I don’t know what the history books are going to call this era of Trump and the many movements his rise to power has spawned, but I think his scheming vizir Steve Bannon gave us the word we need. The Era of Deconstruction. I think, with time it will come to have both positive and negative connotations; the positive coming from the many progressive social movements that the Trump wind helped to kindle, the negative coming from the massive internal hemorrhaging of our government stemming from the current Executive branch.
All should have a finger on the pulse of the negative right now. Here is just a smattering of issues that gravely concern this author: Net Neutrality, harmful immigration policy, purposeful short staffing key agencies like the State Department, deregulating environmental policy, trying to shutter consumer protection agencies, et cetera. The positive is from a general sea change in our attitudes towards our fellow citizens.
We are finally, slowly, but surely listening to the victims of sexual immorality(I believe we’re all still searching for something better than misconduct that’s all encompassing and has the appropriate gravity.) It’s in an era like this, where the populist demagogue and the Orwellian gov’t types are thriving, where we need to remember what purpose an aspect of our culture like the arts can serve.
While we’re out deconstructing the horrible world we built, I think we should be careful to preserve and expand the broad leeway we give to artists to challenge us.
What I’m winding up to is that Kathy Griffin’s photo op with the severed Trump head and that production of Julius Caesar with the Trumpian aesthetics should totally be ‘within bounds’ for our society. As should Ted Nugent’s gun toting malarkey during the Obama Presidency. Our pattern seeking minds pine for easy answers. Ban it all. Allow it all. However, there is a chasm of nuance, that comes with all freedoms, that we do not so easily grasp.
Free speech contains the right to say things that are wrong, especially when they are about prominent public figures. The government isn’t really the problem at the moment, because we have found new ways to censor and condemn people in the 21st century. The capitalist squeeze: pull the advertisers, cancel the show, condemn the parent companies etc.
That tool has been wonderful for the societal sleazebag fumigation we are going through, but I think it should be used extremely sparingly when it comes to issues of speech. Louis C.K. committed heinous and immoral actions, nothing in his act is what was condemning.(If he hadn’t committed those sick actions, or someone more upstanding had been the creator, his body of work wouldn’t smell the way it now does. In hindsight it looks like a creepy manifesto.)
Kevin Spacey made a lot of movies, their scripts weren’t the issue. Charlie Rose wasn’t interviewing those women. Donald Trump’s Deconstruction is only effective, because we as a society are not willing to get down to the dirty and say what needs to be said on a nationwide level.
