The Arts Fuse Newsletter, May 22

Coming Attractions, Are We Paying Proper Homage OurJazz Ancestors?, An Art Nouveau Shop Front in Harvard Square, Dizzy Gillespie Plays Gospel, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and other critical delights.

May 22, 2024

From The Editor's Desk:

The logo for Artists Against Fascism, a Vermont collective of artists, activists, researchers, and community-builders who utilize interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches to understanding, organizing, and fighting fascism within our own communities, but also as a collective.

Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan’s recent New Republic commentary about what arts and culture might look like in a second Trump term is very welcome. Political prophecies from both left and right sides projecting utopias and dystopias abound. But speculation about how the arts will fare is rare. That said, Corrigan ends up waffling. She details Trump’s educational background, then admits it will have no effect on future policy: “Trump doesn’t care about culture—as opposed to celebrity.” Republicans will renew their efforts to zero out funding for the NEA, the NEH, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting while “big money donors, both Republican and Democratic, [will] keep the high-end cultural monuments of urban life — opera companies, symphonies, flagship museums — afloat.” This is mild hand-wringing, considering that the magazine claims an American fascist state might be on its way.

Corrigan doesn’t consider that we can already glimpse the future of arts and culture under Trump. Courtesy of its self-serving apathy —not both-sides-ism but no-sides-ism. The New Republic and other media outlets insist democracy is in danger — a crisis is at hand. But, in the world of arts and culture, who is sounding the alarm? The bet is that it will be business as usual — no matter who wins. Corrigan sees the increase in dystopian fiction as evidence of an “oppositional,” but she doesn’t connect visions of despair with political efficacy. The schedules of Boston-area theaters for next season’s shows — when Trump might well be ascendent — are chockablock with standard fare. On our stages, didacticism is a matter of fashion: grappling with identity and gender is on the front burner, empowering pro-democratic forces is out in the cold.

Perhaps, deep down, the powers-that-be in arts and culture agree with the fat cats of the right wing. It won’t be bad for business if Trump is re-elected: fears of fascism may be overblown and a boogeyman in office might be damned good for ticket sales and funding. The indifferent can sit back and enjoy irresponsibly, arguing that the arts transcend the fate of democracy. That is the way it works in semi-authoritarian states, such as the Hungary of Republican fave Viktor Orbán. Corrigan should have taken a gander at its internecine culture war. Arts and culture survives by kowtowing to heavy-handed government patronage that demands self-imposed censorship. The strategy is textbook divide and conquer among artists: “collaborationists” are pitted against “progressives” whose funding requests are guaranteed to be nixed. The latter either leave the country or go underground — to sound an alarm that should be loud enough for us to hear.

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Editor-in-Chief

Bill Marx

wmarx103@gmail.com