The arts: an arena of struggle

We tend to cherish the notion that the arts provide us with the best moments in

our lives — moments that are harmonious, pleasurable, entertaining, or that offer

unique occasions for refection. This may be true, and it’s worth hoping for, but it is

not the whole story. The arts are pre-eminently a field where emotional incompa-

tibilities, social conflicts and questions of status collide in a more concentrated

way than happens in daily communication. Add to this the considerable economic

interest that always penetrate the cultural field and we find ourselves in the area

of human life that a highly charged. There are, for instance, people who are

irritated by background music; there are people who feel that for last seventy years

most architecture has had little to offer aesthetically; there are people who оbjеЁt

to advertising that uses images of seductive women. There are also people who

become aggressive when forms of artistic expression clash with their deepest

convictions, or who feel that they have been urged — explicitly or implicitly —

to commit acts of violence.

What represents beauty and joy for one person may be objectionable to another.

seldom do people agree about what is valuable in theatre, film, dance music, the

visual arts design, photography in literature. The arts can provoke complaints,

intolerance, aggression; it is not unusual for certain works of arts to be banned in

particular societies or at least considered extremely suspect ; artists have been killed because of their work; often there is a lack of economic support for

certain forms of art while others get funding in abundance for production

and distгГхitiоn; artistic creations may be praised to the skies or meet with

deafening public silence. And often it seems that this support or lack of

support is unrelated to any degree of quality, or lack of quality, that one may

imagine.

Most acting in contemporary Hollywood movies, I would say, is amateurish and

the music is often boring, but that does not seem to matter as long as people enjoy

the film. “‘п recent years, Taiwan has witnessed an unprecedented number of

young popular singer. These highly commodified performers are young, good

looking, stylish, and usually possess little or no talent at all, Leo Ching (1996:

177-8) observes. In Zimbabwe, there is а flourishing market in stone sculptures

that as first mainly produced for tourists. Because they were made in series,

their prestige among Zimbabweans themselves was low. But now local people are

getting to like them and are buying them and appreciating them as works of art .

The passage of time has led to a reappraisal (Rozenberg 1994:16)

Thus, quality, or the importance granted to a work of art, is relative concept.

Within each distinguishable area of aHistic production there exist enormous

differences in quality, and the people who feel attach to certain genres believe that

They know why some works within these are better than others. However, in the

broader social context it is mostly criteria other than quality that are decisive for

why some works of art gain a prominent place in society and other seem to be of

no importance at all. It is not so easy to get a grip on these criteria in general

terms, because they differ from one society to another and &om one period of time

to another.

There are such difference in social appreciation because the arts engage our

deepest emotions. Music, theatrical performances, soap operas, images of different

kinds , films, novels and poems are structures of feeling. They embody our

believes our sentiments, giving structure to these (Edelman 1995: 1-9). They

provide us with а way of orientating ourselves in domains that are not part of the

rational or logical components of our lives. It is, therefore, a mistake to think that

the arts contribute exclusively to the beautiful, pleasurable, innocent or morally

respectable aspects of our existence. On the personal level, they feed our

open and secret aspirations in the various spheres of life we like to be paH of,

which may contain many different elements ranging from the sleazy to the

mystical.

The arts are also part of a social struggle about which expressions of pleasure,

aggression, desire, tenderness, power, cynicism or fear may be shared with

other and thought desirable and which may meet with disapproval. What is

considered as beautiful, entertaining, amusing or exciting with depend on the

specific social context. Which is more beneficial kom a cultural perspective: the immediate gratiHcations that the artistic experience is expected to deliver, or

the long, show process of leaming what is valuable in the arts and what gives life

а more profound dimension? What kinds of references to actual political or social

situations can artist make, and which are they well advised to avoid? Lionel Tiger

reminds us that “there is a fierce endemic contest in many communities about what

who gets pleasure, when, with whom, and with what cost or tax” (Tiger 1992:6).