Real Art Is Dangerous Again, Thank Goodness
It’s a great time to be a maverick.
On the one hand, it’s risky to be a true artist — one who creates honestly and passionately without care for who’s offended — as the cultural hypersensitivity that’s currently in vogue has no room for individuals, weirdos, and heretics.
On the other hand, because of all of the sacred cows that have been propped up in the volatile generation we’re living in, there are countless gray areas for bold creators to dive into and come out of with some staggering results. It’s these murky areas that some of the best ideas come from.
Some of history’s most dominant works of art, the ones we study and revere today, were extremely controversial in their respective eras. These were works — movies, jokes, books, paintings, plays, TV shows, etc. — that challenged the mores of the time, explored the depths of the human condition that were considered too dark to convey on canvas or page, or were just so fiercely new that they shocked audiences with their bracing originality.
These works were created by artists who understood that suffering for their fiction was required to push culture into the future.
However, I’ve heard numerous stories recently about creators feeling like they can’t properly express themselves; today’s identity politics stresses the importance of an artist’s identity over their talent, and many entertainers have lost their jobs simply for creating, resulting in a climate that discourages many artists from even taking that first step toward creating a potentially contentious — yet potentially important — work.
If you’re an artist who’s afraid of incurring the wrath of social media mobs with a work that can be seen as offensive, I say give political correctness the finger and express yourself with the subtlety of a young bare-knuckle bruiser hungry for his first back alley bout.
Just jump into that ring and start swinging with everything you’ve got.
The cruel truth that most audiences and critics have yet to learn about real artists is that they’re fighters, ready to do battle on behalf of their craft and their right to express freely. Things like harsh judgement and calls to censor their work get their blood, adrenaline, and imagination pumping more than anything.
The bleak conditions that wokeness has foisted on us have, in a weird way, done us artists a real solid. They’ve given us something to fight against with our lyrics, our dance moves, our brushstrokes. Nothing attracts the muse more than giving an artist grief for producing.
As Albert Camus stated in his famous speech, “Create Dangerously”:
“…perhaps there is no peace for an artist other than the peace found in the heat of battle.”
Because we live in a time when conformity is rewarded, now’s the ideal time for artists to assert their independence and refuse the pressure to be at the beck and call of a movement that cares more about their skin color than their talent. Artists are more resilient than they think in fighting this Battle of Ideas.
I’m not encouraging artists to go out of their way to create fuss simply for its own sake. Pissing people off for a lark is just as creatively bankrupt as blindly creating art to placate the Fragile Few.
What I AM encouraging artists to do, is to take the visions and ideas they believe in at a gut level, and to set them loose into the wilds of pop culture, and to ignore the zealous griping and empty accusations that will inevitably come their way.
Humans fear change, which is why society is often disturbed by the daring work of intellectual renegades; there’s real comfort to be found in monotony, so it’s no surprise that audiences react with confusion and revulsion towards art that shakes the foundations of acceptability.
But that’s no excuse to self-censor.
Fortune isn’t the only one who favors the bold — History will always look kindly on those who ventured to forge her despite — and TO spite — the rigid etiquette of any given time.
So get out there and make some necessary trouble.
The future is waiting to hear from you.