politics as an inferior realm, which is how I value it.
Both status quo and libratory art are legitimate forms of art, not least at the highest aesthetic levels and to potentially great levels of popularity.
I find the decision to reduce all art to two political categories extremely problematic. To me, it’s like saying everyone is part of the War on Terror and you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists. The fact is, I find the subordination of art to political concerns morally objectionable. If you’re going to force that kind of choice on me, I’ll be with the terrorists, thanks. But as I said earlier, I’m willing to agree to disagree.
Non-programmatic instrumental music is in the realm of politics and morality, in that a choice was made to create it rather than to create something that does clearly partisan or more pointedly ethical work.
I think it’s great if people create and play non-programmatic instrumental music, as I do myself, because it’s enjoyable and empowering in a variety of ways; it’s a good in aspects largely outside of explicit morality and politics, typically, as it seems to me, and doesn’t seem to have drawbacks. However, in a predatory society, there is no doubt that the powers that be prefer such art to art that more explicitly threatens their unjust power and rule, and they work to constrain the production and distribution of overt libratory art, which I also create and produce and attempt to distribute.
I don’t “reduce all art to two political categories” and I don’t think politics should “master” art, and have never said so. There are all kinds of ways to categorize art and many different reasons to produce it and experience it - to enhance one’s perception and imagination and so on, to name some reasons possibly apart from moral and political.
I often speak of status quo art to help make more clear what I mean by libratory art - that it functions against an unjust status quo and for progress. Unlike you, I certainly don’t think the political realm is inferior to the aesthetic realm. In fact, much of the political and the aesthetic are inescapably intertwined and often manifest themselves in myriad works of art that intersect political and aesthetic spectrums in many ways, far beyond “two political categories.”
Some art does emphasize the libratory more than other art - and that is one type of art that has a central role in social change. It’s not the only type of art, nor should it be. And it’s not the only type of art found in movements for social change. It seems clear though that libratory art is the type of art most forcefully opposed by the reigning powers of injustice, probably because such art is the most threatening, the most powerful sort of art for change.
Non-programmatic instrumental music is in the realm of politics and morality, in that a choice was made to create it rather than to create something that does clearly partisan or more pointedly ethical work.
No, I don’t buy that. It’s like saying atheism is a religion.
However:
There are all kinds of ways to categorize art and many different reasons to produce it and experience it - to enhance one’s perception and imagination and so on, to name some reasons possibly apart from moral and political.
That I agree with. To call art political is to decide to view it within a certain mental framework, or filter. Sometimes that framework should be used, definitely, but it’s not the only one, and should not be used exclusively.
I note you don’t disagree with what I wrote, as you quote above. You misstate it, then disagree with your misstatement.
Uh… I quoted two different parts of what you wrote, disagreed with one part and agreed with another part.
And I’m stating my positions, and my view of things you’ve written from my positions. I have different perspectives than you. For me, the difference between the statement that all art is objectively political and the statement that all art can be viewed politically, which admits subjectivity, is very important. You may not think it is, but I do.
I also view morality and politics as near opposites. I bet you disagree with that. You probably have a different definition of at least one of those words than I. From my observations politics are about one thing: power. And from my observations political acts are acts of manipulation, deception, and competition. (As you and I are involved in a partially political discussion, I admit to being guilty of the first and third of those things. Hopefully I’m not guilty of the second.)
And perhaps my understanding of your position based on what you’ve been writing is flawed, because it seems to me like you’ve been generalizing from the particular and making some rather black-and-white statements. It also definitely seems to me like “There are all kinds of ways to categorize art and many different reasons to produce it and experience it - to enhance one’s perception and imagination and so on, to name some reasons possibly apart from moral and political” implies that not all human activity is objectively political, even if it has “political” consequences. Perhaps it’s you who doesn’t disagree with me?
I’ll end by likening art to two activities to clarify my position. First, science. Certainly technology is not entirely neutral, and soemtimes not neutral at all, and certainly the answers you get depend on the questions you ask, but when one is investigating the nature of the universe, one should do so without an objective other than truth. I think the Bush administration demonstrates the problems with politics interfering with science. Science shouldn’t be within the realm of politics, politics should be within the realm of science.
Second, sex. Rape is a political act. Making love isn’t. Propaganda is a political act. Political art is an artistic act, and to be effective either artistically or politically it must be more than political. And that means there is more than the political.