Art with a Social Agenda - Boyz N the Hood

Anytime the purpose or point of art is discussed, it is inevitable that there will be mention of a possible social or didactic purpose of art. Sadly, it also seems inevitable that these claims are ridiculed and cast off in favor of a more ambiguous aim or a more intellectually satisfying view that art should exist solely for art's sake. I've never been one to come down firmly on one side of any issue and I'm rarely satisfied with any single answer when the question is challenging and unquantifiable; this issue is no exception for me. I've always loved art, but I cannot give myself over to an answer that states art exists solely for pleasure, nor can I believe that art is the sole purpose of art. What's more, I will not believe that art can be reduced to a mere educational tool or an agent of social change. Truly, art is multifarious in its abilities, purposes, and aims (of course, if it can be said to have any).  While the idea of art as an agent of social change might seemingly be inapplicable in some cases...

a nude by Francois Boucher

This nude challenges existing social paradigms

and presents our culture from a new perspective.

(No, that is not correct.)

... in others it's not so ridiculous an idea.

a policeman by renowned graffiti artist Banksy

This policeman challenges existing social paradigms

and presents our culture from a new perspective.

(Not so funny here, huh?)

I'm writing all of this because 20 minutes ago I saw, for the first time, director John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood. You might expect any movie that opens with statistics about violence and murder rates to be unbearably affected, overly moralizing, lacking subtlety, and generally like what might be any other work of art with an obvious social agenda. Absolutely not the case here. The film was engaging, entertaining, and enlightening. The moral of the movie was visibly present throughout, but at no point did it ever seem like there was a giant billboard preaching "BLACK ON BLACK VIOLENCE IS BAD; LOOK AT THIS SITUATION - IT HAS TO BE CHANGED", even in the scene with the Laurence Fishburne's lecture in front of the billboard. It is a real testament to the artistry of the writer and director, Mr. Singleton, and to the craft of the actors that the moral is conveyed so effectively. It is also a testament to the ability of art to have a social agenda. I think that the key point here is that moralizing art, art with a social purpose, must be done artfully. I know exactly how ambiguous that sounds and how useless it is to say, but unfortunately, that is often symptomatic of any discussion of art. I suppose what I'm trying to say that if moralizing art isn't done artfully, than it isn't art - it is tedious and banal and any hope of edification goes out the window. Boyz N the Hood was powerful as a film and I bawled my eyes out at the critical moment. The films point was made clearly, and  Singleton was able to produce an effective work of art that is perfect evidence for the argument for art having, at least in some respects, a socially beneficial purpose.

In Defense of the Arts

Dang. It is hard to be an English major.
     I was speaking to a friend recently about an issue I feel very strongly about. More and more, it seems, the arts are being devalued. Anyone with an English degree, a philosophy degree, or any degree in the arts, should they be daring enough to pursue such a degree, is ridiculed and forced into the position of having to defend their choice. This is something that both my friend and I have experienced, and doubtless many others have too. I chose to study literature not only because I love it passionately, but because I passionately believe in its the importance and power, and in the importance and power of all the arts.
     I could write at length about my feelings about this, but I'm going to cut myself short here and turn it over to Mr. William Faulkner. This is Faulkner's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature. This speech offers at least one argument for the importance of the arts, and it is one that I find especially convincing and entirely relevant to our times. Enjoy. Believe.

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work--a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Speech originally posted @ www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/faulkner/faulkner.html