Art is something subjective, but it’s understood to be anything that someone creates with their own mind that makes someone think or feel something. It’s not just paintings and sculptures, but television, movies, music, theater, and writing as well. Art is all around us, and people’s opinions and personalities are shaped by the art they interact with. The shows we watch, music we listen to, books we read, and art we enjoy all affect us, whether we think they do or not.
In schools, funding is usually cut from the arts before anything else. Art is viewed as something disposable, in large part because where there is good art there is discussion. Good art leads to people discussing its themes, messages, characters, and the things that people relate to or are interested in, and the people in charge don’t want that.
Art is one of the biggest ways that people rebel, and it’s also one of the most accessible. Good materials, free time, and the money to focus on art of any kind are all barriers. Anyone can pick up a pen and write a story or sketch something. At its most basic level, art can be done with anything, and it can mean different things for different audiences.
Kids shows are often thought of as surface-level and dismissable, but they’re a form of art that impacts one of the most impressionable populations: children.
Most of us probably watched Gravity Falls growing up. It’s a kids cartoon that follows a pair of twins as they spend the summer at their great uncle’s tourist trap in a town filled with strange occurrences. It may be aimed at kids, but its themes stick with kids into adulthood. These themes include the importance of accepting that change is a part of life and not letting yourself be defined by others.
I remember how, in the final few episodes, the character Mabel was trapped in Mabeland, a prison made up of her perfect world, where she didn’t have to deal with reality. In order to escape, she had to accept that even though reality, change, and growing up sucks sometimes, it isn’t all bad.
As a kid, seeing that even the terrible days aren’t all bad helped me see the bigger picture, realizing that bad days aren’t the end of the world. Now, as a senior who’s graduating in less than two weeks, it means something different to me. You can’t hide from reality or hope that nothing will change, because things are changing whether you like it or not.
The things we are exposed to as kids shape us. Even if we don’t fully understand everything that the artist is trying to share with us, the ideas we are surrounded by affect the lens that we see everything else through and the mental references that we have to deal with new events and emotions. That’s why people in power go after art first, because art forms key parts of our personalities as kids and as adults.
When authoritarians gain power, one of the first things that they do is limit access to art and literature, and demonize the opinions that they don’t agree with. Look at the Nazi book burnings before and during World War II, where books about sex, sexuality, liberal and democratic attitudes and tendencies, as well as works of emigrants, traitors, authors from foreign countries, and Jewish people were burned. These burnings and bans weren’t just about the art, but about control.
When you control people’s access to art and literature, you control the information available to them and, in turn, their ability to fight against the people who are controlling the spread of information. Keeping people trapped by the information that is deemed acceptable stops people from questioning the authority, because everything they see and hear is in support of the authority.
If every book you read and art piece you see is screened to make sure it doesn’t contain any ideas that the people in charge take offense to, then it’s so much harder to fight against the people in charge. They aim to keep people from being introduced to new ideas and from realizing that there are people who share your frustration and your perspective, because when people realize that they’re not alone they’re more likely to do something. Maybe they start to plan a revolution, or more likely, they share their ideas with other people, or they just find the motivation to keep going.
Seeing other people who are also upset with the world or struggling with things that you struggle with is very important. There’s a reason that people say “you aren’t alone” when talking about mental health; as humans, we crave connection. Knowing there is someone out there who you can see yourself in, even if they’re fictional, helps. Especially when whatever you’re dealing with is something mental or emotional that people think you can fix if you just ‘try harder,’ seeing someone who has dealt with the same stuff makes you feel valid. So many people start to feel like they are crazy because they can’t just flip a switch to stop being anxious or snap out of a depressive state, but seeing characters or real people who know they have similar issues makes them feel less alone and like they can talk about their problems.
Look at the suppression of any art deemed “un-American” in the United States after 9/11 and the backlash against Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses. In both of these cases, the people expressing opinions that the people in charge don’t agree with are silenced. Art that was considered “un-American,” which really just means that it said anything even slightly negative about America, was taken down or not put up after 9/11, even when it had nothing to do with the attacks. Salman Rushdie faced death threats and even a fatwa (a religious ruling that ordered Rushdie’s execution) over his portrayal of Islam and the prophet Muhammad in The Satanic Verses, despite Rushdie himself being raised Muslim.
Sometimes, it’s not as obvious as book burnings or hiding art. Small changes, ones people might not even notice at first glance, create ripple effects on the impact and message of a work.
Take the famous poem “First They Came” by Martin Niemöller. It’s about the dangers of inaction. It’s not a very long poem, but a lot of the time when people share it, they change it slightly; they cut out the first line and edit the second sentence. By cutting out the first line, “First they came for the Communists / And I did not speak out / Because I was not a Communist,” the message of the entire poem is changed. By erasing the line, they’re erasing the legacy of the first group that the Nazis came for. It isn’t just the removal of the first line, however. Even sources like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum change the poem, cutting the first sentence and changing the second to start with the line “First they came for the Socialists” instead of the actual line, “Then they came for the Socialists.” It makes it seem like this is what the poem has always been, almost as if the first line never existed.
By erasing the messages present in art and suppressing the art that aims to say something, we lose the connections inherent in art and the ability to share the things that matter.
Art, both making it and interacting with it, allows us a method of processing our emotions and the things we deal with. There’s a reason there’s so much art that centers around things like coming of age and familial relationships. We use art as a way to express our fear, anger, happiness, grief, love, and more, because those emotions are what make art. Art gives us an outlet, and when we find art that makes us feel something it matters.
There is art out there, somewhere, that you can find yourself in. Maybe you find a character who struggles with the same mental health issues you do, or who has the same dreams as you, or who shares your culture.