CREATIVE NON-FICTION: The arts do not exist for the sole purpose of keeping us entertained.
Because I believe in the power of art to effect change.
All rights reserved by the writer, Sulastri Binte Noordin
“Banksy” is the tag used by a UK-based stencil graffiti artist. He first started roaming around London, and now other places around the world, creating street art, often of a political nature.
A particularly memorable piece, aerosol-sprayed onto the West Bank barrier, depicts a figure who looks like a terrorist throwing not a bomb, but a bouquet of flowers. And sometimes, he sneaks into the hallowed walls of famous galleries such as the Tate Britain and hangs his works up side-by-side with the other, more traditional pieces, for subversion.
Controversially, in 2018, his work Balloon Girl was auctioned at Sotheby’s for a million pounds — only for the frame to immediately shred the picture once the work had been bought. He had single-handedly pranked Sotheby’s.
The question is, does Banksy create art — or is it merely litter? Do his political messages, conveyed through his art, even make a difference?
Nobody likes a tedious definition debate, so it is perhaps wiser to simply concede and say that art is difficult to measure and contain and can be highly unpredictable, unlike the sciences, which are associated with the handling of precise, concrete facts.
Just kidding.
Both the arts and the natural sciences are complex domains of human knowledge: both share characteristics of uncertainty and trial-and-error. Ask any honest scientist about their research and they would tell you the amount of creativity and guesswork that goes into a clinical trial for Alzheimer’s, for instance. And ask any honest artist about their latest music and they might surprise you by saying the record almost wrote itself, if they were in a state of flow while writing their songs.
In popular culture, the arts mainly play the part of purveyors of entertainment on a mass-manufactured scale, the mode of dissemination being the mass media. The brand of music, for instance, which commonly pervades everyone’s consciousness nowadays is mostly pop — whatever is trending on the Billboard Top 100, or whatever Apple iTunes recommends as the next up-and-coming singer-songwriter.
I do not judge people for liking pop, or whatever genre of music they listen to. Music provides an avenue for emotional release that makes people happy, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Personally I relate to the latest, more mature works by Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Lorde, and, yes, Justin Bieber. Musicians evolve as they mature, and there is nothing wrong with deriving enjoyment by listening or dancing to whatever makes you feel light and happy.
However, it is true that present-day entertainment is invariably tied up with commerce, and so “art” in this form has become a money-making enterprise. In my view, when profit-making becomes the only bottom line of art, that is when trouble sets in. That is when the art that is produced becomes formulaic, diluted, and trivial.
I am not saying art cannot be entertainment and I am not saying finances cannot be involved with art. Even Banksy set up a shop — aptly-named Pest Control, since his graffiti often features rats. Instead, I am saying that art cannot be merely reduced to dollars and cents. Because — art — has — higher — functions.
No, I do not think the arts have an automatically “humanising” force in society, simply because not all art can or does that. We know what the culturally sophisticated people of Nazi Germany did: they read Goethe, and listened to Bach, and then they sent fellow human beings into concentration camps and turned them into bars of soap.
Nevertheless, there are more modest, achievable functions that the arts can and already serve in society.
Essentially, art relies on one’s sensitive perception of the world. Being in touch with art in its various forms makes a person more capable, I think, of seeing through various societal facades. For this, the arts have been one of society’s most fearless whistleblowers.
Ever since Western theatre exploded into existence back in the era of the Greeks, playwrights like Euripides have sought to expose the ugly, hidden underbellies of their society. The Greeks prided themselves on their logic and good sense, and yet Euripides’s The Bakkhai explicitly spells out the foolishness of worshipping undeserving gods, and questions the very stability of ancient Greek society.
And unlike individual dissidents, art can withstand the pressure of mass homogeneity because, when persecuted, it seeps underground and accumulates force again gradually, only to resurface again someday. Nobody has yet figured out who Banksy really is, and he (or she) keeps stencilling graffiti in public places, without getting caught.
What I think the arts can do, is to reflect humankind’s true face, giving society the important capacity of introspection and developing a self-awareness of who or what we have become. Through this, we can see the flaws in our civilisation clearly and hence effect change.
I know that art alone cannot change the world. I am not that naïve. But art does have the means to channel forces of change. Political theatre has always been considered dangerous because it is truly not afraid of challenging the status quo, if need be. For instance, some of Bertolt Brecht’s most famous plays, like The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Mother Courage, were devoted to Nazi resistance.
Good art, like good science, also constantly questions the way we look at the world. The arts keep humankind in touch with its own psyche and its past. As a psychological or emotional guardian, art handles daily experiences in a transformative way. For both artist and audience, long-term exposure to quality art sharpens a person’s sensitivity and allows one to lead a fuller life.
As my favourite author, Jeanette Winterson, wrote, “The consolation of art is everything you have seen, read, heard and kept inside you as a talisman against the popular lie that nothing matters anymore.”
