Art is Inherently Personal and Political

    By HSG on Thu, 10/29/2015 - 11:58am | Arts & Entertainment

    BarbaraAllenHelaine Smith is an English teacher at an elite K-12 girls school in New York City.  The Wall Street Journal recently published her essay on teaching literature without letting "politics" or "personal identity" intrude.  Here is my response to the Journal:

    I share Brearley teacher Helaine Smith's disdain for "trigger warnings" and excessive deference to hypersensitive political sensibilities.  Ultimately, however, I reject what I consider to be her constricted view of literature.

    Smith writes that she teaches 6th graders Barbara Allen and several other Scottish ballads that "[are not] about politics or personal identity."  But this claim is false.  All great art is about personal identity and rare indeed is the classic, if one even exists, that doesn't touch on politics as well.

    In one of the many versions of Barbara Allen, dying Willie dispatches his servant to notify Barbara Allen of his condition.  At Willie's deathbed, Barbara Allen reminds him that the last time they were together he slighted her while paying respects to other ladies in a tavern. She is otherwise cold and unresponsive.

    After Willie dies, Barbara Allen is very sad and she dies too - apparently from a broken heart.  They are buried next to each other and the rose bush that springs from Willie's grave and the briar that sprouts atop Barbara Allen's grow entwined to the old church wall.

    Notwithstanding Smith's claim, the theme of Barbara Allen is the importance of one's personal identity and how self-worth depends on recognition by others.  Willie's failure to identify Barbara Allen and her subsequent refusal to respond to his entreaty prove fatal to both.  By contrast, the briar and the bush thrive together.

    Barbara Allen contains a political element that is directly connected to the importance of personal identity. There are three characters in Barbara Allen but only two count. Unlike the lovers, the servant is unnamed and has no personal identity or value independent of the master he serves. If that's not a politically fraught statement, what is?

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    That's funny, and here I was under the impression that great art and politics are inverse. What do I know? I majored in shop and an ex-wife dragged me to every art show in the state of California (oh---visual art---do you include or exclude it in the definition of "great art"---Hal, you drive me nuts, but assuming you do......) for ten years and my favorite was the famous used Kotex show in San Francisco which, I was assured, was great art but in which I could discern no personal identity, or politics---er, o.k., I can see that...but at the same time you link personal identity and politics together the way the writer did while in shop we separated Chevy parts from Fords, oh well, if you link them it's good I suppose but then the other thing, Hal....rare is the great art...Christ, what a statement and of course making a syllabus is a political act so the woman is devious or unaware or has some kind of ax to grind and what the hell is she doing writing for the WSJ, is she in Peggy Noonan's  yoga class and the thing is Hal, before trying to dissect what this woman says---I think it's great that someone invests their lives teaching lit to teenagers, I could love this woman, well could have before she hooked up with the WSJ and Hal, it's as obvious as a leaky head gasket that there is a straw person or person in the wings which is what the Journal is interested in---a teacher who, OMFG, dares to link anything in a classroom with the real world---and OMG, you mean we are giving warnings on lit the way we do on cigarettes, cookies and McDonald's burgers and what would be the WSJ's guess about how many teachers are liberals trying to corrupt upscale students. Hal, what the hell are you talking about?


    by Oxy Mora on Thu, 10/29/2015 - 7:12pm

    Your assertion is far too broad. Art encompasses too many forms to be lumped together. You might be able to make a case that literature is inherently personal and political. That's what you seemed to do in the blog absent the title. It'd be a little  more difficult to make the case for the visual arts. Imo it would be impossible to do it for the vast majority of classical music as there are no lyrics or jazz where much or even a majority of the music has no lyrics.


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 10/29/2015 - 7:22pm

    Though, there was a great deal of radical politics around jazz.  Good be-bop gets the mind moving!


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 10/30/2015 - 11:10am

    Michael, you're absolutely right.
    .

    THE MUSIC YOU LISTEN TO BOTH MOLDS AND REFLECTS YOUR MENTALITY

    Many of the so-called musical "revolutionaries" never took the time to learn what jazz is really about. Jazz is more than just another form of music, and it's not just fun-n-games. Jazz is also a way of life. There’s a political component to it - a way of thinking that reflects a unique way of viewing reality. So jazz purists are not simply upset over a modified beat and the introduction of electronics, they're also upset over the caving in to mediocrity and the abandonment of the political principles and qualities that jazz represents. 
    .
    After all, one of the greatest contributions that jazz has made to the black community is informing the world that we're not the frivolous and thoughtless people in which we'd previously been portrayed. The harmonic complexity of bebop served to bring the dazzling intellectual capacity of black people to the world stage. So naturally, jazz purist are both reluctant and hostile to going back to the people-pleasin' days of what is essentially a musical form of Steppin'-Fetchism.       
    .
    Jazz has traditionally been the cultural anthem of social revolutionaries - both Black and White - who are willing to fight the good fight. Thus, jazz purists resent the mongrelization and surrender of those principles in lieu of "Can we all just get along?" To them, that represents the selling of our principles. That's why the word "commercialism" is looked upon with such disdain by those of us who have come to be known as jazz purists. We're not merely fighting to defend our right to be snobs. We're fighting to defend excellence from sliding down the slippery slope of corporate profit and mediocrity; we're fighting for a way of life, and we're fighting a political battle against the dumbing down of America as a whole. Our fight is an essential part of our jazz tradition. It's expected of us, because that's what jazz is all about - pushing the envelop, and never caving in to convention.
    .
    So you can’t just put a funky beat behind noise and call it jazz, because once you go frivolous, the spirit of jazz has been abandoned. While jazz does kick up it's heels on occasion, it's a very serious form of music that’s designed to appeal to the mind, not just the ass. For that reason, a logical and organized structure is essential to its character. Without that, and it’s arrogantly distinctive swagger, it's not jazz - Period.

    .

    *
    MILES
    .
    We knew him as Miles, the Black Prince of style,
    his nature fit jazz to a tee. Laid back and cool,
    a low threshold for fools, he set the tone
    of what a jazzman should be.
    *
    Short on words, and unperturbed, about
    what the people thought;
    frozen in time, drenched in the sublime,
    of the passion his sweet horn had wrought.
    *
    Solemn to the bone, distant and torn,
    even Trane could scarcely get in;
    I can still hear the tone of that genius who mourned,
    that precious note that he couldn't
     
    quite bend.
    .
    *
    Toward the end Miles started having problems with his chops so he went into retirement. But he loved music so much that he wanted to get back into the game, so being the genius that he was, he simply INVENTED a form of music that he could play. Then a generation of musicians who came along behind him, and who didn’t have a vision of their own, built an entire musical movement based on what Miles created to accommodate his old age and disability - we call it "Fusion."
    .
     

    by Wattree on Sun, 11/08/2015 - 9:24am

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