Forum / The Occupy movement: morality in the arts

Marcus Speh
Nov 14, 04:44pm

you might be interested in the 1st instalment of a panel discussion on the OCCUPY morality in the arts that i was lucky to participate in recently. <a href="http://atticusbooksonline.com/the-occupy-movement-morality-in-the-arts">online now at atticus books</a>. this was an excellent discussion which included fictionaut (and <a href="http://atticusreview.org">atticus review</a> editor-in-chief) katrina gray—enjoy and please share widely.

Christopher Allen
Nov 14, 05:15pm

A very important discussion. Wow. And wonderfully done.

Sam Rasnake
Nov 14, 05:27pm

Great - Enjoyed.

James Lloyd Davis
Nov 14, 06:52pm

Interesting. Going back to read it again. I'm familiar with the Edward Abbey quote and admired his novels. The context of the quote, Abbey's "A writer's Credo," which is linked in the discussion through hypertext, is marvelously relevant when read in toto:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Na5l5WZ5mQwC&pg=PA373&lpg=PA373&dq=%22A+Writer's+Credo%22+in+The+Serpents+of+Paradise&source=bl&ots=G8O9SWbpsX&sig=UK13udeKC2EDclzWpMWqK_eW898&hl=en&ei=2ae6TvKUG6Si2gWT2qm6Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

I particularly agree with the bottom line of that Credo which simply states, "The people know who their enemies are." I love the instinctive presumption that all ordinary men and women can read between the lines of rhetoric and discern for themselves what is just and what is unjust.

You can fool them for a time, lull them to sleep with a dream, but when they wake up, something like OWS happens and the tables get turned. Stuff happens. People take sides and it gets serious.

I love the fact that these discussions are taking place, that questions are being asked about the role of the arts in political events and in relation to morality in general.

Thanks, Marcus, for the link.

Susan Tepper
Nov 14, 11:23pm

Good conversation at this link. It makes one think..

Susan Tepper
Nov 14, 11:24pm

Specifically I was referring to the conversation on Atticus Review.

David Ackley
Nov 15, 03:48am

Sometimes discussions like this blur the distinction between art and artist. In their persons artists ought to feel the same obligations to society and morality as any responsible and responsive person, interpret these how you will. However, it is dangerous I think to try to oblige an artist's art to those same requirements. Art only ought to be responsible to the artist's unique and individual vision, the truth as she sees it. Burdening art with preaching and right thinking has produced the corrupted vision of Socialist Realism during the soviet era and the propaganda films of Leni Reifenstal for Hitler.

RW Spryszak
Nov 15, 07:33am

David's comment is very insightful, I believe. Heavy handed messaging in writing has much the same effect on me as a low-cut red dress on a well-endowed blond; too overt + no subtlety = oh go away.

Better to be subversive, which is only really done when the story stays true to the story it is telling.

It's Old Man And The Sea Syndrome (which I just made up). Everyone is sure it's a metaphor for something, but the author says it's just a story about a guy who goes fishing.

That's how to do it right.

James Lloyd Davis
Nov 15, 02:28pm

As artists, men and women with mind, heart, opinions and compassion, we are subject to all the passions and desires of all humanity, a group that may include cowboys, truckers, CPAs, web consultants, waitresses, and unemployed physicists. Some readers appreciate a little bite in their diet of books.

You cannot excise humanity from art... well, you can, acutaually can't you? But why would anyone choose to excise moral leverage as a matter of personal principle or to serve the odd notion that the purity of art is served by selective silence, ambiguity, ambivalence or filtration of opinion in morality.

I doubt that anyone here is suggesting that artists who refrain from injecting morality or ideology into their work are somehow wanting, so it's odd to hear people suggest that those who do are preaching, writing with heavy blunt objects in their too, too obvious metaphors.

The corrupted vision of the Nazis in Germany found a fertile field in the amoral nihilism of popular German culture in their day.

Perhaps in literary fashions extant these days, Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, with it's overt message and obvious drum beat of leftist ideology, would be considered heavy handed. Nonetheless, it becomes a perennial
favorite with readers long after the author has passed away, long after the struggle of Tom Joad has passed away.

Or has it?

Is it possible that, as in Steinbeck's time, the rich and powerful have become too rich and powerful, and that people are out of work everywhere, that people are losing their homes? I guess if that were the case, we'd all know it, right? There would be powerful literature out there to reflect it,right? Nah, if things were that bad, our literature would mirror the society that sustains it. Right?

There is nothing wrong with being obvious and clarity is not a concept for anyone to fear, although obscurity through multiple layers of metaphor seems to be rewarded in some literary circles. A matter of taste and opinion, I suppose, but I believe that such trends lead to a decline in attendance overall. If you don't speak their language, if you don't express the unspoken questions that exist in the minds of all the people? Just maybe they'll stop listening to what you have to say.

Jane Hammons
Nov 15, 03:42pm

http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2011/11/printable-open-university-schedule-for.html

Just wanted to share the UC Berkeley schedule for today's Open University, a strike in response to UCPD's violent "nudging," along with other violence, of many students and faculty. I hope for a peaceful teach-in. Off to work!

Ann Bogle
Nov 15, 08:08pm

Thanks, all, for this thread. Good luck, Jane! Bruce Fancher just tweeted a link to the "Obey Wall Street" site. First mention like it I'd seen.

Marcus Speh
Nov 15, 08:51pm

part II of the discussion is online now: "<a href="http://atticusbooksonline.com/the-occupy-movement-music-as-democracy-or-music-as-greed">The Occupy Movement: Music as Democracy or Music as Greed?</a>".

Marcus Speh
Nov 15, 09:11pm

@david — thanks for clarifying...you said:

<blockquote>"Burdening art with preaching and right thinking has produced the corrupted vision of Socialist Realism during the soviet era and the propaganda films of Leni Reifenstal for Hitler."</blockquote>

i strongly disagree. i believe the soviet artists and riefenstahl exactly painted and filmed "the truth as they saw it", fully authentic, not mislead or "burdened" by a moral mission. i don't think goebbel's preaching created anything, or stalin's for that matter. if anything, it's the other way around: those artists nurtured fascism, according to what i've been trying to say: art creates culture, not the other way around. In Gardner's words (I quote & explain this <a href="http://atticusbooksonline.com/the-occupy-movement-morality-in-the-arts">in the discussion</a>):

«Art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy. It is a tragic game, for those who have the wit to take it seriously, because our side must lose; a comic game—or so a troll might say—because only a clown with sawdust brains would take our side and eagerly join in.»

Artists who stood (and stand) on the side of fascism, who stand against decency and ultimately against the people, against the 99%, are agents of chaos and death. Attributes that fit for the Nazis Riefenstahl (film), Breker (sculpture), Speer (architecture).

James Lloyd Davis
Nov 15, 09:46pm

Amen, Marcus.

Going back to my post, I see that I have once again and very cleverly invented a word, "acutaually." I don't think I meant to, but I'll stand behind it and offer it up for general consumption as a neo-impressionistic form of the word, "actually."

In my defense, I was excited.

David Ackley
Nov 15, 09:59pm

Marcus, there were both positive and negative incentives for work adhering to Socialist Realist criteria, which is to say in support of the regime's stated morality, in the soviet era. Only works embodying those goals were disseminated and their writers supported by the state. Writers who didn't toe the party line were imprisoned and shot. Telling 'the truth as one saw it' was the moral act in that context and artists who did so paid the price with their lives, like Babel and Mandelstam for example. Included among the victims were those whose work was expressly moral and others whose work wasn't. I was speaking against the notion of requiring that art have a particular content--moral or not--in order to be acceptable and inveighing against the idea that art ought to be subject to such expectations in judging its worth. The pressure to be " moral" also seems to me to carry with it a particular unstated version of "morality" that is in its own way censorious.

Marcus Speh
Nov 15, 10:19pm

david, yes, of course...i use the word "moral" for the same reason that gardner used it presumably: to attract attention. i'd rather say "life-affirming", which does not carry the same connotations, i presume.

not "acutaually", at least, james (i am excited, too).

RW Spryszak
Nov 16, 12:32pm

I think to hold to a standard of art the requirement remains being subversive rather than blatant. For me David's key word is "burdening..." actually...

James Lloyd Davis
Nov 16, 02:45pm

"A standard of art"... the phrase itself is presumptuous, I think. Art is fluid, never so structured that any force will contain or command it. When art is discussed, the perceptions will always be varied because it is a phenomenon that follows no rule, but changes to suit a curious and unknowable force, the artist. Artists are not a collective body, but are individuals. "Schools" exist only as perceptions after the fact and are classifications only, a collective definition for archivists and academics.

No one can hold a standard to art or impose requirements on the individual artist. Academic institutions and governments sometimes try to grab the reins and transcend their position from that of observer to the role of judgement and regulation, but that always fails eventually. The avant garde doesn't flow from institutions as though they are some empowering force. Never has and never will. Creative energy moves individuals into expression through the arts and not inversely. Art does not make artists, artists make art. Individuals define the art... people define the art.

People ultimately bear a responsibility to one another in a moral context. I believe that. I believe that when a prevailing sense of social responsibility is weakened, then beneficial societies and governments will collapse. History gives us so many examples.

This is my only point and a point of departure from the forum, since all I can do now is to restate an unwavering opinion.

Democracy and social justice will fail in an atmosphere of apathy and ambivalence. If an artist is a citizen in a democratic society and has the power to influence and thus preserve and protect the qualities of freedom and justice within that society through the use of his or her art, then I believe there is a mandate to do so. It is not a mandate that proceeds from the art itself, but from the artist's humanity.

Darryl Price
Nov 16, 04:29pm

Some John Lennon thoughts:"We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're doing what we can
But when you want money
for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right
Ah

ah, ah, ah, ah, ah...

You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You better free you mind instead"

Marcus Speh
Nov 16, 05:31pm

ha, darryl, it's gonna be alright. thanks, mate.

part III of the panel discussion is online now: «<a href="http://atticusbooksonline.com/the-occupy-movement-can-a-protest-lead-to-meaningful-social-change">The Occupy Movement: ‘Hell no! We won’t go!’</a>.»

since <a href="http://blog.marcusspeh.com/?page_id=5954">my own contribution to this discussion</a> has a word count of 3000 words & took me the better part of one week to write, i will refrain from adding more to it. time to digest & keep one's fingers crossed for the movement.

RW Spryszak
Nov 16, 07:56pm

The only argument here is one of means. I favor subversion because, obviously, it uses fewer words and people will actually read the whole message. :-)

James Lloyd Davis
Nov 16, 10:20pm

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Shakespeare, before the bar (or in the bar...)

James Lloyd Davis
Nov 17, 12:40am

“The founders never intended indefinite free speech. They assumed that after two weeks any protest would be wiped out by small pox.”

Stephen Colbert

stephen hastings-king
Nov 17, 01:12am

i read the exchange about the occupation movement and found it interesting. well done. i will say, though, that i am deeply uncomfortable with the language of morality in a political context, particularly when it comes with an assumption that, somehow, shifting into that register bypasses politics. more often, it is an expression of a politics, once that moves to abstract it from a political context and write it into some higher-order framework. but there is no higher-order framework. this is maybe a main reason why moral philosophers insist with such vehemence that there is such a thing and imagine that failing to see it would lead to wholesale social breakdown. this follows from a notion of original sin more than it does from any rational consideration. people who were politically committed to fascism were able to carry out appalling actions and justify them on moral grounds--if you believed, for example, that there were social parasites that infected the body politic, it is not hard to see how the elimination of that parasite was a moral obligation. if someone committed to stalinism saw in the phantom of the hitlero-trotskyite wrecker an explanation for the problems encountered by socialist construction in one country, it was not a big step to a justification of acting against people taken to embody that principle on moral grounds. same goes for people opposed any of the above. the problem lay in the construction of the frameworks that enable such actions and the media through which they are disseminated. both can be and are deeply problematic *if* a political uniformity can be imposed along with that framework. this is a basic problem of ideology, of worldview if you like, and how these things are made. recourse to a language of morality is a move inside an ideological context and not a move that abstracts a speaker from that context. so i would place the weight on argument, on being able to make them and process them and derive consequences from them---which is basic to any notion of democracy that means anything. a plurality of viewpoints is only meaningful in a context that valorizes argument. without that, a plurality of viewpoints presents people with a kind of shopping problem, which memes best fit with their real or imaginary (and there's no strict distinction) lifestyle or their aesthetics (the notion of symmetry is an aesthetic matter, so the notion of what "fits"). this isn't directed really at the usages made of the notion of morality above in marcus' posts or in john gardiner--it's more about the register itself as a way of speaking and thinking about speaking and, by extension, of thinking about position when one speaks (where one speaks from).

but then again, it's been a long day and maybe some of the above follows from that too.

James Lloyd Davis
Nov 18, 03:41pm

Maybe it's a matter of semantics that people object to here. Morality in writing might equate to some concept carried over from the notion that morality is just another brand of "religiosity," that new word coined to cover the hypocrisies of certain unnamed descendents of the Puritan ethos.

When I speak of morality in literature, my own understanding of the phrase comes from the anti-hypocrisy aspect of the term morality. I'm thinking morality in terms of treating others humanely. In my mind, self-serving greed is not the "sin of avarice," the breaking of some covenant with an uncommunicative deity who demands a tithe and a weekly hymn. No, to my way of thinking, greed is the new, institutionalized self-indulgent characteristic of self-serving people who justify dishonesty, bribery, and political corruption in some curious logic resembling the cult of social darwinism practiced by people and nations just prior to the Great Depression in America and the Holocaust in Europe.

Maybe what is needed is a better exercise in defining the terms of morality.

Just a thought.

Ann Bogle
Nov 18, 05:20pm

Mother Ann Lee was the founder of the Shakers. Although I am not a Shaker and didn't go to jail for dancing off evil spirits on street corners in London, I quote her at the beginning of my M.F.A. thesis (U of Houston). She wrote, "Form is the best response to the forces calling it into being."

Darryl Price
Nov 20, 05:53pm

I hope you all saw the piece in the times today. The students did the most remarkable piece of protest art in ages. They floated their tents in the sky. What a moment of rare beauty caught blowing against the savage response of the rigid non-listeners, who don't believe in change, who are afraid of anyone who speaks out loud, who want to attack and burn every joyful noise ever made,who spend their time stamping the grass down whenever they're not consuming vast amounts of cash soup cider with all their armoured personel, you know, the barbecue buddies with the hidden agendas and the full clips of real bullets to match, the pretenders who think they are shipwrecked on an island of savages, who couldn't locate an actual beating heart that cared about more than getting their own under all those heaps of bigotry if they tried, the big babies with the even bigger baseball bats,who are always willing and eager to use them. They've killed many a newly born firefly without so much as a second of remorse for the loss to our beloved fields of vision. And yet beauty persists. Honor persists. Courage. Hope. Dreams. Humanity persists.Because there is good, and goodness, and goodwill to be had each and every moment somewhere in the world, too.
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