Ethics Re:
Violence for Writers et al.
ON WRITING - by G.L. Horton
As studies continue unveiling a causal relationship between violence
and aggression in children and the violent content of the video
and movies they are exposed to, the next question is-- what do
we as artists do about it?
Easy to say, but very difficult to do: Don't publish it, produce
it, perform it, direct it, buy tickets to it, or buy the products
of sponsors who purvey it.
Speak up and remind others that mammals learn through imitation,
and that children -- young ones of course, but a surprising number
of older ones also-- do literally think that television and the
rest of the public story-telling forums are run by a committee
of adult authorities who have designed them to educate people
about the way the world works and provide role models. In fact
this has been drama's function in most times and places, for good
or ill. The "entertainment" value was just a sugar coating for
the lessons on how to be a ruthless warrior or a submissive servant
or whatever: roles that had to be understood and accepted for
the social order to function.
Yes, as artists our job is to tell truths, and to explore the
dark side of our natures as well as love and altruism. But in
a democracy, which truths ought to be communicated when, where,
and to whom is a judgment we are obligated to make as citizens--
and screening our own children's exposure to soul numbing stories
and images isn't enough. Those protected kids live in the same
world as kids who are brutalized. And yes, I'd say that if one
even suspects that one's work will glamorize evil and inspire
impressionable youth to deeds of cruelty, then it is one's duty
to give it up-- however lucrative or personally satisfying it
might be.
I know that this is rigid and priggish, and a reversal of what
I once believed: but I've come to suspect that the doctor's Hippocratic
oath to "First, do no harm" ought to apply to all the arts and
professions.
Thomas again: In the face of the mass media and the popular
culture to which kids, and all of us are exposed, to self-censor
our work in theatre seems a minute and impotent response.
Well, compared to what? Mass media and popular culture is art,
produced by artists, isn't it? What's the essential difference
between a beer ad and the iconography of a medieval cathedral?
Between an action film and the battle scenes on the Parthenon?
(quality aside)
For me, (an opinion I've expressed before in other settings
and never a really popular one, but mine, none-the-less) the
true subject matter of theatre is theatre.
My belief in this allows me to avoid inevitable paralysis
which follows from imposing moral instruction on an art form.
More important, it allows the creators of the beer ad and the
action film to avoid paralysis, too. Under this philosophy, the
bad guys, the immoralists, will always win.
I know this may duck the problem of artist's responsibility.
But who are we really to expect that we have enough control
over the end product of our work that every audience member
will "read" our work in the same way and get out of it what
we intended.
We can't expect it. But we can work very hard to make it so.
And what choice do we have? If we don't appoint ourself the makers
of significance, where is significance to come from?
Today's paper had an article from the LA Times (datelined
Seattle) saying that screenwriter Wm Mastrosimone is working with
hs youth on antiviolence drama, to atone for his contributions
to anesthetizing children to violence: "I am a person who has
written violent movies... who makes a living in Hollywood." Mastrosimone
was shocked into this stance after his 8th grade son came home
from school and told him some kid had written death threats on
the blackkboard.
It doesn't say whether he has quit "Sinatras".
I think that your response to the unsettling experience you described
might be seen as the emblematic response of the modernist/post-modernist
movement. If the contradictions and hidden agendas of inherited
moral systems have been exposed, on what basis can the artist
create? What can he or she affirm? Why, the activity itself, its
tools and techniques. Some good practitioners use the tools scientifically,
as pure exploration. Others-- the great majority of others-- use
them to market everything from hamburgers to mass murder. It is
the situation Yeats described: thebest lack all conviction, while
the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.
The audience you were part of used theatre to celebrate its identity
and cohesion, and it reminded you of a lynch mob, or one of Hitler's
rallies, yes? I felt the same terrifying emotional swell at Harvard's
Hasty Pudding Theatre at the premiere of Mamet's "Oleanna", when
the respectable middle aged males around me roared their approval
of John beating the crap out of his student Carol. The "worst'
are any of us, when in the grip of art's vast power to rouse our
emotions and shape our perceptions
I don't suggest that anyone self-censor their artistic (or scientific)
explorations. Only that they take responsibility for the way they
loose the knowledge gained on the world we all share.
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