Pen to Paper

In a recent episode of Dragon Page: Cover to Cover, J.F. Lewis was interviewed about how his recent novel Staked eventually led to the author “getting kicked out of [his] church.”  It’s a very interesting story, and I’d encourage you to give it a listen.  As soon as I heard it about a week and a half ago, I knew I had to write something about it.  I wanted to hold off for a bit, though, to make sure that I wasn’t just giving a knee-jerk reaction.

There’s a lot that I’m tempted to say, but a good chunk of it boils down to sweeping generalizations and name-calling.  For efficiency, I’ll summarize that part of my reaction: all of the jerks in the world are poopheads.

Moving beyond that, though, I think that the issue is one that people of faith (and from my experience, American Christians in particular) has always struggled with.  What are, or should be, the moral guidelines for art?  Should art reflect the world as it is, or as we think it should be?  Is anything fair game, or should religions get to say, “this is off limits”?  Is “authenticity” justification for showing characters sinning/doing bad things/engaging in morally questionable activities/being less than perfect, or should they always be perfect role models?  Should evil always be punished and good always rewarded?

I tend to think that the artist (and by this I mean any creative person) has to find their own answer to these questions.  Part of this process is to seek the counsel of friends, family, mentors, and religious leaders, but in the end no one but the artist can choose what to include or exclude in their work.  And in the end, no one but the artist is responsible for what they create.  It bothers me when people who have no role in a work’s creative process claim the right to censor it, to tell the artist “you can’t do that.”  If something offends you, don’t support it.  Vote with your dollar.  Don’t presume to try to force your way into an artist’s mind and change their moral convictions to match yours.

It’s interesting to me what people choose to object to.  If grandfatherly Morgan Freeman is playing God, that’s a movie for the whole family (despite questionable uses of power being played for laughes).  If it’s Alanis Morissette, though, that’s probably heresy (even if the film raises important questions about society and theology).  Not surprisingly, Dogma was banned by the college I went to, which also prohibited student actors from “drinking” on stage.  On the other hand, Thomas Kinkade’s works were perfectly welcome, and many of my artistic friends object to him for different reasons.

I’m reaching the point of this post where I feel like I should have an oversimplified conclusion, something like “Art = Good.  Excommunicating an artist because you disagree with their work = Bad.  The ‘Movie’ movies = Very Bad.”  But not only would something that clear cut be the opposite of my point, it would probably not be an accurate description of what I want to say.  Instead, I have two bits of advice.

First, if you’re an artist, give careful thought to the moral implications of your work.  If you can do something with a clean conscience, go for it; if not, maybe you should hold off for a bit.

Second, if you know an artist, don’t leap straight to “I need to tell them that they’re wrong” when you have a problem with one of their works.  First, ask if it’s you’re place to say anything; and if it is, do so as a friend or teammate, and not the morality police.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Art, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.