From Jen Silverman's 4-28-24 NEW YORK TIMES article entitled "Art Isn’t Supposed to Make You Comfortable":
As someone who was born in the States but partially raised in a series of other countries, I’ve always found the sheer uncompromising force of American morality to be mesmerizing and terrifying. Despite our plurality of influences and beliefs, our national character seems inescapably informed by an Old Testament relationship to the notions of good and evil. This powerful construct infuses everything from our advertising campaigns to our political ones — and has now filtered into, and shifted, the function of our artistic works [...].
When I work with younger writers, I am frequently amazed by how quickly peer feedback sessions turn into a process of identifying which characters did or said insensitive things. Sometimes the writers rush to defend the character, but often they apologize shamefacedly for their own blind spot, and the discussion swerves into how to fix the morals of the piece. The suggestion that the values of a character can be neither the values of the writer, nor the entire point of the piece, seems more and more surprising — and apt to trigger discomfort.
While I typically share the progressive political views of my students, I’m troubled by their concern for righteousness over complexity. They do not want to be seen representing any values they do not personally hold. The result is that, in a moment in which our world has never felt so fast-changing and bewildering, our stories are getting simpler, less nuanced and less able to engage with the realities through which we’re living.
To read Silverman's entire article, click HERE.
"A
sanitized culture always on its good behavior & bleached of
provocation is no culture at all. It’s a garden party where no one talks
of anything but the weather, and these days even the weather is
controversial. In America, culture defines politics rather than the
other way around, and it remains to be seen whether the culture wrests
back from our times the courage of disquieting provocations…."
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