Art is primal. Necessary. Emerging from some deep, ineradicable human need, art has been an integral part of human society from the time humans sought shelter in caves. And since that time, art has been a means of exerting social control in ways both subtle and bold. In ancient Egypt the architecturally marvellous pyramids were designed to strike awe in the hearts of the slaves lugging the bricks, thereby reinforcing their lowly place in the universe and making them more tractable in the process. The Renaissance popes conscripted into their service anyone who knew how to wield a paintbrush and put them to work exalting Christian cosmology. As for Stalin, he corralled every writer (a notoriously cantankerous group) who wanted to earn a living by the pen into the Soviet Writers Union, where their raison d’être became the glorification of the state.
America was meant to be different, a beacon for people fleeing from dogma, a place where the collective project was that of creating a society where everyone could be an individual—nirvana for artists. From the poet Walt Whitman (“Song of myself”!) to the painter Georgia O’Keefe to the photographer Robert Frank, artists in America have been free to pursue their personal vision. If they chose to exalt the status quo, like Steven Spielberg, they won Oscars. Should they want to smash it, in the manner of Allen Ginsburg, they were given the National Book Award. But something fundamental has shifted, and the arts in America are lately meant to serve a specific moral or didactic purpose. That is not to say any artist can no longer write, paint, or photograph what they like. But unless artists and writers follow certain precepts, they decrease the chances that their work will be reviewed in prominent media outlets, talked about in the right postal codes, or considered part of the bien-pensant cultural conversation.
As an American novelist, it is risky for me to write the sentence you just read. Why should this be so? It is no secret that the American cultural temple is a liberal project. I believe that is to be applauded, and I say this as one whose own views are generally liberal. If someone has to control the culture, I’d rather it was liberals than the National Rifle Association. Unfortunately, this situation comes with a downside which is homogeneity. As Hegel would tell you (thesis, antithesis, synthesis), when everyone agrees, progress becomes more difficult to achieve. How is art meant to happen when everyone is supposed to be thinking the same thoughts? Art goes against the grain. It’s the sand in the oyster that creates the pearl.
Let’s take Hollywood as an example. It is a truism that the culture of Hollywood is liberal, but not liberal in the sense of freethinking. Perhaps you are considering writing a screenplay. Knowing the political orientation of the producers to whom you will be trying to sell your work, what would you do? Of course, there is the occasional producer who values complexity, but what you would probably do, because nearly everyone does, is leave complexity at the curb and write something that reinforces the outlook of those who are signing the checks.
We see a similar phenomenon in publishing, at least when it comes to literary fiction. If an author creates a protagonist who questions liberal pieties (not condemns, mind you, but simply questions), he will risk creating a barrier to the work being subject to critical consideration. In a world where critical approbation is necessary to sell books, this is not a happy state of affairs. Elucidate the interiority of that protagonist and the problem becomes exponentially worse. In contemporary American literature, there is no Michel Houellebecq, because the current conditions do not allow for it. New York publishers will avoid a novelist who writes about Islam the way Houellebecq does; critics would either ignore or lambast them. A novel like Submission can only be published by a major American publisher because Houellebecq is not an American.
There is another salient aspect of liberalism today and culturally it is perhaps the most important one of all—the privileging of groups that have previously been excluded from power whether female, black, Latino, Asian, gay, or any other historically marginalized peoples. On the surface, this seems to be an entirely positive development. Let’s call the phenomenon “radical inclusiveness.” But it is this feature of the current liberal project that has so troubled the arts. In an unwritten cultural fiat, writers are granted “standing,” as in an author does, or does not have the “standing” (or, is allowed) to tell a particular story. An inverted hierarchy has developed whereby those who suffered from exclusion are now on top and those who did the excluding (metaphorically, at least; one presumes these artists didn’t exclude anyone individually) are on the bottom. Chinese-American author Amelie Wen Zhao postponed publication of her novel Blood Heir when she was accused of racism for writing insensitively about slavery (in a fantasy novel!). Award-winning author Kristine Kathryn Rusch decided to self-publish her novels about a black detective because of the degree to which she, as a white woman, was discouraged by traditional publishers from writing about a black character.