Why the white liberal desire to see Black Artists deliver lectures to those they believe are prejudiced harms Black Art, making it at best reductive and at worst formulaic and predictable.
This short essay was written in response to an article on Quillette entitled The Artist and the Censor
An interesting essay, and one with which I largely agree- with one exception. I do think it is in the nature of the artist to rebel instinctively against authoritarianism. Those who meekly comply for the sake of patronage- at least in the modern era- are not true artists. When I was younger, I always thought myself economically centre Right, and culturally centre Left. But since the revelation that authoritarianism has nothing whatsoever to do with Left or Right, but has a good deal more to do with who holds the whip hand in terms of cultural power, I have found to my surprise that my natural sympathies are those of a civic libertarian.
I abhorred the cultural censors of the moral majority just as much as I abhor the woke establishment for their supposedly virtuous edicts. Ever notice how the censorious urge always emerges from the desire to do good for others? Kierkegaard would have some to say about that. ‘We must protect the children, or the vulnerable’- when the Devil would say persuading people they were moral actors in fighting others, literally or figuratively, was his greatest trick- an ode to the Manichean in us all.
Anyway, I dislike preachiness and the ‘holier than thou’ claim. I understand we each have unique perspectives, and that much of our unique experience is informed by the arbitrary nature of the human urge to classify, and even stereotype. But I am very dubious of claims to special knowledge- it runs counter to our ability to explain, elucidate and, above all, empathise. Otherwise why would we even bother to read fiction, watch movies or documentaries which serve no purpose other than to profile culture?
If the purpose of the more narrative arts was simply to entertain, then there would be no great movies or great novels. But more of us are beginning to rebel at a visceral kneejerk level every time there is a suspicion the movie has lurched into a lecture- because there seems to be an implicit assumption of prejudice and bigotry (they should look up the definition) levelled at roughly half the population, anywhere in the West.
But the glaring truth which should offend them is that if there is discrimination, it is mainly an animal of the Left, these days. Regardless of politics, the universities, big tech, the institutions, and almost the entirety of the professional management class is now almost exclusively cosmopolitan liberal, except in instances where they have actually been successful in their drive for diversity, which is rare. Ironically, the rare instance of the social conservative in such roles, is inevitably from one the groups they purport to champion, and invariably gets on better with the workers who the white Leftist holds in such cultural contempt.
Oh, I’m sure you will find the odd conservative within the large agricultural concerns, in extraction and possibly even in distribution at a management level. You might even find a small oldguard, counting the hours until retirement and hoping and praying they don’t say anything inadvertently offensive, like using the phrase ‘niggling doubt’. But in the main conservatives are a small minority within management in corporation- which begs the question, why are they making so little progress?
Could it be that performative virtue is no substitute for real virtue at all, or even that the real problem has been fear of the accusation all along? It might be a case of Leftist Karens force-fielding themselves from the potential for giving offence, where none is meant. The fact that it only takes two or three practitioners of cancel culture to cow entire corporations and institutions into submission would tend to suggest this is the case. The tearful apologies and the flagellation of wanting ‘to do better’ are as predictable as the likelihood that an apology won’t sate the vengeful urges of the cancel culture mob.
If true, it really would be a tragedy unfolding for Black people- their supposed best friends and allies, their worst enemies. We’ve all seen the viral video of the white woman and the dog with the Black man in the park by now. And that white woman who called the authorities on the little Black girl selling bottled water on the street had to be on the Left, or a resistance type. A conservative would admire the drive and the entrepreneurial spirit, after all, and they loath the petty officialdom of the State. They wouldn’t call the apparatchiks on their worst enemy.
Of course there are conservative examples as well, but you can spot them too- and most of them look… retired. A woman tearfully wanting to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at a public meeting because its been banned, is just as likely to be in her late forties or early fifties as she is to be completely oblivious to the cultural ebbs and flow which causes such instances. She may be younger, but she doubtless left the workforce or fell far behind in the power hierarchies as soon as she had kids, and only someone largely left alone by the HR bureaucracies and implicit bias training could look so confused and oblivious. They never bother with the proles after all- for freedom- live beneath their contempt or consideration.
But back to Art. Recently, I started watching Town Bloody Hall (it’s on YouTube). Germaine Greer had mentioned it in a BBC fly-on-the-wall, probably before the controversy and the deplatforming. She admitted a certain torn ambivalence, one the one hand being flattered to be considered a writer of note by the great Norman Mailer, whilst simultaneously feeling the need to argue with him.
Anyway, there is a section where Norman Mailer admits to being excited by the Feminist Revolution, but also fearful. Because he said that a Right Totalitarianism could be borne, because many in the hall could imagine themselves romantically going off and fighting to the bitter end. But a Left Totalitarianism in the West was worse, because it would lead to the shattering of so many dreams and hopes. Quite prophetic really, all things considered.
The thing I resent most about the cultural critics and curators is they always want to patronise the Black or other minority artist intent upon delivering a lecture with the narrative. As though a Latina painter has nothing to portray unless its about its about oppression, or a Black male scriptwriter can’t pitch a sellable movie unless it’s about his interactions with the racist cops.
It’s all so reductive and derivative, and so obviously in service to narrow political aims- one big fuck you and dirty smear to anyone even thinking about voting for the Right. And in many fields, that’s before the narrative by committee sets in, the formulaic tick-box corporatisation which attempts to make a work as appealing as possible to as many audiences as possible, whilst simultaneously robbing the wrapped gift of its contents, as though we all live primarily through the experiences of our identity groups, brotherly universalism long since forgotten. Disney has found out recently to their cost that the Right can boycott too. They may not care about the Leftist sympathies of Amazon or Google, because they are both so bloody useful- but they won’t take lectures from books, movies or subscription services they pay for.
I know such more complex with subtle themes exists- I’ve seen the Art, read the book and watched the movie. But it is becoming increasing difficult to find. These days broader experiences of race simply don’t seem to be so actively solicited or promoted. Which is a crying shame, because it cuts the Artist off from at least the majority of their potential audience. In a recent survey, nearly 50% of the British public feels the BBC does not reflect their values, and they were just the ones brave enough to admit it to a stranger.
This from a country which has almost the lowest implicit bias scores at a population level, in the world. And Prince Harry was doing so well at finally promoting the most ridiculed group in Britain- people with ginger hair. Then he had to go marry a woman so pathologically obsessed with telling us all how racist we all were. Apparently the reservations within the Royal Family were more to do with a doubt that a Hollywood starlet would be able to assume the burden of duty required, or the obvious necessity playing second fiddle to the Royal Heir’s mother. Apparently the protocols of Royal Titles were changed in 2012, four years before Meghan met Harry (probably over concern there might be a false impression the extended family was costing the British taxpayer money)- although I will readily admit there were a couple of British tabloid headlines which did skate incredibly close to racism by inference. Most were from the foreign press, and were immediately withdrawn for legal reasons after the initial airing.
Anyway, just think about the way the cultural attitudes of a mainly white cosmopolitan managerial class within the BBC, with their instinctive oikophobia and anti-Britishness, harms the ability of the Black British Artist to reach their audience. Can’t we have a modern equivalent of Desmond’s? Obviously, it would be a bit difficult to write the Black experience without the occasional nod to policing, but how about a drama which shows the warmth and humour of the people I knew in London over twenty years ago? I’m sure the same is true of Hollywood, the networks, and the digital services. Do any of us really think that Three Billboards in Gary, Indiana would have been made, if written by a Black woman? No, because Hollywood and even independent filmmakers wouldn’t even consider an American community dividing along any lines other than race… It doesn’t fit the narrative zeitgeist.
A good writer needs to be sneaky about the subterfuge they employ to inform, persuade and convince. They don’t go about bashing people over the head with lectures, or poking people in the eye with the presumption of bias. If racism is often subtle, sly and appears in surprising places where you least expect it, then its serum needs to copy the self-same attributes. And if you really want to pick people to champion your cause then don’t choose recently graduated mainly white college students who know nothing about life and always seem to feel to suddenly start lecturing gran about her racism at family gatherings, right in the middle of dinner. Talk about ways to elicit white women’s tears. It’s not the accusation, just the sense of familial betrayal.
Thanks Geary, you make several important points here. This observation is especially good: "... there seems to be an implicit assumption of prejudice and bigotry (they should look up the definition) levelled at roughly half the population, anywhere in the West."
This put me in mind of a church in the city where I live, which has a huge rainbow flag draped in front of it saying "We welcome LGBTQ worshippers". I have long found this objectionable – not because I am homophobic, but because the church is basically selling its own virtue by insinuating a prevalence of prejudice and bigotry elsewhere. I doubt very much that that has anything to do with reality. The most likely scenario, to my mind, is one where neither the officiating priest or pastor nor the other church-goers would ever inquire into their congregation's sexual preferences.
The second point that warrants reiterating, to say the least, is the erosion of politically neutral public life. I'm referring here to the way in which more and more of those occasions that we used to enjoy collectively, irrespective of our political persuasion, have been hijacked for use as a political platform. The evangelical urge of many on the left is so strong that they seem unable to bear being part of any public event that is not overtly on side. The Oscar awards ceremony is a good example of this, as also the Welsh bishop who preaches the gospel of "Never trust a Tory," and the high school valedictorian who went off script to lambast the new abortion law that is up for debate in Texas. I wonder how the Catholics and Pro-Lifers at that event felt about that? Of course the press (and one "H.R. Clinton") gushed over her, commending her for her bravery. But would they have been equally effusive had she seized the opportunity to argue for the other side? I doubt it. One by one, every non-political event or occasion (football matches, visits to NT stately homes, art galleries etc.) is being co-opted by people who it seems cannot suffer occupying the same space as someone who has views that are different from their own, someone who perhaps even voted for Johnson or, heaven forbid, Trump, or who is sceptical about the concept of "gender fluidity." The burning need to preach, and if possible convert, has even infected the language we share, most recently in Germany, where a small minority of feminists, who claim to feel "excluded" by masculine-gender nouns, is trying to introduce new, supposedly "inclusive" noun endings that entail an asterisk and a glottal stop. Since most major media outlets have embraced this nonsense, resisting it has become very hard. And yet all the surveys so far conducted, show that most people reject this kind of top-down rewriting of German grammar... All of which brings me back to your last example of the graduate who uses the family gathering to lecture gran about her racism, which in turn raises the question of whether politics should be allowed to infect absolutely everything. For are there not some institutions – language we all speak, the family, religious institutions of all kinds, music, art, sports – whose value to society as a whole transcends by far the political causes of the day that they are now being used to espouse?
Just think about the great talent of black musicians in the 60's and 70's. One of my favorites would be Gladys Knight, "Midnight Train to Georgia". Wasn't about being black, just a great tune anyone could appreciate.
Thanks Geary, you make several important points here. This observation is especially good: "... there seems to be an implicit assumption of prejudice and bigotry (they should look up the definition) levelled at roughly half the population, anywhere in the West."
This put me in mind of a church in the city where I live, which has a huge rainbow flag draped in front of it saying "We welcome LGBTQ worshippers". I have long found this objectionable – not because I am homophobic, but because the church is basically selling its own virtue by insinuating a prevalence of prejudice and bigotry elsewhere. I doubt very much that that has anything to do with reality. The most likely scenario, to my mind, is one where neither the officiating priest or pastor nor the other church-goers would ever inquire into their congregation's sexual preferences.
The second point that warrants reiterating, to say the least, is the erosion of politically neutral public life. I'm referring here to the way in which more and more of those occasions that we used to enjoy collectively, irrespective of our political persuasion, have been hijacked for use as a political platform. The evangelical urge of many on the left is so strong that they seem unable to bear being part of any public event that is not overtly on side. The Oscar awards ceremony is a good example of this, as also the Welsh bishop who preaches the gospel of "Never trust a Tory," and the high school valedictorian who went off script to lambast the new abortion law that is up for debate in Texas. I wonder how the Catholics and Pro-Lifers at that event felt about that? Of course the press (and one "H.R. Clinton") gushed over her, commending her for her bravery. But would they have been equally effusive had she seized the opportunity to argue for the other side? I doubt it. One by one, every non-political event or occasion (football matches, visits to NT stately homes, art galleries etc.) is being co-opted by people who it seems cannot suffer occupying the same space as someone who has views that are different from their own, someone who perhaps even voted for Johnson or, heaven forbid, Trump, or who is sceptical about the concept of "gender fluidity." The burning need to preach, and if possible convert, has even infected the language we share, most recently in Germany, where a small minority of feminists, who claim to feel "excluded" by masculine-gender nouns, is trying to introduce new, supposedly "inclusive" noun endings that entail an asterisk and a glottal stop. Since most major media outlets have embraced this nonsense, resisting it has become very hard. And yet all the surveys so far conducted, show that most people reject this kind of top-down rewriting of German grammar... All of which brings me back to your last example of the graduate who uses the family gathering to lecture gran about her racism, which in turn raises the question of whether politics should be allowed to infect absolutely everything. For are there not some institutions – language we all speak, the family, religious institutions of all kinds, music, art, sports – whose value to society as a whole transcends by far the political causes of the day that they are now being used to espouse?
Faith without power is fine. It's a personal matter.
Faith with power is highly destructive to those who are not part of the "in crowd."
Just think about the great talent of black musicians in the 60's and 70's. One of my favorites would be Gladys Knight, "Midnight Train to Georgia". Wasn't about being black, just a great tune anyone could appreciate.