Art for Whose Sake?

Okay, you've got art for art's sake, art for propaganda, and a slice of personal horn-blowing in between. What goes with this sandwich? The pickle we're in. My first need here is to define "propaganda." Remember Brenda Lee's ancient hit, "I'm Sorry?" I sure do, with love, but I also remember a line in it that I was raised on by my parental generation: "Mistakes are part of being young." Oh yeah? Well... yeah, actually. True enough. The young make lots of mistakes characteristically. What's not true is the implication: that older people don't, that when you "grow up" you grow out of making mistakes, so do as I say not as I do, blah blah blah. And that implication is the lie hiding behind the truth, because making mistakes is part of being older too. (My own experience is that the young tend to make varied experimental mistakes, whereas older people tend to make the same tired old mistakes over and over.) So propaganda is a lie hiding behind a truth.

Thanks to Steven Leech for the Laura Bush/Poetry story, which I missed at the time, and which is instructive-- in microcosm it was just yet one more ugly american assumption that the rest of the world is no more than a classroom of sing-along children (it's a small world after all, it's a...), and that implication is the lie. A lie that this time around got revealed. Propaganda by gently coerced default.

Phil Bannowsky touches this base as well. What's wrong with an overt message in art? Is the problem fundamental, or just a slippery slope issue wherein the message might overwhelm the medium and hammer us where a magic wand might weild more savvy weight? From another angle, is it even possible to open your mouth and not advertise? Is there a love-poem in creation that doesn't advertize me or mine above others in the marketplace of life?

I have never deliberately been a "political" poet in the sense of instrumentally serving a specific organized cause, but I have also never tried not to be, understanding that truth is not something that fits in a box. Or, to put it the other way around, if it does fit in a box, it's probably not the truth-- which is why art for art's sake is probably a lie, since it chooses to live in a box. And so, (at long last) I vote for advertising, provided it is honest. It is simply physically impossible at any moment to see the universe except from one place instead of from all the others. That doesn't mean the truth will sell or not hurt. It just means that if you don't want to live under a box-top, but under the sky, you've got to accept the weather, rain or shine.

Earl Turner's Ghost

Last week I found myself re-reading The Turner Diaries after almost 25 years. I can't say I meant to. Something about the more extreme Tea Party rhetoric brought it to mind. And the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombings is this month. I just wanted to check on a few quotes I thought I remembered and wound up reading the whole thing. Not the two most productive hours of my life, that's for sure.

The book was pretty much as I remembered it. (Although the electronic version I first started reading was heavily abridged, with some of the more detailed descriptions of illegal activity, such as the bombing of an FBI building, removed.) As with a lot of propaganda, Andrew Macdonald’s (aka William Pierce) writing is clunky and stilted. However, it gets almost gleefully gory towards the end when describing scenes of mass genocide. I still think the Diaries contains the most hateful passage in American letters: Earl Turner's fictional entry for August 1, 1993, the “Day of the Rope”, which relates in stomach churning detail the mass hangings of so-called “race criminals” in Los Angeles.

The Turner Diaries was written in the late 70’s and, for the most part, seems amazingly dated. Only two groups fuel Earl Turner’s righteous anger: Jews, who in spite of their inferior status, somehow manage to control everything from the banks to the dreaded Equality Police and Blacks, who function as their incompetent subhuman henchmen. There's only a passing mention of illegal immigrants, homosexuals and feminists. The mass media mostly ignore Earl Turner and his fellow guerilla patriots until its too late. There's no equivalent of the talk radio echo chamber or Fox News to stoke the fires and give free publicity.

On the other hand: there are plenty of screeds about Second Amendment Rights. In fact, it is the fictional Gun Raids of 1989 that precipitate Earl Turner’s descent into crime and terrorism.

Once again I wondered just what was it about this hastily written book that inspired so many people to try to live it, often with tragic consequences. After all, it’s only words — and not particularly eloquent ones at that.

***

I have a theory about evil. I believe we all have the capacity for it; it rests in us like some sleeper virus waiting for a trigger. In most of us, it stays asleep a good part of the time. Thankfully, very few of us are born without any capacity to resist it.

But sometimes our resistance falters, the virus stirs and begins to multiply. One of the things that can drop our resistance in a heartbeat is a life-changing trauma. For Earl Turner, it’s the raid on his apartment and his subsequent arrest. The arrest leads to the loss of his job and his stable, ordinary life as an electrical engineer with latent racist tendencies. For a while he is able to coast, taking contracting jobs with some local electronics firms, but soon his deepening involvement with the racist underground leads him to a place where he’s poised to pass the point of no return.

“Now everything is chaotic and uncertain,” he writes. “When I think about the future, I become depressed. It’s impossible to know what will happen, but it’s certain that I’ll never be able to go back to the quiet, orderly kind of life I had before.”

In other words, Earl Turner has lost his center and realizes he’s in danger of losing his sanity. He commits to writing the diary to regain his psychological footing, but also to rationalize the evil he’s done so far, to become “reconciled” to his new way of life. This fateful decision to reconcile allows the evil in Turner to really blossom. With each violent act, his tolerance for atrocity grows, until he becomes a person who can shoot people in cold blood and find solace in the death of thousands.

***

Our nation has gone through several life-changing traumas in this young century. The first, of course, was 9-11. What? You mean we’re not invincible? This was followed quickly by the collapse of Enron and WorldCom. You mean I can work my whole life, be a loyal employee and all, and lose everything in a day? Then, Katrina. We let a city drown while the whole world watched? And finally the housing bubble burst, which eventually led to the Great Recession we’re in now. That whole American Dream thing was one big lie?

To add to all the heartache, there is the sinking feeling things will never truly go back to the way they were. We can try to patch things up, but we all know they really won't be fixed. The changes needed now are so far outside of our consensus thinking that when we try to imagine the future, all we can see is a black hole.

There are plenty of people in this country who are hurting and looking for a way to quiet their pain. Some will merely squelch it with antidepressants; others will start looking for someone or something to blame. Maybe it’s the Socialist Republic of Obama bin Biden. Maybe it’s all those illegal immigrants who stubbornly refuse to speak English. Maybe it’s Obamacare. Maybe a few of them will listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck and be inspired to “do something” — or, God forbid, stumble on a link to the online version of The Turner Diaries and plan to blow something up. They say an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, but so is a shattered heart.

Earl Turner made a personal decision to descend into evil, but he never would have gotten that far without his fellow racist warriors to egg him on. Words have power — and when people are hurt, vulnerable and standing at the crossroads that power is infinitely multiplied.

Those who use violent or hateful language to “fire up the base” might as well be playing Russian Roulette. Most of the time you’ll escape with your life. But then again: there’s always that chance you’ll get the bullet.

Jack Bauer, Drop Your Weapon

It’s official. Day 8 of the series 24 is going to be its last. The show’s ratings have dropped significantly among its key demographic (18-24); several key actors’ contracts are about to expire and the show’s writers and producers can’t come up with a compelling story arc for Day 9. Might as well end the show in good form rather than let it limp into irrelevance like the X-files. There are plans for a 24 movie sometime in the nebulous future, but when the last hour airs in May, for all practical purposes, 24 is done.

I came to 24 late in the game (Day 5) and watched the series inside out, catching up on earlier seasons by renting DVDs and downloading the occasional discounted episode from iTunes. My main reason for watching was to have something to talk about with my co-workers, the majority of which were rabid fans of the show. I continued watching (long after many of my colleagues had stopped) to see how the show’s writers would deal with a most difficult creative dilemma.

You see, until 2 seasons ago, 24 relied extensively on torture as a dramatic device. Then the infamous Abu Ghraib photos appeared. Suddenly, as many as two torture scenes per 43 minute episode didn’t look so good — especially since 24 was exported around the world. At one point officials from the US Army met with producers of the show and asked that they tone it down.

Torture in 24 land was soft core violence porn that had very little to do with torture in reality. Bad guys favored the low-tech bloodier forms: battery acid, pulling out of finger and toenails, sawing off of extremities. Good guys were partial to the high-tech stuff — designer drugs that produced mind-numbing (and tongue-loosening) pain and psychological humiliation — but if the situation demanded it, they could pull off the low-tech stuff as well as any master villain.

Torture in 24 was 100% effective; it always produced actionable intelligence that saved many lives. And while 24’s super agent Jack Bauer didn’t enjoy being cruel, he rationalized it as a necessary evil. After all, he was fighting a war.

So here was the writers’ challenge: to keep the show’s trademark tinderbox high tension while giving Jack Bauer more than a comic book conscience. Oh yes, and to find another device to keep viewers on the edge of their seats.

The more thoughtful Jack Bauer first appeared in a special episode entitled Redemption which aired after a long hiatus due to the writers’ strike. In this episode Bauer is a fugitive hiding out at his friend’s orphanage and school in an African country that resembles a combination of Sierra Leone and Rwanda.

Jack is haunted by his past deeds of barbarous heroism and is a man with nothing important left to lose. His wife was killed long ago; his evil father and brother are dead and the latest love of his life lies catatonic in a bedroom in her father’s house. His daughter has stopped talking to him because he is a death magnet. And: by this time, Bauer has been a victim of torture. A couple seasons back he was tortured at the hands of the Chinese.

Someone arrives at the orphanage to serve Jack with a subpoena to appear before a Congressional committee. Bauer’s about to pack his bags and be on the road again when suddenly it looks like the orphanage might be in danger. The old Jack springs into action to save the children, but ultimately to accomplish that end, he has to give himself up to authorities.

The fan reaction, judging from various discussion boards, was mixed. While there was enough ass-kicking, explosions and car chases to please some people, and others were just glad Jack Bauer had returned, it unnerved some fans to be presented with a hero with doubts about his mission.

The following season had the requisite number of explosions, gunfights and terrorists, but it also featured storylines about the legality and morality of torture, questionable methods of investigation such as racial and religious profiling and the outsourcing of military operations to private security firms. Jack is exposed to a deadly designer virus and in one climatic scene near the end of the season, actually asks a Muslim cleric for absolution when it looks like death is near.

Fan reaction was uneven at best. A big complaint was that the show had gotten too preachy and political (as if it wasn’t political before) and that Jack had gotten wimpy. Even a terminally ill Jack would have been G.I. Joe to the end.

I thought last season was okay for what it was. Some of the dialog addressing hot potato topics was clunky, but then again the show was never known for its snappy wit. Besides: how subtle can you be when your main character is either shouting or speaking in a hoarse whisper? Sometimes the medium limits the message and you write yourself into a corner. I doubt I could have done better.

***

Whatever you may think of 24, if indeed you think about it at all, it does serve a purpose. Since we are not a nation of deep readers, TV is how most of us deal with national trauma. Something horrible happens and then the made for TV movie appears. You ease into your favorite couch, grab the remote, watch, process and move on.

24 is a 9-11 “do-over” show. (The Unit was another shorter-lived example.) It presents a world that is both more evolved and far more dangerous than our own. 24 has had two Black presidents and one woman president and is about to broker a peace deal with a country that closely resembles Iran. (Although after Monday’s episode, that deal might have been shot to hell.) However, there’s also been a mushroom cloud over LA. But Jack always thwarts the terrorists, the tech comes online in the nick of time and the millennium changing disasters are always averted. If only it were true.

Perhaps the fact 24 has lost its mojo means we no longer have as strong a need to relive, repackage and revise 9-11. Maybe we are finally getting closer to that time when we can rise from our easy chairs, gather up our grief and anger and move on.

A Day that Poetry Mattered

For those of us who were introduced to the literary life during those scary years of the Cold War, on the cusp of the counter culture with its anti-Vietnam War, Civil Rights Movements, and all those other progressive movements which now define the national dialogue, we have been witness not to a New Morning in America but to an American nightmare. Its darkest time was in those days and weeks and months that followed the events of September 11th. Not only was the Iraq War the wrong war fought for essentially no reason, since nothing was found, but also because of the Bush's Administration's assault on our Constitutional protections. Lies had fed the crest of mass hysteria headlong into one big bad bill to pay and a pack of angry nations.

While that hysteria was being whipped to a froth, cooler heads prevailed among poets and others who lived the literary life. Is it any wonder? Even though we may lead the literary life, that doesn’t mean we don’t see through all their crap. And we don’t like being co-opted either, which is what Laura Bush, the First Lady, attempted to do on the eve of the Iraq War. Let me refresh some memories.

For February 2003, Mrs. Bush attempted to convene a White House symposium of poets and literati on Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Langston Hughes. Invitations went out and in return poets everywhere responded with anti-war poems. Her symposium was canceled. This is not the end of the story.

On February 17, 2003, during a blizzard, at the Lincoln Center in New York City, two thousand people convened for a reading. The event was billed as “Poems Not Fit For the White House” and its warning was of the consequences of the Bush Administration’s headlong rush to war. You’d be surprised who showed up.

Among those poets not particularly known to involve themselves or their work with a lot of political or even social issues were Sam Hamill, Sharon Olds, and a 97-year old Stanley Kunitz, who delivered one of the more moving poems presented during the event. Some poets couldn’t make the event because of the snowstorm and had others read for them. For example, Ellen McLaughlin read for Robert Pinsky, Kathleen Chalfant read for C.K. Williams, the actor Eli Wallach read for Robert Creeley, Wallace Shawn read for Mark Strand, and André Gregory read for W. S. Merwin. Arthur Miller, whose 1953 play The Crucible was an allegory of Senator Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunt of suspected subversives throughout the early 1950s, was a participant. Anne Waldman, in keeping with the theme originally proposed by Laura Bush, read poems by Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Langston Hughes, as well as her own poem “War Crime.”

The writing of poetry is not an “either/or” proposition. Just because a poet may also be an activist, or maybe only a proponent of a cause, does not make that poet incapable of writing poetry that is closer to writing poetry merely for the sake of poetry. Laura Bush evidently took it for granted that poets were either, at best, apolitical or, at least, without a conscience. She may have been surprised that such great crafters of poetry like W. S. Merwin and Stanley Kunitz also thought about issues crucial to the welfare of our national community.

Personally, I’ve been accused of using literature as propaganda. At times, I’ve thought this accusation to be unfair, because I had only felt the need to expose something important going on in the environment around us that needed exposing. I’ve always been upset when a good poet disassociated him or herself from a project with which I was involved because we weren’t restricting our endeavors to writing or promoting poetry only for poetry’s sake. A good poet can write both kinds of poetry within this kind of imposed dichotomy. And a good poet should never be afraid to let his or her conscience show, especially when it could benefit the welfare of all those we care about during times of crisis. Poetry does not only matter to the individual poet and his or her devotees. The real value of poetry is that it should matter to us all.

Who Pays the Piper

A regular theme here at Broken Turtle is that corporate funding for the arts comes with strings. That is not to say that craft and inspiration can’t break free and project a progressive vision from time to time, one that speaks with an honest heart about a shameful outrage against an American city. Such was the accomplishment of Ten Months: The Wilmington Voices Project, a three-person show portraying the memories and lasting legacy of the 1968 rebellion/riots in Wilmington, Delaware and the ten-month occupation by the National Guard following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Conceived and Directed by Anne Marie Cammarato, the play will continue from March 31 through April 4 at the Delaware Theatre Company.

The work was not so much composed as harvested from memories and archives buried for forty years. The actors, Taïfa Harris, Erin Moon, and Ben Cherry, shift deftly among a host of characters: a white man who romanticizes Wilmington’s history from the Lenni Lenape to the DuPonts, a teenager rapping the words of Wilmington poet Devon Morrison, an aging African American man, wondering where his city went.

I do believe that such authenticity is a starting point for empowerment and change. But let me quote from a letter I published in today's News Journal to tell you what happened:

My enjoyment of Anne Marie Cammarato’s poignant exploration of painful memories in “10 Months: The Wilmington voices Project,” was dashed by the corporate propaganda inserted in the discussion following the show.

The Rodel Foundation-sponsored discourse led to a pitch for “Race to the Top,” which could rip up union contracts, fire principals and teachers wholesale at schools that serve the poor, and bribe cash-strapped school districts to surrender community control. The Rodel Foundatin, Eli Broad (ex-director of Notorious AIG) and their corporate partners have dominated education discussions in our state and marginalized less-powerful voices that might better advance community needs.

Diane Ravitch, assistant Secretary of Education for presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and formerly an advocate for such schemes, has now reversed herself in the face of their sobering results. Ravitch now concludes that high-stakes testing, “utopian” goals, “draconian” penalties, school closings, privatization and charter schools don’t work. She writes that “[t]he best predictor of low academic performance is poverty–not bad teachers.”

Today, it was announced that Delaware and Tennessee are two of the eventual 16 state winners of the “Race to the Top” competition and, along with it, $100 million in funds. Now, when government joins with communities to support their needs, that’s great. But when the government foists a corporate agenda on public education, that’s real tea party material.  It remains to be seen, much in the same manner as the recent Health Care package just signed by President Obama, if the “Race to the Top” will more benefit the community or the corporations. There has certainly been very little real debate locally, other than a column I wrote, “So-called school reform serves corporate ends,” back in April 2008, and some recent remarks in Delaware Liberal blog.

Back to the arts, many folks say we should avoid overt messages. It’s amazing how corporate sponsors don’t seem to feel that way.

Brainwashed

Earlier today I was watching CSPAN with my sister and my housemate. CSPAN were airing a countdown to the House Health Care Bill debate, showing the motley protest in front of the Capitol and taking calls.

One call especially caught my attention. The caller, who was opposed to the bill, declared: “Health care is a privilege, not a right.” He didn’t sound the least bit crazy. He was just stating what he felt was a natural born fact. In this world, the caller figured, some had and some didn’t. He didn’t happen to have health care at the moment, but he didn’t trust the government to do it right. If he got sick and died, he figured that was the way it was supposed to be. It was what he deserved.

“Poor deluded man,” my sister said. “Society’s really brainwashed him.”

“Did he really say health care is a privilege?” my housemate asked in disbelief. “Did he actually say that?”

“Why are Americans such idiots?” I lamented.

The caller was an easy guy to laugh at, but on the way home, I thought about it.

I have my own health care horror story of sorts. It’s quite a tale of woe, but I’ll give you the short version here. Almost exactly three years ago, I tried to push my car out of a snow drift. Afterwards, I felt a pain above my right knee. After the pain persisted for more than a week, I had the leg x-rayed. The doctor said I hadn’t broken anything and gave me some naproxen, saying whatever it was should clear up in a week.

It didn’t. Gradually, my body fell apart until it got to the point I could only get around with a walker. (Actually I probably should have used a wheelchair, but I stubbornly refused. Pride, you see.) I was in mind-numbing pain. But somehow I always managed to get my butt out of bed and go to work — even as my legs grew as twisted as the roots of an old oak tree.

It eventually took four surgeries over one year and six days to rebuild me. I avoided the surgeon’s knife for as long as I could. Part of the reason was because I’d never had surgery before and hadn’t spent much time in a hospital since the day I’d been born. But the main reason was because I was scared to take the time off of work and admit I was that broken.

Because once I admitted that, I was vulnerable and I knew it.

I’m better now, though not perfect. I walk with a cane and a rolling limp, but at least I’m not in pain. But my sickness cost me my job — and in a little over a month — my health insurance.

And even though I don’t want to admit it, there’s a part of me that believes, just like that CSPAN caller would, that somehow this is all my fault. It wasn’t just my body that failed; it was me. And my personal failure was a drag on everyone else’s premiums and so it was right I was kicked to the curb. Sickness is expensive, y’know, even evil, stifling sacred profits. I was the bad guy.

It’s hard to live in a country all your life and not be brainwashed — at least a little. Yes, I can be an American Idiot, too.

***

Right now Congress is debating the Health Care Bill. They’ve been at it for at least 90 minutes. (Or they could be done. I don’t know. It was too nerve-wracking to watch in real time. I’ll check the post-mortems in morning.) Hopefully, they will do the right thing and pass the bill. It’s far from perfect, but at least it’s in the right direction.

Someday in this country healthcare will no longer be a privilege; it will be a right that seems just as natural born as the status quo does today. And someday a serious illness will no longer make you feel like you are somehow less of a human being — and that you should be thankful for whatever little you get.

Giving It Up for the Future

The late two-time Delaware Poet Laureate David Hudson died a bitter man back in 2003. There were many reasons for his bitterness, some legitimate and some fallacious. Fallacious or not, one of those sources of his bitterness stemmed from the notion that poetry could have a role in effecting our social and cultural environment. The fact that he stopped actively being a poet in his later years and turned to political activity was an indication of his frustrations. Politics has a better chance of affecting change than poetry. So much so had Hudson turned his back on poetry that nearly a quarter century after giving up on poetry, many were surprised that he had ever publicly made a name for himself as a poet. Of the few who had remembered he’d been Poet Laureate, there were those who absolutely hated David Hudson to the extent of publicly voicing glad tidings at his death. In the end the bitterness got spread around and the result on our social and cultural environment was to receive bitterness’ small dose of poison.

Like Hudson, I’ve given up writing poetry for many of the same kinds of reasons in favor of prose, which judging from the near total lack of sales of my literary art contributes to my own bitterness. My point here is that I’m really not bellyaching over my own failure as a literary artist. I’m just not writing fiction any longer for those who don’t appreciate my effort. I’m still writing fiction, however, and I’m writing it for the future, when probably none of us will be around anymore. It is the future, after I’m long gone, that my work may –– MAY –– find the kind of success for which I intended it today. Its relevancy may  –– MAY –– be revealed in hindsight, but if it isn’t then my life’s work is just as dead as I will be, but its carcass will still collect dust on the library shelf until it also turns to dust.

Douglas Morea was quite correct in equating art and religion. The same sensitive nerve in us that’s touched by art, I suspect, is the same nerve that compels us to at least acknowledge our spiritual capacities. Another dimension of this nexus between, especially, poetry as a form of art and religious experience is its potential for prophecy; and by this I mean the capacity to reveal the visions of the world we see around us into some form of the truth about things and events so that more of us can perceive and understand our environment. If we dare to take our poetry and fiction to the people, then we’ve committed a social act. In spite of our individual conceits and fragile egos, when we write poetry for social consumption we’re doing more than just farting in the bathtub to enjoy the rich bouquet that bubbles to the surface from having digested some essence of the world we experience around us.

In the context of our own local literary history, I often wonder about the effect our literary artists have had on the community in which we live and breathe today. Had Delaware poet and journalist Elizabeth M. Chandler in her short but productive career, and to a certain extent John Lofland, not written literary art in the early 19th century revealing the plight of those held in bondage, might Delaware, officially a “slave state,” have instead joined the Confederacy and not been the gateway to freedom we became for those escaping slavery along the Underground Railroad? Had not George Alfred Townsend written The Entailed Hat after the Civil War, revealing the role played by Patty Cannon, serial killer and kidnapper of Black people in order to make money selling them into slavery, would the Ku Klux Klan have become even a stronger force in Delaware than it had? Had the late 19th century humorist Max Adeler’s vivid depiction of a brutal public whipping in New Castle of an elderly Black woman in Out of the Hurly-Burly been more widely accepted, might there have been a chance that Delaware would not have become the “Jim Crow” state it became up to the early 1960s? Might we have been spared the ugly public lynching that occurred at Price’s Corner in 1903, or might lynchings in Delaware have become epidemic as they had in so many other of our United States? Had not the writings of Alice Dunbar-Nelson inspired many of our local Black citizens to believe in their capacity for excellence, would we have produced a Clifford Brown or Louis Redding? Had not local early 20th century novelists Henry Seidel Canby, Christopher Ward, and Charles Wertenbaker shown us in their novels Wilmington’s cultural barrenness, might not those who followed them, including future Poet Laureates David Hudson and Jeanette Slocomb Edwards, have striven to engender a more rich cultural environment for the city?

And what about us, those of us who have been writing literary art over the last forty years? How will we have improved our community, socially and culturally? How might we be remembered? Or as some suggest, should our literary contributions even deserve to be remembered? Whether we like it or not, we’ve already made our contribution to the future because we’ve been making a contribution to the present all these years. And the final question, if our literary contribution is forgotten, what kind of social and cultural landscape will remain for future generations?