I've talked about creativity and social responsibility before, and got flamed in certain corners of the artistic realm for daring to suggest that writers or artists might want to practice some sort of social responsibility before deciding how far to go, before deliberately setting out to offend for the sake of offending.
And yet, when I suggested that it's wrong for writers and artists to tell other writers and artists what they should and should not create, that they are placing too many external restrictions on the freedom of expression of others, I get blasted for that as well. Perhaps the criticisms of my concerns over these attempts at peer-pressure restrictions came from different corners of the artistic realm than the criticism over my calls for social responsibility, but taken together, the two incidents seem to betray an inconsistency of thought and attitude.
I truly believe one can reveal truths, even make readers or viewers squirm, without blatantly setting out to offend certain groups of readers or viewers. A true artist should be able to walk that line between somewhat disturbing and downright offensive. Anything over that line becomes cheap tricks, a mutated perversion of art relying on shock and disgust to get attention, rather than using true substance to make a point.
Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that artists should indeed have a moral compass, but in a free society, that moral compass should probably be internal rather than external. Unfortunately, you can't allow for broad creative freedoms without also allowing for the potential creation of offensive materials. And as has been pointed out to me more than once, more often than not, someone, somewhere will more than likely find something offensive about a work of art, whether it be visual or textual. As the old saying goes, you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.
By the way, in my humble opinion, art doesn't always have to have a deeper message beyond what the art actually portrays. It can contain such messages, and often does, but art for art's sake is just as valid as art for some higher purpose. To say otherwise is to ignore a multitude of masterpieces by diverse artists that did not necessarily set out to radically changed the world, but simply set out to make the world a slightly better place to live in. Perhaps that does change the world, but by subtle means rather than in-your-face ones.
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And yet, when I suggested that it's wrong for writers and artists to tell other writers and artists what they should and should not create, that they are placing too many external restrictions on the freedom of expression of others, I get blasted for that as well. Perhaps the criticisms of my concerns over these attempts at peer-pressure restrictions came from different corners of the artistic realm than the criticism over my calls for social responsibility, but taken together, the two incidents seem to betray an inconsistency of thought and attitude.
I truly believe one can reveal truths, even make readers or viewers squirm, without blatantly setting out to offend certain groups of readers or viewers. A true artist should be able to walk that line between somewhat disturbing and downright offensive. Anything over that line becomes cheap tricks, a mutated perversion of art relying on shock and disgust to get attention, rather than using true substance to make a point.
Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that artists should indeed have a moral compass, but in a free society, that moral compass should probably be internal rather than external. Unfortunately, you can't allow for broad creative freedoms without also allowing for the potential creation of offensive materials. And as has been pointed out to me more than once, more often than not, someone, somewhere will more than likely find something offensive about a work of art, whether it be visual or textual. As the old saying goes, you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.
By the way, in my humble opinion, art doesn't always have to have a deeper message beyond what the art actually portrays. It can contain such messages, and often does, but art for art's sake is just as valid as art for some higher purpose. To say otherwise is to ignore a multitude of masterpieces by diverse artists that did not necessarily set out to radically changed the world, but simply set out to make the world a slightly better place to live in. Perhaps that does change the world, but by subtle means rather than in-your-face ones.