Presenting art is not enough, at least if you’re running a nonprofit. Something has to be done or else the opportunity is lost forever.
I was watching the 1953 version of War of the Worlds recently and it struck me that as time passes, the perspective on this particular story changes wildly. Secondly, and more importantly for the nonprofit arts industry, those perspective changes have morphed into raw emotional attachment.
The original H. G. Wells story, written for Pearson’s Magazine (UK) and Cosmopolitan Magazine (US), chronicled the events of Martians invading Earth. It has been dramatized several times, most notably in a 1938 Halloween episode of Orson Welles’ radio program, The Mercury Theatre on the Air, in which Welles wrote and his company of players performed it to sound like the radio report of a real Martian invasion. Despite the many disclaimers broadcast through the show, over a million listeners (about 20% of the listening audience) took the invasion as having actually happened. The next day, The New York Times reported that thousands of people “called the police, newspapers, and radio stations here and in other cities of the United States and Canada seeking advice on protective measures against the raids.”
The 1953 movie, produced 15 years later, won an Academy Award (for special effects), and centered equally on the invasion and a love story between the characters played by Gene Barry (Dr. Clayton Forrester, the leading scientist in his field) and Ann Robinson (Sylvia Van Buren).
And yes, I’ll be insegrevious enough to point out that “Dr. Clayton Forrester” was the name used by Trace Beaulieu for the evil scientist in several seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
But I digress.
There is a vast difference in how we view history, which is why we continue to repeat it (or, as Mark Twain said, “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.”). Historical perspective seem to fall into four categories, in descending order of reliable empirical data: experienced history, consumed history, learned history, and third-person history.
Experienced history exists when events are happening to you in a literal sense. It can also mean the events that happen to you in response to that experience, if that, too, becomes an event and you are a participant.
Consumed history exists when you are at a distance (such as watching an event happening, either live or taped, on TV). In your perspective, the event is happening to other people. It may be consumed history when you see or hear a live event, but the result of that kind of experience is less dependable, even from the consumer.
Learned history exists when you read, watch, or read about an event after the fact. No matter how factually detailed the description may be, you are not physically affected in the moment, nor do you see its immediate aftermath.
Third-person history exists when someone else is telling you about the event and its importance, regardless of the factual nature of the description. The description might be true or not — or have “truthiness,” as Stephen Colbert called it; that is inconsequential to the nature of third-person history. Third-person history is always genuine (or at least it is presented as such), and every now and then, it might even be factual. However, generally speaking, third-person history includes opinion and innuendo. Sometimes it includes conspiracy theories. In its most benign form, it is harmless fluff. In its most inhumane form, it is redolent of rotting fruit — a fruit so poisonous as to be lethal when ingested.
The question arises (yet again): how does your nonprofit arts organization use historical perspectives, not to talk about the issues that plague us, but to do something about them? Art, all by itself, is not a charitable act, nor does it offer more than the opportunity to feel something new, which is laudable from an artist’s standpoint. But it is not the goal of a nonprofit, any nonprofit, to raise awareness without providing the opportunity to do something tangible.
When Arthur Miller penned The Crucible, a play about the Salem Witch Trials and the perils of bullies, beliefs, and mob mentality, it was obvious that he was writing about the similarity between Adolf Hitler’s and, subsequently, Joe McCarthy’s rallying of red-eyed mobs to wage war on new ideas and cancel people who had them. Regardless of what a critic might think of The Crucible, it was written to remind people that there are “leaders” among us who act as the maggot-ridden ideologues of society, and that most people don’t want to fight the craze; worse, they don’t even want to get involved or take in the historical perspective.
“The Crucible” was an act of desperation. Much of my desperation branched out, I suppose, from a typical Depression-era trauma — the blow struck on the mind by the rise of European Fascism and the brutal anti-Semitism it had brought to power. But by 1950, when I began to think of writing about the hunt for Reds [Communists] in America, I was motivated in some great part by the paralysis that had set in among many liberals who, despite their discomfort with the inquisitors’ violations of civil rights, were fearful, and with good reason, of being identified as covert Communists if they should protest too strongly.”
— Arthur Miller, New Yorker Magazine, October 1996
As an academic work, The Crucible works on many levels. But as a catalyzing work that causes people to get up and do something about the problem, it fails when presenters go only so far as to have post-play discussions and background information in the program. Or sell T-shirts.
Would it be so hard for that same charitable organization, one whose worth is not measured by the art it produces but by the impact it causes, to examine those places within their community right now where cancel culture is rampant, third-party history is accepted as fact, and bullies rule the day? And then work with their audiences, not to decry the obvious, but to eliminate the existential threat that occurs when the rotting orange crowd gets viewed as normal behavior? And then measure those actions?
As for the work currently being produced on your stages and in your museums, are you mistakenly measuring impact on your productions by how many people came? Do you assume that your work is measured by a critic, other artists, standing ovations, appreciative letters, and donations? Or do you make sure that the art you produce languishes merely as something to be seen (at best, consumed history)?
With the double-barrelled horror of Halloween and an election coming up, it seemed appropriate to speak up. Will you? Or will you just get the joint ready for the Christmas show?
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