We’re all used to hearing about how oppressive governments crack down on art. They don’t like free expression. They want to control information. They also like to destroy joy because they are controlling assholes.
But I’d add something else to these control freaks – art is terrifying to them. Art is something that is a threat to dictators and they must control it.
Think about what Art is – not even good art, but sincere art. Art is personal expression, thoughts and feelings turned into another form. It often combines different media forms, like sound and visuals together, or penmanship and words. Art is a bundle of ideas, of feelings, that works it’s way into your head – that’s what art is, and even intentionally obscure art can intrigue people to actively engage.
Art spreads. Art infiltrates. Art infects. Art can be symbiotic with the people who encounter it. This is the kind of thing that unsettled a would-be tyrant.
A play, a stunt, a book, a song can soar across the radio waves and the internet and change people. Art is communication, and communication will go as fast as it can (and sometimes as slow as needed). A piece of art can change people fast and dictators don’t like change and they aren’t happy with fast either.
And you might not know they’ve changed. Someone may have become changed by a book or by a TV show or a bootleg tape and you won’t know! People become different people but you can’ tell. Well, can’t tell until too late, and dictators fear people not being what they seem.
People infected with art might even make more art. They get inspired to do things. Art combines with the appreciator’s own ideas to make something new. That fast-spreading art can produce even more art that risks the control a dictator wants. Von Neuman’s catastrophie with bright brushes and a poison pen.
Finally, dictators are not creative people. They’re not imaginative. Art is creative. Art is imaginative. Dictators can’t understand it, can’t deal with it, so the have to destroy it or control it.
(Some Dictators even posture as artists, but you know, they never really are.)
So of course they feel threatened by art. They can’t control it, can’t stop it, can’t do it and it’s lurking right behind them.
Of course that means if we keep doing art we keep breaking dictators. And as I’ve noted art and spirituality are pretty much the same thing, who knows what you can do to would-be tyrants with just some innocent art with spiritual elements . . .
-Xenofact