You MUST Avoid This Trap.
What I learned from one of America's greatest teachers.
Tribalism is killing any chance of artistic revival.
Leftist spoliation of our cultural institutions has inflamed right-wing demands for a “return to tradition.” Rightists demand art that reflects more “conservative values,” which has an unclear definition outside of patriotism and Christian moralism.
Some say all art is political.
Others says “just entertain me and shut up.”
I say they’re all wrong.
We’re tired of “left wing” art.
We don’t need “right wing” art.
We need bold, imaginative, free-thinking artists.
Here’s how you can become one.
Zelda Fichandler was a titan among culture warriors.
The mother of America’s regional theatre movement, she also built the finest actor-training program in the country.
I was among her final crop of students.
Zelda sought out not just to train actors—but to nurture smart, soulful artist-citizens. Always urging us to think outside the box, she loved to pin science articles on one of the main billboards in the 5th floor hallway at 721 Broadway, HQ of the vaunted Graduate Acting Program.
(For example, it was she who introduced me to the concept of the connection between stomach and the brain, bolstering her view that the most visceral and exciting acting—and living—emerged not from the intellect, but from the gut.)
She stressed that Curiosity and Empathy are foundational to the craft of acting. In truth, they are foundational to any artistic discipline. They are the artist’s bread and butter, what sets them apart from the civilian population.
And they’ve become rare in today’s atomized, hyper-partisan climate.
Artists who want to matter moving forward must reject being pigeonholed—by others, or by themselves.
I don’t condemn post-modernism or deconstructionism.
They may wear away at a functional society as water weathers stone, but they are useful philosophical approaches for creative exploration.
It’s creatively useful to poke and prod various pillars of the social order, as a way of asking questions and developing new ideas and theories, eventually manifesting them in challenging and provocative new works.
For creative work, maintaining a critical eye (dare I say Theory) toward the status quo isn’t just useful—it’s essential. After all:
The artist who accepts everything questions nothing.
At the same time, I’m nowhere near as militant an atheist as I was 15 years ago.
I recognize that much of humanity’s greatest art was inspired by a devotion to God; I respect the poetry and rich symbolism in sacred texts; I see the hubris, cynicism, nihilism and resentment at the heart of leftist politics as cancer to the creative psyche.
I’ve developed a respect for the transcendent and the unknowable, and their potential to elevate an artist’s work beyond the now and into eternity.
Where the ignorant might smear me as a “fascist” for my policy preferences, for the sake of artistic freedom I embrace what I call psychological—perhaps even spiritual—liberalism, honoring my creative individuality and maintaining an appetite to explore the carnal, the uncouth, and the unsavory aspects of life and living.
I embrace the importance of strong families, but understand that infidelity and relational strife make for fascinating drama. I think conservatives are correct that unchecked promiscuity is harmful to civilization, but understand that sex and sexuality are powerful, primordial forces, and will never shy away from them in creative work.
While I’ll be the first to condemn the “problematization” of classic literature, I just as readily condemn the reflexive (and elitist) rejection of popular entertainment; those who finger-wag at jazz and hip-hop, or who sneer at comic books and videogames—itself a multibillion-dollar industry that has evolved into a potent storytelling medium, buoyed by technology that allows for breathtaking creative expression.
Some might say I’m a bleeding heart centrist; that I’m a coward who sits on the fence, or who won’t take a firm stand.
Fuck those people.
They’re not artists.
It is cultivating these inner tensions, not avoiding them—rejecting black-and-white thinking, living within the discomfort of the grey, inhabiting divergent realities within one self—that makes for fascinating, multi-dimensional art.
Many modern artists seek to “engineer” society.
But their true power lies in standing outside of society, while still feeling its pulse, and evaluating it from as many angles as possible.
Even if such dimension never makes it into a finished project, the dimension will live within the artist and inform all of their work. As Zelda once said, “the work we do as artists and the lives we lead are not separate things.”
The artist who maximizes their ability to empathize, and who cultivates a rigorous intellectual curiosity, will set themselves apart from those locked into imprisoning partisan or philosophical narratives.
This is especially valuable in today’s world, where algorithms and outrage drive so much discourse. The artist who can escape these brain-melting traps will put themselves in an echelon far above the rest.
As the public grow evermore tired of the bitching and bickering—and as they grow evermore sick of AI slop—they’ll be looking to real artists, who transcend boundaries and who can speak to the totality of the human condition.
The challenge therefore isn’t to create more ‘conservative’ or ‘right wing’ art in reaction to woke bullshit.
The challenge is to create art so powerful it makes ideology irrelevant.
And that’s how you become unforgettable.
Enjoy your weekend,
CD
I cannot tell you, Duncan, how much I appreciate your thoughtful writing and courage in the face of the un-thinking idiocy that has infected our artistic institutions, indeed, our entire cultural life.
I say this as a Catholic and a conservative who's nearing 70 and has spent my life as a thespian believing in the power of Theatre to reach hearts and minds.
As a younger woman I spent many years on the Left, leaving it in my thirties due primarily to the palpable hatred and lack of compassion it had for ordinary people, ordinary values, ordinary heroism, ordinary decency.
This corrosive attitude has gotten worse, rendering it almost impossible to write for or reach any but the most niche audience.
The vast American populace that once valued the works of Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neil and so many others right up to the '80s goes ignored and unserved, and they have rightfully concluded that going to the theater is a thing of the past.
I did and still do value powerful works by atheists, misanthropes, hedonists and revolutionaries.
Faith does not demand a blind eye, as you say, to the carnal, the crude or the unsavory aspects of life.
I recently directed a revival of Arthur Miller's THE PRICE Off-Broadway, a play that that pulls no punches in it's vivisection of family relations and cherished dogmas.
It is not today that we need a New Left or New Right kind of art, but a mature, human one that acknowledges with wit, humor, satire, honesty, power and compassion our shared experience.
Carry on.
Glad you're out there.
-Noelle McGrath, Brooklyn
The living in the discomfort of the grey sums it up perfectly. It gets pretty damn uncomfortable and some days it’s easier to live in than others.
When you brought up standing outside society, I felt the peace in it aligning with this verse “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart...”