In the most recent Eminem thread, Nick the Greek said he doesn't want to live in a society in which artists are compelled to create only art that's safe for children if they are to be thought of as morally responsible. Well, neither do I. But that's a false choice, isn't it? No serious person believes that art should be devoid of sex and violence, because sex and violence are part of life. It all comes down to how an artist handles those things, and the context in which the art is created. We live now in a culture in which artists and those who promote them refuse any moral responsibility for their work, and tell themselves that they are operating from a position of ethical superiority.
The fact is, art is never created in a vacuum. Here's an example that cuts close to home for me. A few years ago, I was at an international journalism conference, and the question of journalistic self-censorship came up. In one session, I complained that American media outlets self-censored on reporting on radical Islam in the US, out of fear that somewhere, there might be a redneck who takes that information and commits an act of violence against a Muslim. My view was that the information, if true, ought to be reported, and let the chips fall where they may. We American journalists aren't in the habit of suppressing truthful information because of what might be done with it, except in cases of national security or other extraordinary circumstances.
Some of my Third World colleagues said that wouldn't work at all in their countries. They said they deliberately withheld certain information about killings or acts of violence all the time. Why? Because if the full information were reported in their ethnically and religiously divided societies, it would almost certainly spark pogroms and riots in which lots of innocent people would die. For example, if it were reported that a Muslim man had killed a Hindu woman, the reaction could be a mass Hindu attack on a mosque, and mass murder of Muslims. And vice versa. That sort of thing. To self-censor in those contexts was in fact an act of moral and social responsibility.
I saw their point. UPDATE: TMatt's just back from a journalism conference in India, and writes about the same phenomenon.
This Eminem discussion puts me in mind of the 1991 film "Grand Canyon," in which Steve Martin plays Davis, a Hollywood film producer of violent, exploitative movies. He's shot in the thigh in a criminal incident, which prompts an epiphany and a conversion. Here, after the jump, is the part of the screenplay in which Davis tells his friend Mack about his change of life:
Here is Davis, the film producer, explaining to Claire (as I recall) what his having been shot and nearly killed in a robbery attempt has done to his sense of vocation:
DAVIS: ..to try and understand just what exactly had been delivered unto me at the cost of flesh and bone and precious blood... what message was being delivered to me in a. [number] calibre envelope for me to open and read and understand. And this problem, this difficulty I was having in understanding...it grew on me like a fever. It buzzed around my brain till I could no longer sleep or eat or think about anything else. It was as painful and real as the physical wound I could see in my thigh. What? I had a feeling that you, more than anyone, would have a problem taking me seriously.CLAIRE: Please, go on. I am taking you seriously. I'm sorry for whatever you think you saw.
DAVIS: I will go on, but first tell me what made you smile.
CLAIRE: "Unto."
DAVIS: What?CLAIRE: You said "delivered unto" you. I'm sorry.
DAVIS: That is purposeful, my sweet. We're talking about a religious experience. I might say "doth" or "thou" or a lot of things.
CLAIRE: Please, Davis, go on. The suspense is killing me.
DAVIS: At the end of this long, torturous night...my head pounding in syncopation
to my throbbing wound...there came a glorious, delicate dawn. And I knew... I knew
I can't make those movies any more. I can't make another piece of art that glorifies
violence and bloodshed and brutality. I can't contribute another stone to this landslide of dehumanizing rage that has swept across this country like a pestilence.That's a mixed metaphor, isn't it? Anyway, I'm done, kaput, fini. No more exploding bodies, exploding buildings, exploding anything. No more sh*t.
CLAIRE: Davis, that's wonderful. You know how I feel about it.
DAVIS: I think I've always been frank with you.
CLAIRE:To say the least.
DAVIS: You'll never have to say another word.
CLAIRE: I applaud you. Have you told the studio yet?
DAVIS: F**k the studio.
CLAIRE: Have you told your business manager yet?DAVIS: F**k 'im. You said all along there's a fortune to be made in stories about life. The life force, the creation of life, the very instinct for living. Besides, I don't give a shit about money. Imade more money this year than my father made in his entire life. At the rate I'm going, I'm not gonna run out of money for, well, months, anyway. I'm gonna make the world a better place for your new bambina.
Later, on a movie lot, Mack is driving Davis around, and gets some bad news:
MACK: I forgot to congratulate you on the new direction your career has taken. Claire told me about the violence in your movies. She was so pleased.DAVIS: Claire told you? Oh, that. Oh, f**k that.
MACK: What?
DAVIS: That's over. I must have been delirious for a few weeks there. ...
MACK: Oh, man. This is bad. I don't wanna tell Claire you changed your mind. I've regained my senses. I was talking like a moron. ...
MACK: What happened?DAVIS: Nothing happened. It never happened. Look, Mack, I'm an artist. Now go ahead
and laugh, because everybody does. Nobody in this town will admit that a producer is an artist. But I know how many lame-o directors I've had to carry on my back every step and then watch as they take the glory and reviews and awards.MACK: Which awards were those?
DAVIS: I don't mind working in modest anonymity.That's the way Thalberg did it, too.
MACK: If they're so lame-o, why do you hire them?
DAVIS: I haven't got time to do it. Hanging around the set all day, doing that
boring lighting and shit. Let them do that. That's beside the point. The point is ... there's a gulf in this country, an ever-widening abyss between people who have stuff
and those who have sh*t. It's like this big hole has opened up in the
ground, as big as the fu**ing Grand Canyon. And what's come pouring out... what's come outta this big hole is an eruption of rage, and the rage creates violence
and the violence is real. And it won't go away until someone changes something Which is not gonna happen. And you may not like it. Even I may not like it. But I can't pretend it isn't there, because that is a lie. And when art lies, it becomes worthless, so I gotta keep telling the truth, even if it scares the sh*t outta me like it scares the sh*t outta you.
Even if it means some motherf**er can blow a big old hole in my leg for a watch, and I'm gonna walk with a fu**ing limp for the rest of my life and count myself lucky. ...MACK: Davis, we're not talking about great art here.
DAVIS: Says you, Mr Snob, Mr Arbiter of Taste, Mr lmmigration Lawyer to the Arts. But there's so much rage going around we're damn lucky we have the movies to help us vent a little of it.
MACK: That line is so tired. I'm shocked you'd use it.DAVIS: You think just anyone can do what I do? You think anyone can make the crap I make?
MACK: Wasn't there something about "life force"? That's what Claire told me.
DAVIS: This is life. I'm trying to get that through your thick skull.There's always been violence. There will always be violence, evil, and men with guns. My movies reflect what's going on. They don't make what's going on. And if I make 'em better than anyone, then I've got a bigger responsibility to serve it up. Mack, you ever seen a movie called Sullivan's Travels?
MACK: No.DAVIS: You haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies. It's a story about a man who loses his way. He's a filmmaker, like me, and he forgets for a moment just what he was set on earth to do. Fortunately he finds his way back. That can happen, Mack. Check it out.
Davis is clearly a cynic who can't stand not to be part of the game, and so he rationalizes his destructive work by wrapping it in the mantle of social responsibility and Art. See how he does this? This is how life is; he's just commenting on it, and if he doesn't comment on it, he's being a liar. What he doesn't see, and what he once saw, is that the relationship of art to society is not one way, but interpenetrating. If he recognized that the film art he was responsible for played a role not in ameliorating the violence and conflict in society by exploring deeper, life-giving truths, but exploited the rage and hatred, he couldn't do what he does. I would imagine that the men and women who make it possible for degenerates like Eminem to release the poison that they do tell themselves something similar just to get out of bed in the morning without hating themselves.
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"The tragedy of Eminem is that he so obviously misfocuses that talent, not that it's completely absent." EA
TR: Yes, exactly.
As for Hip Hop in general I agree Rod should listen to more if he's going to make a judgment on it. I'm not a big fan of hip-hop, but I don't dismiss it all. I tolerate/accept that kind of dismissal from people who are elderly and set in their ways, but I'm pretty sure Rod is under 65.
Everlast's theme to the show "Saving Grace" is pretty good. (Everlast and Eminem are two white "rappers" who apparently loathe each other) I remember liking Arrested Development and Fresh Prince before he became Will Smith. Dana Owens aka Queen Latifah can sing for real, I have one of her non-hip-hop albums and I think you might like that anyway.
Pol O C,
If you're going to quote Oscar Wilde, it would be only fair to acknowledge that he recanted those views towards the end of his life, abandoned his aesthetic philosophy, and was received into the Catholic Church before he died. "As a tree falls, so shall it lie." Of course many would argue (me included) that he had a certain subconscious longing for Christ long before his conversion, that is pretty obvious in some of his works.
Sigaliris, Conrad G., and some of the others here would profit by reading two things:
"That Hideous Strength" by C.S. Lewis, particularly those chapters toward the end where it discusses the- literally- demonic and diabolic effects of obscene and inhuman art,
"Notes on Dali" by George Orwell, and "Reflections on Violence" by Eric Hobsbawm, neither of whom was any sort of conservative (Orwell was a socialist and Hobsbawm was a marxist, but they both had the wisdom to see through the idiotic arguments that 'one man's meat is another man's poison.'
There's an essay by Simone Weil called, I think, 'The Responsibility of Writers', but perhaps not- it is also very much to the point.
Queen Latifah--my she-ro! ; )
Major Wootton, that is an interesting and thought-provoking post. I respect your journey and wish you well. It's not the same for everyone, however. I grew up with all those things you're working on now. I discovered Dante and Botticelli in my childhood--literally. My parents had a lot of books around. I was a curious child. Botticelli was an early favorite, along with Michelangelo, Gerard David, Hans Memling . . . . I may have been one of the only (if not THE only) teenage girl in the U.S. with a particular fondness for Tilmann Riemanschneider.
Shakespeare, check. I first read "Julius Caesar" as a pre-teen because it had ghosts and suicide in it. And "The Tempest" had magic. "As You Like It" had a magical forest and a girl who dressed up as a boy and ran away! And so forth. "Full fathom five thy father lies . . ." I learned that by heart just because I liked the sound of it. Spenser, check. There were mythological beings, and C.S. Lewis liked it. I found it somewhat heavy going compared to Dorothy Sayers' translation of the Divine Comedy, but it was all right. Chaucer, check. Milton, check. I liked "Comus."
"Mortals that would follow me,
Love vertue, she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to clime
Higher then the Spheary chime;
Or if Vertue feeble were,
Heav'n it self would stoop to her."
And yet, mysteriously, I'm now that same person who is treated with contempt and opprobrium by a good many people here, including yourself on occasion. If culture could provide salvation, doesn't it seem that I should be among the saved? Somehow, the study of the beauties of the past has failed to persuade me that the right wing of the present is correct and speaks truth in all things. I don't want to rain on your parade--and indeed, I cannot, for the study of beauty is its own reward--but I would warn you, gently, that culture is not enough. Culture, in itself, isn't truth.
You can't create meaning in a life lived in the present by relying on the accomplishments of the past. It all gets to be kind of a twee hobby after awhile. It's like being a SCA re-enactor, embroidering your own bodices and wearing point-lace hose, and lifting your pomander to your nostrils when confronted by the plebs on the cross-town bus. It just won't do! I'm genuinely sorry that it won't, too. But if beauty and truth can't live in the here and now, they can't live. I sympathize with those who find it very hard to locate value and meaning in the present moment--but if it isn't here, it isn't anywhere.
Hector--meh. I first read "That Hideous Strength" before reaching puberty, and have read it about a hundred times since. I used to find those chapters you speak of very convincing, but have since revised my opinion. I now find their value debatable. They say more to me about the state of mind of the author than about the actual role of art. I don't believe in the demonic and diabolic. No form of art is produced by the devil. Art is produced by human beings, and has a human meaning. I now find Lewis's lurid descriptions of Teh Eeeevil Pictures to be rather embarrassing and sad. As representations of art so terrible and powerful that it "withers the mind," they are a big fail--kind of like the big rubber monsters in an Ed Wood movie. I still find much to enjoy in Lewis's work, but the propagandistic special effects just don't work for me any more.
Rod Dreher
June 23, 2009 10:30 PM:
"Christian conservatives, waah waah waah. Anything to avoid having actually to defend the violent, misogynist filth that Eminem produces. If you'd stop whining about Christian conservatives and actually address the issues of the content of his art, we might get somewhere. Defend the art, why don't you. Nobody here is saying the government should censor Eminem. We're just saying his art, which he has a right to produce, is degrading and degenerate. To be perfectly honest, I think you know that, and deep down agree with it, which is why you won't defend it on its merits, but instead moan about Christian conservatives."
I'll stop whining about Christian conservatives when they stop trying to impose their rigid morality on everyone else. What is the point of this assault on Eminem, other than to shame him and his fans and titillate the darker fears/temptations of your narrow-minded readers? Who cares about the content of Eminem's art, when you are attacking it as baseless, degrading, etc. That is the language of intolerance and censorship, which is really the heart of the topic here, as evidenced by the fact that you could rewind this perennial rant back 10 years and insert Marilyn Manson as the great bogeyman artist, or ten more with Ice-T. Why don't you quit trying to make the issue about Eminem and instead address your need to marginalize artists who's vision you don't agree?
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