The Arts and the Myth of Dissent

I'm not convinced that the White House's move to co-opt the "arts community" for the production of propaganda represents much more than the usual executive overreach that every new administration tries to get away with until the press, Congress, and public slap their hand. Bush, famously, tried and largely failed in a similar (though much larger in $) program to fund faith-based institutions that provided beneficial services in their communities. But the differences between these situations are also illuminating.

Almost from the day it was announced, religious leaders across the political spectrum said that while they appreciated the recognition of their good works, they would have to think before accepting such funding. Obviously one would expect the left wing to squawk about the pernicious potential of political influence, but many prominent conservative leaders said much the same thing, and it was their opposition which ultimately throttled this signature initiative.

By comparison, the arts community from the start greeted Obama's candidacy with kneepads and Altoids, and this latest outreach seems only to have spurred them only to new acts of Lewinskian devotion. But then, the ideal of the artist as the engine of dissent is more than a bit of a sham. Artists have historically been, and remain today, among the most reliable friends of the worst political leaders one can find south and east of the border.

From the early Soviet days to Oliver Stone's rambles in Venezuela today, artists have always fallen in love with the ideal of the maximum leader. Good, stable government is a dull, plodding mule next to the wild stallions of totalitarianism. All artists dream on some level of finding a patron who could free them from the monotony of hustling to keep the rent paid. But having the government behind you can do much more than fill your stomach with bread and wine. Grant committee meetings, bourgeois clients, reactionary audiences--uncle Fidel can make those all go away with a wave of his hand. Artists are many things, but in this they are no more or less human than any of us.

The arts are in many ways more popularized and trivialized today than any time in recent memory. Like Warhol's paintings of rich people sitting on a couch, hung above that very same couch by those very same people, or graffiti artists arrested in front of top-of-the-world museums exhibiting their work, the arts have found a comfortable coexistence in fierce agreement with a culture opposed to itself.