All Art Is Autobiography Made Flesh
Whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to make yourself part of every story you tell
Even the most spectacularly fantastical tales, from The Lord of the Rings books to the original Star Wars Trilogy films, are populated by themes, traumas, and passions wholly unique to their authors — in J.R.R. Tolkien’s case, the horrors of World War I and industrialization and, in George Lucas’s, a love affair with cinema, anxiety about authoritarianism, and a general passion for things that go fast. This is because all art is autobiography, from an aching, borderline cheesy love song like Extreme’s “More Than Words”, to the startling colors of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, to the strict manners and class anxiety that hold Jane Austen’s novels together like mortar.
You can dissect any of these artists’ work and slowly, methodically reveal the personal experiences — the personal biography — that informed every single creative decision and transmogrified something once wholly unique into universal “stories” for audiences.
This might potentially strike you as obvious, but many do not accept this to be the case, very often viewing art as distinct from those who create it. A vase full of sunflowers is just a vase full of sunflowers, right? This is a useful coping mechanism when we discover someone we admire is a complicated, deeply problematic human being - such as in the case of Woody Allen. But then reality catches up with us, and we are left with no choice but to reconsider their past work through a lens of our new knowledge and, in doing so, confront our own failure to recognize what was there all along.
This is not to say that we cannot continue to enjoy much of the beautiful work such troubled people created, but let’s not pretend his characters weren’t autobiographical (I’m looking at you, Manhattan where a middle-aged man — Allen — dated a teenaged Mariel Hemingway as if that’s just a totally normal, healthy, not creepy thing to do).
Here’s something quite remarkable actor, occasional director, and activist Marlon Brando said on the subject of autobiography in art to James Grissom:
I have found that most of us who want to act or write or make music or paint things or sculpt things are trying to remember, re-create, share, and pitifully hold on to a particular memory or memories that allowed us to continue living with some comfort. In everything I’ve done as an actor, I want to tell people, somehow, how it felt to feel my mother’s hand on my forehead when I was sick. I want to tell people how it felt when I protected my mother from my father’s rage. I want to tell people how it felt — how it changed my life — when my sister came to my aid, over and over again. Art is autobiography made flesh. Art is sending the message that life has merit, that people have merit. I think we should see things that make us all want to go out and live better and share the good things we have seen. I think we should, without ever meeting, let it be known that we are here to support and protect each other.
There are many ways your autobiography informs your work, most of which are not conscious. But I do find that with practice, you can begin to understand how your life manifests as tools in your artist’s toolbox. For some of us, this practice takes the form of therapy sessions to better understand ourselves and our relationship to our own pasts/traumas. For others, it means journaling, where our most intimate thoughts accumulate and, in their admission — their exorcism — become another conscious piece of the stories we tell.
In my case, I use my fiction and personal essays as a way to accomplish both: therapy and exorcism. Questions drive me, about myself, about the world, about ideas I don’t feel I’m clever enough to understand. In other words, art is inquiry for me, both internally and externally, and I do so without limits. The more scared I am of something, the more determined I become to put it on the page, such as in this piece I wrote last month about IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE and my mental health challenges as middle age has set in: “Why You Never Get Tired of It's a Wonderful Life”.
Commerce certainly has the potential to disrupt an artist’s creative goals — in other words, the need to pay bills — and I, like many others, have had to pursue work I wasn’t always proud of in an effort to push my career forward. In Hollywood, this is especially true for most screenwriters, I think. But even in their compromised visions, some personal truth — or, autobiography — is always evident.
For example, consider "Dracula” (2013), which I created for NBC and Sky. I’ve detailed the nightmarish experience here: “The Horror of ‘DRACULA’: The Unbelievable True Story of the 2013 TV Series”. But even in a series that turned out nothing like I hoped it would, you can still find me in its DNA, all its characters, and its themes. Consider:
I am a fiend for Victorian horror novels and the films they inspired, from Universal’s legendary monster series to Hammer Films’ blood-soaked takes on these. “Dracula’s” pilot’s opening scene was the result of my love for Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960). My take on Dracula was informed by my deep love of European history, fear of mad scientists like Elon Musk, and disdain for organized religions and theistic beliefs in general. My Mina Murray was a budding scientist, not a doting fiancée. The character of Lady Jayne was a warrior badass that drews equally from Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974) and Buffy Summers, both characters I adore. Most of my male characters suffer from rage, not being recognized for their self-perceived real value, or both — something that I witnessed much in my childhood. Representation was a serious, not tokenistic element of the series given my strong convictions about equality (my take on Lucy Westenra was a favorite in the LGBTQ+ communities because of this). Most of all, it was a series about science/reason versus God where science/reason would win…or at least it was in its conception and when it was greenlit. It’s still there…mostly. My King of Vampires quotes Darwin in the first episode. My kid’s name is Darwin. Come on, that’s…all…me.
Then there’s my novel Psalms for the End of the World, which Headline Books released in September of 2022. It’s even more autobiographical.
In so many ways, it’s a treatise on how I view humanity, identity, and reality presented through a lens shaped out of pop culture that I love. It’s largely informed by the grief I was struggling with at the time; my mother had recently died and, as I was writing it, my father discovered he had to have a double lung transplant or he would join her. Likewise, the world outside seemed to be burning down, which terrified me because I had two children, one of whom was only nine days old when I started writing the book (he was strapped to my chest at the time, sleeping). There are chapters so deeply autobiographical, in ways that might not even be obvious to the reader, that rereading them even now is challenging for me. In every possible way, it is the most personal thing I’ve ever written. Frankly, it’s a glimpse into me, for better or worse.
Let me put the point I’m making another way: art is the vehicle with which we reveal who we really are to the world.
That’s terrifying, I know, but it’s the only way to create something true, something that might change others, something that endures beyond our brief time on this Pale Blue Dot.
When we get in that process’s way, we not only impede our own path to self-awareness, but we also muddy and even diminish the quality of our work. What we create becomes a simulacrum, a copy of a thing that was never even real to begin with, because we were too afraid to put ourselves into the story. But we are the story. I am the story. You are the story. Always. As Brando so eloquently said, all art is autobiography made flesh.
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Have come to this one late (apologies, so many email newsletters in my inbox!). Love it. Love that Brando quote.
I think this article is a great counterpoint to discussions around the idea of the intentional fallacy. I think the balance between what a piece of art means to its creator and its recipient is a really interesting one. I really like the idea that art provides insight into the mind which created it without that necessarily being the message you take away in its appreciation. That might not be exactly what you were saying, but it’s my take away. Thank you.