Art's Role in Politics

Can art serve a legitimate moral or political function without being reduced to propaganda?

I think art can serve a moral and political function without being reduced to propaganda. However, I think that when art is employed for solely political goals, its power becomes more known to others and it becomes susceptible to being used for the wrong reasons, namely to mislead and manipulate people. Thus, I think that art should stay far away from politics but be used as a motivator to act morally and to encourage people to create beautiful things in the world. 

In The Symposium, Plato claims that art persuades us without us being able to interrogate it. The beautiful thing is something that appears to us as good or noble, but it appears to us as good without us being able to give reasons as to why we think that it is good. Art produces a belief without reasons for those beliefs. Even though we don’t know why the thing itself is beautiful or produces certain feelings, the beautiful thing motivates us to act. It produces a kind of conviction that makes us think we ought to do something. For Plato, this push to action is reproduction. Why do we reproduce beautiful things or mate with a beautiful person? To make more beautiful things. Schiller sees art’s power to incite certain feelings as well, but because he recognizes arts usefulness or power seems to think that it owes something to politics. 

Schiller thinks that there is a necessary relationship between art and politics because only art can allow politics to achieve its goals, or rather, politics needs art because its incapable of realizing its own ends by political means. He argues that political laws alone can never bring about the good that they intend. They can posit the goal but the actual change has to come about from other means. Even the best intentioned laws aren’t fulfilled because people don’t buy into it. A good example of this was the French Revolution. They had a good goal in mind and it was right for the whole but the vision failed because they didn’t have a way to move toward the end they sought. Art however, can make us want a particular end. Art can be the transition from where a group is politically and where they want to be, and Schiller argues that it must be that transition. What is problematic here in my opinion is that art can transition to the wrong goals and to the wrong ends. Yes, it can do good, and it can motivate us and encourage us to do better and be better, but it can also do the opposite. Because, as we’ve discussed numerous times before, the beautiful things leave us with conviction that we can’t explain, I think it’s dangerous in the hands of politicians because it leaves room for people to be convicted without knowing what they’re fighting for. 

Schiller argues that the artist shouldn’t serve its age or not be a mignon to political wills but how can it be involved in politics and not do that? Art can be a great tool for the good and can be a positive mode of motivation, but it can also mislead us. A good example of this is the “Be Essential” posters on campus, and overall I would say that the posters are a positive, good thing. However, are all of those posters the picture of reality at Rhodes college? No. Art is a great tool, but it can be used on both ends of the spectrum to encourage good or bad behavior. The other end of the spectrum here is propaganda. Propaganda is by definition, material that attempts to motivate action or to persuade with the intention of motivating actions, particularly when that involves manipulation or deception. Now all art can be manipulative, but it’s when that manipulation motivates someone by deception that it becomes problematic. 

Adorno and Benjamin both see art’s power, as does Schiller; however, Benjamin and Adorno seem to think that likelihood of art being reduced to propaganda is increasing with modern technology, particularly film. Because of our ever increasing technological capabilities, it’s becoming easier and easier to manipulate people and mass audiences at that. Film manipulates scenes to suggest a reality or to evoke feeling in its viewers. However, the total shot can be changed by a twist of the camera. Devereaux was very hesitant of film because she argued that a male gaze was projected onto the viewer. Benjamin and Adorno seem to be recognizing the capability that film has to project anything at all onto the viewer, positive or negative. 

Benjamin, feels that art has moved from being authentic to something that is reproducible and almost devalued. He argues that art used to have an aura, a certain authenticity because you could only see it then and there. Now, art is more technical and we don’t need artistic genius, yet we’re still treating art as if it still possessed that special aura. He argues that with film and new age art, the picture is broken into pieces. Where as in theatre, you needed the whole, with film you can break it into parts to manipulate it. He goes on to say that there is a loss of identification between the spectator and the actor, and that all of this produces a destruction of the aura of the image because there is no distance in film as there is in theatre. Adorno sees film similarly, and sees modern art as a move from ritual to free-floating power. Because it is free, art is now free to take on anything it wants. Adorno and Benjamin are afraid that political agendas will manipulate us because we still see art as god-like things when really, genius no longer exists. Anybody can create dazzling spectacles, and we need to recognize this and think of art differently. 

I tend to agree with both Benjamin and Adorno. Because we have the ability to manipulate images even more so than we ever have before, art is particularly susceptible to being used for negative purposes such as propaganda. Thus, I think it is imperative that as Devereaux said, we keep in mind that we’re being manipulated as we watch something, analyze the manipulation and make our own decisions. The problem is that not many people have the time or even think to analyze a piece of art or a movie, and often take it at face value. Because of this, art can be a very dangerous tool if used politically because people might be brainwashed into following a particular idea without pausing to analyze what their viewing or to account for the manipulation of the piece they are seeing. Thus, I think it’s very difficult for artwork to be used politically without negatively impacting people and deceiving a mass audience for pure political goals.