Art Rules My Youth
Today, art is little but a click away. Be it a Netflix Original Series, an Amazon Prime Movie, or even a Digital Theatre+ Play. In fact, according to Statista, in the US alone over 78% of consumers use at least one subscription-based Video On Demand service. That’s hundreds of millions of people in one country alone, all consuming art. In that same breath, enough people around the world do the same, that a large portion of global culture revolves around the consumption, discussion, and reaction to art. If you plucked the Greek philosopher Plato from his time and allowed him to see this happening now, and at this scale, his knee-jerk reaction, coming from the earliest form of democracy we can trace back to, would probably be to tell you society was bound to collapse. And likely soon, if the world continued to allow its citizens to become enamored by art, in particular the art of representation: imitation. If you asked him what his solution to this problem would be, he would tell you it would be to banish every artist of this world from the public limelight.
Farfetched? Take it from the man himself, courtesy of Book X of the Republic, one of his seminal works:
“For example, the painter, we say, will paint for us a shoemaker, a carpenter, and other craftsmen, although he doesn’t understand the arts of any one of them. But, nevertheless, if he is a good painter, by painting a carpenter and displaying him from far off, he would deceive children and foolish beings into thinking that it is truly a carpenter. (PLATO 598c)
Reading this, it becomes possible to understand why Plato believes representative art should not be tolerated in his Just society. Plato rejects representative art as he believes its spectacle distracts people from the truth and reason of reality. In the above quote, Plato elaborates on this, arguing that it is through the medium of representative art that even those with little to no knowledge of a field can produce works that imitate that field well enough that they can mesmerize the public, preventing them from ever looking towards the actual truth the art is based on. Or to give a modernized version of Plato’s analogy in the above quotation, ‘the work of a science-fiction writer would only serve to distract the public from learning about actual science’. And when considering something as dangerous as a politician using art to sway the public to their favor, the question of whether that politician actually included truthfulness in their art becomes pertinent. In an era where for the first time that same public were given the power to determine the direction of the state in Ancient Athens, having art as a potential tool to win over votes must have troubled Plato to his core. Enough that he deemed Art irreconcilable with a well-functioning state. In Plato’s words — at least the words he attributed to Socrates — within the same Republic, the only rulers of the state should be philosophers: Making artists, people who may have little knowledge, but large ability to enthrall populaces, a natural antithesis to the philosopher king.
Having the benefit of being able to dwell on Plato’s thoughts, thousands of years later, if I could face Plato now in reaction to his critique of art, I would simply ask him: Why does Art only exist as a distraction from the truth from your perspective?
Can Art not provoke rational thinking and encourage the pursuit of the truth?
To my first question, Plato might answer: ‘Because representation, which one could argue makes up the majority of art, is not concerned with truth and accuracy, so long as it gets its message across.’ And when I think to any films, series, or plays which held up complete accuracy, I come up frustratingly short. Many may have come close, say Spotlight or 127 Hours, but to Plato, any inaccuracy at all would make it the lesser to hearing those stories from the actual people who went through them.
To my second question however, I think Plato might pause, if only for a moment. The art may not be completely accurate, but it could ignite an interest within the viewer that motivates them to seek out the truth more fervently than if they had never been introduced to the art at all. Take The Day After, an ABC made-for-tv movie released in 1983 about what could happen if The Cold War followed through to its logical conclusion: Nuclear Warfare. The movie exceeded any reasonable expectations when Ronald Reagan, the US president at the time, revealed that the film had struck him emotionally, to the extent that it made him pursue nuclear disarmament treaties with The Soviet Union. In this case, the art pointed Reagan towards a truth — the danger of nuclear warfare — and motivated him to do more to face that truth for himself and for the American nation. Equally poignant, the televised series Star Trek, released on September 8, 1966, didn’t stop at giving people a dream-world they could distract themselves with, it inspired children and adults on every corner of the globe that watched it to learn and pursue science at its core: 55 years later, being able to hear scientists such as CalTech’s Robert Hurt saying they might not be scientists today had they not seen the show.
Ultimately though, I would tell Plato about how I was once a teenager, young and impressionable, who stumbled upon an artwork — Bakemonogatari, still my favorite artwork — which chose to represent the views of two thinkers through a hard-fought battle and debate between the anime’s characters. The debate centering on the inherent good or evil of humans. It was the first time I experienced philosophy, particularly that of Mencius, who argued the fundamental good in human beings, and Xunzi, who argued the fundamental evil. The debate stuck with me. Enough that I wrote my first memorable essay on it. It stuck with me until I couldn’t help but further investigate the world of philosophy. It put me on a path Plato would’ve excitedly encouraged, the pursuit of truth and knowledge. It put me on the path to Plato himself. Something I am thankful for to this very day. And that happened because of art. Representative art.
After a few weeks of living in our world, I think Plato might start seeing the merit in art. It never lost its danger — see Birth of a Nation skyrocketing KKK enrollment –, and for that we should always heed his warnings, but it simultaneously produces works that inspire, elevate, and even teach. When it’s not through school or community, what other mediums have such a power to introduce people to concepts they hadn’t before considered?
I make art. And if there was one person whose approval I would appreciate more than most, it would be Plato’s, for no other reason than being able to teach him something new.
