💬 Weekly Question: Do artists have a responsibility to confront the darkness of our time?
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Almost two years ago, I shared this article at 5AM StoryTalk - “How to Make Art That Confronts the Darkness (Or Not)”. In it, I asked 25 artists from around the world, in different mediums, at different stages of their professional careers a single question about the artist’s responsibility — if any — in contending with the “darkness”. The answers were extraordinary and varied. I then posed this question to readers of this newsletter, which elicited similarly diverse perspectives. But as we goose-step into the second year of a United States controlled by fascists and the general rise of fascism, white nationalists, and the broader Far Right in other Western countries, I think it’s worth returning to this question. Especially as we watch so-called democracies increasingly behave like police states and threaten war, decades-old alliances fragment and collapse, and climate change and AI continue to stalk us like movie serial killers.
So, here goes:
In a world that increasingly returns to a pre-WWII state of international antagonism, where so many struggle to hold on to hope of any kind, 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?
Now it’s your turn to weigh in. I look forward to your thoughts!
I think my thing with this is, if you look throughout human history, you will be hard pressed not to find some sort of discord, conflict, anxiety, and other darkness society is contending with at any given point; and yet, the artists keep on in the production of their vocations. There's some stuff just made to entertain or escape, there's other stuff made to confront and challenge, and regardless of intent both types of art are often retrofitted through historical analysis as actually being 'about' whatever thing the historian decides the society was dealing with at the time. Some entertainment stuff is too superficial to survive the seriousness of the times, other confrontational stuff is too dated to last outside their contemporary provocations.
This all returns us to navigating, as individual artists, what you can do and whether what you can do fits your best sense of values and self. There are a lot of great art, artists, and art movements birthed out of a need to confront society directly. There are others that sought to transcend those issues by means of beauty and awe. You do you.
Personally, I slowed down focusing on making movies to try to get involved in activism in 2017-2018, and I just couldn't keep on it, I crashed out pretty hard. I was getting back into making my own stuff when the pandemic happened, and unlike so many people on social media who were like "Hip hip hooray, time for me to be alone at home and finally DO THE THING!", I was completely unproductive and incapable of creative work until around 2022 when things started opening up again.
Both show that regardless of my intentions to confront the darkness or avoid the darkness, neither worked for me. Now as I've gotten well back into the swing of things, I focus my activism very narrowly to specific networks and groups whose effects I can multiply with small actions, and I just focus on making my art beautiful and planning for a better future. I can't let the darkness determine the course of my life anymore, I tried and it did not go well for me. All I can do is live in it and furiously demand my own agency to create.
Artists have the write, rite, right to choose their level of responsibility in confronting, uncovering, wrongs and systems of destruction, in individuals including themselves, their families, communities, nations, worlds etc. So they must choose how they want to construct their responses. Some will band with other artists or groups, individuals.
Also I feel ruffled by the standard common usage of dark vs light—even though I use it also but I try to counter it.