Art’s revolutionary ways

Emotional haze of Saharan proportions typically hovers over and permeates the season just ended - conditions under which it is best to be patient about many things. For example, few there may have been to have been discomfited by the Cro Cro judgment and now, regional political rulings on some musical content. But there should there be many more to consider measured caution on such matters.

For certain, crass, artless content is far less likely to engender open empathy once assaulted, than craft bearing subtle, instantly undetectable daggers aimed at the heart. Yet, even so, the application of justice and politics is capable of both rendering and rending fine coats of insulation over otherwise protected products of creative imagination.

The fine points of justice – an uncloistered virtue open to the outspoken comments of ordinary folk such as I – often crave fineries not easily found in the crudities of daily life. “People,” James Baldwin once famously said, “evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate.”

This is rather difficult, clumsy stuff that marks all areas of art. And we may note that literature and art have at times connoted aggressive subversion and revolutionary intent. Guyana’s President Ali, for instance, invokes Marley’s ostensibly benign messaging - even in the face of Marcus Garvey’s subversive anti-colonial inspiration woven into most of what the Jamaican artist had to offer.

Within “Trinibad” there are traces of Baldwin’s formulation of an alternative language to both understand and to describe current realities in what is being offered by these performers. It has been the same in other jurisdictions represented by different musical and artistic genres.

This is not to deny law its proper place. Incitement to acts of criminal violence is unacceptable under any circumstance. So, too, the willful defaming of people, or breaching of their (relative) right to privacy.

Most of us in the movement to promote freedom of expression globally agree this right is subject to permissible limitations – hate speech and defamation among them. But the boundaries to be drawn between such a right and acceptable exceptions invoke a variety of difficult considerations left in the hands of wise legislators and judges.

Surely, the Law Association is currently hard at work deliberating on such matters in the public interest and must be considering accompanying public debate and discussion. However, those of us who have been active on the question of removing all traces of criminal defamation from the statutes understand general ambivalence.

When the subject was debated in our parliament ten years ago, there was rare bipartisan agreement on the applicability of jail when sentencing for acts of criminal defamation. What followed was a half measure referencing “malicious defamatory libel known to be false.”

This is important to remember amid recent developments that have cast the subject of freedom of expression, through creative content, under the spotlight. There is not likely to be strong opposition to the imposition of criminal penalties for specified creative and other expression.

We are already used to “banning” as a coping mechanism. But this has become somewhat anachronistic as an option, since the arms of official prohibition are difficult to extend beyond the sitting ducks of traditional, domestic media.

There is also a certain nonsense associated with repeated references to “airplay”, and its bearing on the popularity of contemporary music, that belies the fact that young people are more abundantly keyed into online platforms than any other medium.

References to “airplay” also invoke notions of official control through outright banning, ill-advised content quota restrictions, and what I have long considered to be our ready resort to prohibition. In some countries we know well, such an instinct extends to other institutions such as libraries, schools, and art galleries.

There is also an opportunity for science to determine psychological triggers and impacts and the factors that predispose people differently across socio-cultural divides. This goes beyond amateur intuition.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Nonsense is nonsense. I however reserve the right to listen to, read, or view the nonsense of my choice. Additionally, people in government always want “positive” messaging to counteract the “negatives” they paraded while being out of office. In some instances, the “negatives” are the outcomes of their own inaction or incompetence.

Meanwhile, look around you and note instances in which books and art and music are giving the middle finger to the status quo. I say keep them coming!