Defiance – Democracy’s Immune System

I was recently ‘schooled’ about an artist, and it should be no surprise who was doing the schooling, my nephew, Scott. And it wasn’t the first time that I found myself sitting in his classroom, getting educated about something or someone that I should have known already. Years ago, it took his repeated insistence to checkout a new band he just discovered, particularly their lead singer. The band? Pearl Jam. But this new lesson centered on an art print that he had chanced upon, and knowing the artist, he knew precisely what it represented and purchased it on the spot. When I asked about the artist, I was told his name is “Banksy”. Well, I had never heard of him, much to my embarrassment, so I did what anyone in this day and time would do, I Googled him, and there I found that he is a graffiti artist. That did not sound promising.

I also learned that one of Banksy’s more interesting traits is that he rarely, if ever, produces anything for financial gain. Of course, the fact that his works are normally produced on the sides of public buildings would explain that, but there are a small number of prints, such as the one bought by Scott that appears to be genuine….and quite rare. He also rarely signs his work, evidently wanting his style to speak for itself, which is itself a refreshing principle. Once I dove in and considered what he had to say to the public, it didn’t take long before I found my opinion of him trending decidedly upwards.

While searching through examples of his work, I soon found a number of well thought-out and even provocative pieces, including this poignant example. It depicts a city worker removing graffiti from a wall, but the graffiti in question depicts cave paintings, no different from what would be found in the caves of Lascaux, France, which date back some 17,000 years. The implications are obvious; those cave paintings that we all revere so much today as priceless snapshots from our cultural infancy, could be the graffiti of their own time. The fact that we now revere those prehistoric paintings as irreplaceable cultural relics, even as high art, should remind us that our own present-day street art could also be viewed with the same artistic latitude.

Although I found many of his pieces interesting, I must admit that my first reaction was that I didn’t consider them art, at least not Art with a capital “A”. After all, his technique involves stencils and spray cans, not canvas’ and brushes, so I had work to do before granting this new art form a seat at the table. Here it should be noted that I have a stubborn conservative streak that appears to work as the counterbalance to my more free-range inclinations, and it’s this prudent purist that couldn’t quite shake the fact that it is still a form of vandalism, produced on someone else’s property without their permission. Fortunately, I don’t trust gut reactions, specifically because they too often are colored by emotional biases rather than a disciplined thought process. A lifetime of cultural prejudices tends to lurk down those reactionary hallways and can only serve to narrow the real question being considered, which in this case is how we should or should not, value artists and other voices of friction when they openly criticize society.

Once I got my mind right, it didn’t take long before I developed a deep appreciation and respect what appears to be his authentic intent to ‘school’ the public by exposing the often-misguided cultural norms that we cling to out of habit and comfort. To my eye, that is the blade that draws blood in his work, because it clearly isn’t due to his jaw-dropping technical skills. His work commands attention precisely due to their simplicity. His works invite no attempt for an appraisal of his technical mastery, and that is not even the point. There are no multi-layered compositional elements to decipher, no elaborate metaphoric narratives to pick through, only a single message, conveyed as simply and cunningly as possible. Once all of the stuffy definitions of Art (capital A) have been safely packed away, what we are left with is pure communication, with each piece standing on its own as a visual narrative, a didactic commentary designed to stir an inner debate with the viewer.

Since nearly all of his work is social commentary, I was surprised not to find iconic political figures in his sights, as you would think there would be. It’s as if he considers personal, ad hominin attacks distracting to his true aim. No, the targets that most often face his attention are stereotypical authority figures, such as police officers or soldiers, which he presents with a contextual twist designed to jar our preconceived associations of them. In one example, for instance, there are two police officers, male and female, kissing, thereby presenting the two in a context of love and tenderness that we are not accustomed to considering when seeing them solely within their rolls. In another, there are two soldiers, one with his gun drawn keeping watch, while the other soldier paints a peace sign on a wall. Or take the one here, showing a masked protester preparing to throw a bouquet of flowers instead of a Molotov cocktail, clearly conveying that militants can also revolt in the name of peace. Even the iconic photo of US Marines planting the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima isn’t safe. Instead of hoisting the American flag, signifying the righteousness of American democracy, the soldiers are shown instead planting the golden arches of a MacDonald’s sign, as if to suggest that one enticing biproduct of the war would be the spread of imperial capitalism. In each example, Banksy’s sole intent appears calculated to shake loose or otherwise shatter our predetermined assumptions regarding our cultural norms.

Hopefully, I am making it clear what should be considered here, for the binding thread coursing through his work isn’t simply ironic humor, but a well-aimed defiance and even contempt for the unquestioned attitudes society passively adheres to. His style may border on simplistic, perhaps even crude, but I cannot help admiring him, or any artist for that matter, for advocating independence of thought. In fact, it is precisely this principle, that of questioning all we have been taught, the traditions  that have been passed down to us through the generations regarding God and country, race and gender, taboos, and customs, that must be re-examined, and pressure tested it in the crucible of our reasoning before we can truly defend the ground on which we stand.

Please indulge me for a moment to pause once more and reflect on what Banksy is provoking us to consider, because it is no trivial matter. There is a much deeper invitation being presented here, a challenge even, to invest ourselves into a more penetrating examination of our beliefs. The distinction that I am suggesting here has little to do with the sardonic humor that he unleashes on defenseless public buildings, but rather to his conviction and moral clarity. In a manner of speaking, it is our moral and ethical domestication that is the canvas Banksy is exploiting. And I wholly support this ‘Banksian’ principle. Each of us, living comfortably in a free and open society, has an implicit responsibility to rethink, and when necessary, reject the inherited beliefs and opinions that society has saddled us with. In fact, Nietzsche, and many other 18^th, 19^th century philosophers did not consider democracy a viable option simply because they lacked confidence in the wisdom of the populace, so it is up to us to earn our inheritance by educating ourselves, and to consider the larger plot playing out behind the various social and political trends……to leave this place in better shape than we received it.

This particular definition of defiance has been something of an obsession for me these past few years, and I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it’s due to a healthy dose of “Rage Against the Machine” that has been pumping through my earbuds of late, or perhaps it’s due to revisiting my admiration for Lennon and his unique brand of social defiance. But regardless of the cause, what stands out firmly in my mind is the absolute necessity for defiant voices in our society to have the freedom to express themselves without the threat of retribution. I believe emphatically that defiance, when communicated with articulation and conviction, is perhaps the most crucial element to the health and wellbeing of a free and open society. As Orwell trumpeted throughout his works, free speech works as the immune system that Democracy requires for its health and survival, for it is the first and last line of defense against all forms of corruption and power. After all, when living in a democracy “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, who else should be doing the job?

“Our society is like a stew; you have to keep stirring the pot or all the scum will rise to the top.”

That quote comes from another defiant voice, Bernard Wrango, aka “Woodpecker”, the anti-hero protagonist from author Tom Robbins’ book, “Still Life with Woodpecker”. His character is fairly typical for a Robbins’ storyline, meaning that he is an impassioned, articulate, and highly principled (but defined only on his own terms) individualist who also considered himself an artist; an artist whose chosen medium happened to be dynamite, which he used in much the same way Banksy uses a spray can. Both use their “art” to “stir the pot”, so to speak, in their attempt to wake people up to the malaise of their capitulation to authority and tradition.

This is not at all to suggest that some sort of blanket anarchy should slash and burn through all of our most cherished norms and traditions, not at all, only that “we the people” should use our minds to question the playbook that we’ve been handed and to call for change when it is merited by insisting that our leaders prune whatever social disfunction requires pruning.

If you find yourself failing to see any of these so-called pillars of social and moral injustice that I am alluding to, then my point has been missed. If that is the case, then allow me to expand our field of vision a bit, because the cultural norms that Banksy and other artists enjoy lampooning to everyone’s amusement may seem innocent enough, perhaps even benign, but their examples serve only to spotlight a far deeper point that I am attempting to make.

What many people fail to notice is that lurking beneath our unexamined acceptance of tradition may contain examples that are not at all benign. For a quick tour of those horrors, consider that it was only 150 years ago that “tradition” in the South meant the acceptance, and even encouragement to buy and sell their fellow humans, which included children, by the way. As recently at the 1930’s, less than a century ago, children as young as 8 held full time factory jobs, even in coal mines, which was an accepted cultural norm at the time. And prior to the 19^th Amendment in 1920, men (always the ruling faction) felt it perfectly reasonable to deny women the right to vote, let alone hold public office. And Jim Crow laws were still enforced in the South until the 1960’s. Each and every one of these examples were culturally accepted and defended by those who never questioned the legitimacy of the social norms of their day.

No, for change to come about, defiance in words and in action is very often required. It could mean hitting the streets in protest or writers speaking truth in print. It requires defiant voices who refuse to go “quietly into that good night” (apologies to Dylan Thomas). In many cases blood was shed, and bones broken, but defiant voices had their say, and society “for all” was improved as a result.

The clearest example of this principle for me, and likely for most of my generation would be the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s. The history books will list all the prominent names of those making the headlines, the “King’s”, the “Abernathy’s and “Parks”, but my instincts fall back to the young people who were operating in complete anonymity in their communities. There they dealt with the vulgarities of hatred everywhere they went.

The photo above is one such vulgarity, showing local college students who had the audacity to exercise their right to order a meal at a public restaurant, knowing they would be humiliated by the self-righteous mobs who gathered in disbelief that people of color actually believed in their equality.

Then outside on the public sidewalks of those restaurants, others peacefully protesting were occasionally assaulted by Police with water cannons and attack dogs. The infamous, and I will add, despicable, “Bull Connor”, the Commissioner for Public Safety in Birmingham during this period, was quoted as saying at the time.

” All you gotta do is tell them you’re going to bring the dogs. Look at em run. I want to see the dogs work.”

In an essay by Henry David Thoreau in 1849, titled “Civil Disobedience”, which was largely written in response to his own outrage to America’s moral silence on slavery, Thoreau expressed his utter contempt of it by insisting that it was not only our right, but our patriotic responsibility to be openly defiant in the face of injustice, solely as a means to force our leaders to listen and respond to the collective voices of its people. Here is a clear example of his own defiant voice.

“The State is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is strongest.” 

Of course, the Civil Rights movement should have been an easy injustice for everyone to recognize and fight for, but as history reminds us, that was not the case. I was young during that time period and was oblivious to the turmoil happening all around me, yet my adult mind still reels at the fierce resistance at something so morally righteous, even by many of the most religious and patriotic in our society.

So, to wrap up this rambling little piece on “defiance”, I want to circle back to Banksy and the other voices of friction out there on the front lines of our public skirmishes, because I consider the fight for free speech such an important facet of protecting the fragility of a government “by the people, for the people.” Of course, there will always be those who distort that principle by turning it into some banal bumper sticker polemic, such as, “America, Love it or Leave it”, but for those who consider these things seriously, Banksy, along with all the other artists keeping the stew of Democracy stirred up, they have my full admiration.