How to Make Art That Confronts the Darkness (Or Not)
How to Make Art That Confronts the Darkness (Or Not)
Twenty-five filmmakers, authors, and comic book writers from around the globe debate whether artists have any responsibility to write about...you know...how completely shit everything is
“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”
– Stanley Kubrick
“Fuck it.”
-Most everyone else
If you’re a regular reader of 5AM StoryTalk, then you know very well how seriously I take art. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the foundation on which our civilization is built. It can distract and entertain us, it can serve as a mirror to reveal who we truly are as individuals and as a society, and it can even inspire cultures to change. Today, as the world outside our windows grows bleaker and more hopeless, it has seemed to me as if artists have never been more necessary to combat this encroaching darkness. And yet, when I discuss this belief with other artists, I quickly discover there is no unanimity about the matter.
So, this May, I decided to try to answer this debate with the help of twenty-five friends old and new - call them a chorus of professional filmmakers, novelists, playwrights, and comic book writers/artists. The results were…exciting, to say the least. So many brilliant, disparate opinions.
This is the specific question I posed to them:
In a world that feels increasingly unstable, where so many struggle to hold on to hope, do you think artists have any responsibility to confront this darkness head-on in their work? And if the answer is no, what responsibility, if any, does the artist have in your mind?
Below, you will find the responses I received, which read like an arts royal rumble. In addition to the variety of mediums these artists work in, they represent a diverse range of voices and cultural backgrounds from across the globe - including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Hopefully, their perspectives and experiences will be of some help to you as you stare down the darkness yourselves.
MATT FRACTION (comic book creator, SEX CRIMINALS)
I feel as though the only real responsibility any artist has is to the work, or maybe, at least, I hope that’s final reward for any of us. What’s the Jacqueline Novak line from Get On Your Knees? “We’re not entitled to the fruit, only the labor?” Something like that. I feel and struggle to obey my sense of responsibility to the work in all its aspects; how it’s crafted, when, and why; how I execute it; what I learn from it, how I fail it, how I serve it, what in it pushes me towards whatever comes next - that’s where I try to focus my energies. How it’s received, if at all, and what’s taken away from it, if anything... all that rests solely in the hands of whomever I’m so fortunate to have for an audience. If anything, those blinders maybe keep me from going crazy, fretting the things over which I know I have neither control nor any right to controlling. It feels like a slippery slope into crafting agitprop at best and typing for applause at worst.
That said, if art can be said to have aspects of both hammer and a mirror, which someone somewhere said once — though I can’t remember who, when, or where — then any art will inevitably reflect and be informed by the womb in which it was formed and the nest in which it was nurtured, right? So that darkness, instability, inchoate tensions, divisiveness — whatever’s the gestalt of the moment (meaning more than whatever the zeitgeist holds (man, the Germans have words for everything), whatever the present conditions. I interpret “gestalt” to mean a more total summation, evaluation, and predication of past, present, and future. If zeitgeist is content, gestalt is form — Is that right? I don’t know. Probably not. But just go with me here, struggling as ever with a lack of better words — and can’t help but be a part of its DNA.
Matt is a U.S.-based comic book writer and screenwriter. You can read my artist-on-artist conversation with him here.
BIRD YORK (actor, “IN THE DARK”)
I tend to view humanity as a five-alarm fire and creatives as the handlers of the fire hose (see: traumatic childhood). Debunking my theory are years of me asking people from all walks of life what they watch and why, (emergency medical personnel tend to like crime procedurals that “do the work for them” and take their brain off of rotation for an hour).
That said, corruption, greed, war are sadly woven into the fabric of our existence. We have been here before. So have the storytellers. The earliest written Vedic stories involved tales of confronting the darkness head-on. The sequel, the Bible, did its thing. Sophocles gave us Antigone. I think we must carry on our version of the tradition. But...I think it is imperative that we also challenge the viewer to confront their own darkness head-on. Creatively confronting our current and historical inhumanity is a necessary endeavor. But so is crafting small, personal stories that help us see you as me. Which is the only way darkness has ever been dismantled.
Bird is a U.S.-based actor, screenwriter, and Oscar-nominated musician.
NICHOLAS MEYER (director, STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN)
The question of artists' "responsibility" in an unstable world to confront darkness, I can say that among art's many virtues is its infinite variety. There are as many different kinds of art as there are artists and I am doubtful that a blanket rule can be applied — or should be applied — to creative endeavors and processes. Tolstoy said the purpose of art is to teach us to love life - but art can do many things. It can teach us to endure or escape life. It can inspire us, inform us or change our worldview. The answer to the question of the artist's "responsibility," it seems to me, must depend on and rest with each individual artist. For me, the business of art is to make people laugh or cry - in a word, to feel. And, for my money, the best art is that which makes you think after you have felt. I go from there.
Nick is a U.S.-based filmmaker and novelist. You can read my artist-on-artist with him here.
SEQUOIA NAGAMATSU (author, HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK)
While I don’t think it’s crucial that every piece of art have activism or sustainability or social justice in mind, I do think that it’s near unavoidable to at least acknowledge this darkness as the context and backdrop of reality if an artistic work is set in or is at least adjacent to our version of the 20th and 21st centuries. In other words, I like escapism and maybe less issue-driven speculative work and kind of mindless entertainment, but I increasingly find it difficult to suspend my disbelief during a mystery or romance or adventure if part of the world isn’t, by default, already burning and under threat. It doesn’t mean that the characters or the organizations of such a fictional world don’t care, but that’s not the story. And I think it’s very believable to see the world through a narrative/character lens where we don’t privilege climate change or government collapse or hate or capitalistic shackles as a threat as immediate as this all-consuming pressure because we all probably do this to varying degrees to cope and survive (and I’m talking mostly here about industrialized nations where that distance is currently an immense privilege).
All that being said, I do think it should be at least an exercise or two or three of every artist (even if they don’t go on to publish or exhibit or film something) to lean in hard to the darkness and grit and hard realities of our time because they should hone and articulate their artistic tools with an eye toward empathy and critical understanding of current issues. Maybe an overarching story might not be hitting topical issues head-on, but having practiced their art within the darkness might manifest in other ways in terms of backdrop (how a gritty context informs the navigation of lighter genres and stories), character creation (or casting), or even the very mediums and modes in which an artist chooses to tell their story.
For me, I do try to weave some of the darkness of reality in any story I tell. And, a lot of this comes from my own background in environmental activism and also my identity as an Asian-American, as the grandson of someone who was forced to grow up in an internment camp during WWII (and, of course, we see similar atrocities being forced upon other communities albeit under different categories and labels). When I first started to write seriously, I was told by mentors that the industry loved “worldly” and “exotic” stories, that I should lean into “it”…and by “it” they meant a version of my Asian identity that served a white audience, a monolithic view of myriad cultures winnowed down to the “off the boat to immigrant success” story that diminished systemic racism, violence by the majority, and the ongoing struggles of communities that do not fit the model minority framework. For me not to lean into darkness is for me to ignore the struggles my own family has had to face and for me to not acknowledge that even passing thought that someone might randomly punch me in the face in a city street for just existing in my own skin.
Sequoia is a U.S.-based novelist and creative writing professor. You can read my artist-on-artist interview with him here.
KIT DE WAAL (author, WITHOUT WARNING & ONLY SOMETIMES)
The artist has no responsibility but to be true - to their art, to themselves and to their beliefs. This means that their politics and beliefs will bleed into their work and in so doing inevitably means confronting the darkness. But that’s an effect and possibly even an intention, but not a responsibility. I feel about this question the way I feel about the responsibility laid upon Black people to fight racism. To continually have something to say about race, to be seen to be in the fray, writing, talking, standing up, educating, informing, active, and informed. And the plague of racism is not of our making, nor perpetuation. We, the victims have this work laid at at our door while the racists go about their business, earning money, getting on in the world, making art. If we want to take up arms so to speak then, yes, go ahead, but I’m tired of having that fight put on me as well as all the other things I want to do and accomplish. Like Toni Morrison said, “There is always one more thing.” So, no, I wouldn’t lay the burden of responsibility on any artists. Do what you have to do and make your thing.
Kit is a U.K.-based author. You can read my artist-on-artist conversation with her here.
TASH GRAY (screenwriter/executive producer, “SNOWFALL”)
Writing is both my love and my obligation. I use it to accomplish a lot: to entertain, to educate, to inspire, to uplift… Writing has given so much to me that I am compelled to give back just as much. My offerings are to be significant and meaningful contributions to the world. A quote by Alice Childress sums up the philosophy I’ve adapted: “I continue to create because writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind.” As a Black woman my voice has been continuously silenced and devalued, but as a writer I am loud and audacious. There was a time that I naively assumed most artists, especially writers of color, too, understood their responsibility to challenge society. Artists are to ask the hard questions and offer the unexplored answers to those questions as well. To right the wrongs and dispel the myths. And honestly, the fact that this is questionable has sent me spiraling many times over and has left me hyper-aware that having a mission statement as an underrepresented writer is less common than I realized.
A few years ago, I was on a writing staff along with an award-winning novelist who is highly respected. Within weeks, we’d become fast friends — likely because who doesn’t befriend someone who idolizes them (ha, I digress). One day, “Fifty-seven” — as I affectionately refer to them in reference to the number of novels they’d published at the date of our meeting — shook me to my core. We were pitching on the season’s overall story and the beat we were considering was something that I strongly felt was an irresponsible portrayal of a group of people. But my new friend — one of the reasons my initial excitement for joining the room was so palpable — insisted that as artists our only responsibility was to the story. I was appalled. We went back and forth for nearly twenty minutes — which is the equivalent to hours in a writer's room — until I labeled it as poor storytelling. Since the last thing a writer wants to be labeled is bad at their craft, I was able to successfully argue that we were unnecessarily perpetuating stereotypes for the purpose of a story. And furthermore, we needed to be less lazy and find another way of telling an equally intriguing and compelling story. We came to a consensus and moved on.
Then and now when writers are reckless, I remain committed to “lighting a candle in a gale wind.” If you ever want to find me, I am dying on that hill — fighting to the end, going down kicking and screaming. Figuratively and sometimes, literally. James Baldwin’s quote forever remains at the forefront of my mind and I remind other artists of it when necessary, “The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”
Tash is a U.S.-based screenwriter.
CANDICE FOX (author, the Detective Harriet Blue novels)
I never shy away from the dark stuff, because I think that’s where the public interest lies. People want to see the blood. Crime fiction is the biggest selling genre, and it’s getting bigger as instability worsens because we’re a species that likes to feel terror keenly, if only in small doses. There used to be a crime fiction award for the novel that contained no violence toward women whatsoever, as a reaction to the over-proliferation of it in the genre. After three cycles, they canned it. Because that’s not the world we live in.
I’ve been aware for a long time, though, of how important it is as an artist to offer hope when you’re confronting dark stuff. When I haven’t, I’ve been accused of being bleak. Bleakness doesn’t sell and doesn’t get word of mouth, and people feel embarrassed to gush about how much they loved the book in which an out-of-control bus full of rescue dogs bursts into flames after it careens into a daycare center. I always try to have one of the dogs grab the wheel just in time.
Candice is an Australia-based author. She’ll be joining me for one of my artist-on-artist conversations later this year. In the meantime, I wrote on the second season of “TROPPO” — an adaptation of her Crimson Lake series that premieres in July.