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Politically (in)correct

In times where monitoring of what you say, write or paint is auto-corrected by the artists’ dependence on grants and endorsements, art is increasingly relinquishing the connection it had towards the political sphere
Deepa Mehta’s ‘Water’ (above) is a moving account of the state of widows in India.
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“All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS,” she declares. “What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings? All good art is political! We’ve just dirtied the word ‘politics’, made it sound like it’s unpatriotic or something,” Toni Morrison laughs derisively. “My point is that it has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I’m not interested in art that is not in the world.”

When I was growing up, the word ‘artist’ had a magical ring to it, but I had no idea about the contours of its business. The axiom ‘art for art’s sake’ was a cliche that I had repeatedly heard. Most people imagined an artist to be an angst-ridden individual, sitting under a purple haze, sipping absinthe. The artist was also somewhat trapped in this self-constructed image of being an outsider.

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Artists are both outsiders and insiders, as art, by its very nature, is an arena for political and moral debate, even if the intention behind creating the artwork may not be overtly political. Artists have always played a very vital role in shaping and questioning society by providing an aesthetics of storytelling. It becomes all the more precious in a world where untruths pollute daily life.

Today, there is scaremongering and blacklisting and a new trope has entered: art and politics must not mix. Fear has entered into the relationship between artistic vision and creativity, pushing artists to relinquish the connection they had towards the political sphere. They have fogged their opinions and artistic expression and started kowtowing to what was considered to be politically correct.

At its best, art is a political enterprise. It is political not in the normal use of the word, but political in the philosophical sense — how human beings live, organise themselves and how open they are to change. Normally, when we join the word ‘political’ to the arts, we imagine something didactic and jingoistic — taking about current affairs or a sort of sloganeering, agitprop kind of messaging.

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Two historical events of the 20th century happened within a span of three days. In 1917, the United States declared war on Germany, thrusting America into a leading role on the world stage for the first time. Marcel Duchamp, a French artist, rattled the art world when he placed a white porcelain urinal at an annual exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in America. This urinal was given the droll title ‘Fountain’, further infuriating the jury. This was Duchamp’s declaration of war on traditional art and its value system, overturning conventional aesthetics as a counter-response to America’s brash entry into the global war.

When Deepa Mehta set out to make her films, she was not playing the role of an anarchist like Duchamp, but wished to dive deep into human stories about identity, choices, society and history. The trilogy of ‘Fire’ (1996), ‘Earth’ (1998) and ‘Water’ (2005) inadvertently disrupted the status quo by bringing varied layers of human experience beyond religion and nationalism to a point of recognition. A sort of merging of history, identity and the complexities of human existence.

‘Earth’ is a reminder of lines arbitrarily drawn between countries and hearts.

Her films created a space where women’s voices were heard in a nuanced way, juxtaposed against a patriarchal value system. ‘Fire’, starring Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das, explores the topic of same-sex relationships. ‘Earth’ is a reminder of lines arbitrarily drawn between countries and hearts and is adapted from Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel ‘Ice Candy Man’. ‘Water’ is a moving account of the state of widows in India, depicting their deprivation-filled life and a yearning for freedom. This led to a barrage of criticism that was far removed from the intentions of what the filmmaker was trying to say. The films were certainly not about current affairs and did not hold the banner of change, but showed a horrific reality that examined thorny questions of our existence and the society that we live in.

Most works of art, whether it is a poem or a painting, a film or a song, reveal a consciousness of history and the zeitgeist. These survive despite a system that considers imagination as dangerous. We may argue about the political content or messaging in any particular piece of art, but we cannot, and should not, deny an artist’s right to be political.

A still from ‘The Suit’.

Artists are continually debating that we mustn’t produce what the public wants, especially when we live in times where monitoring of what you say, write or paint is auto-corrected by the artists’ dependence on grants and endorsements. Commercial films may cater to the public, as would pulp fiction, as their purpose is consumption, but most artists, even if they live in isolation or in a garret unaware of the world outside, are unlikely to produce anything without any wind in their sails. The wind beneath the sails has to be the wind blowing now and not some future wind. The artist can either follow the wind or go against it, but it would be impossible to move without the wind.

I watched a play, ‘The Suit’, in London. It was written by South African writer Can Themba, a master chronicler of township life. It made a huge impact on me and I was eager to adapt it in Punjabi. A young married couple (Philemon and Matilda — Bunty and Mina in the Punjabi version, dramatised by Surjit Patar) is faced with a tragic dilemma. When the husband discovers his wife in bed with her lover, he forces her to keep the man’s discarded suit and treat it as an honoured guest. The Suit on a hanger becomes the third presence in their life. The Suit eats with them, goes for walks with them and also sleeps with them, a terrifying reminder of her betrayal. Despite the absurd nature of this punishment, it slowly provokes the free-spirited but repressed wife’s mental destruction — a metaphor for the insidious emotional abuse of apartheid that plagued South Africa. This is the story of a bitter and brutal account of the collapse of an apparently happy marriage, of infidelity, alienation and the inability to communicate.

This play, transported to a small town milieu in Punjab, became a powerful symbol of fear and brutality that stalk our life in a way that even our thinking becomes controlled and under surveillance.

A month ago, on a visit to Lahore, at the Alhambra theatre, hundreds of people burst into cheer as the verses of Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s ‘Hum Dekhenge’ soared into the hall spontaneously at the end of a theatre festival. I felt a surge of upliftment as I watched the untrained chorus of young men and women sing in various octaves with their entire soul: ‘Jab Zulm-O-Sitam Ke Koh-e-Garan, Rooyi Ki Tarah Ud Jayenge, Hum Dekhenge’ (When the weight of oppression and cruelty will float away like cotton wool, we will see).

It is assumed that the poem full of pain and anger is only about protest, but it’s also a record of what’s happening. It’s the sort of writing which does not recognise borders. It happens when an artist treads fearlessly, while hanging on a precarious edge.

— The writer is a Chandigarh-based theatre director

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