Diversity, Political Correctness & Art

My first book was about a drag dancer in Paris in the 1930s. First-ever review? Plainly put: stick to your own. I also received the "compliment" [lol]: 'wow, I'd swear it was written by a man'. Because girls can't write as well as? Next step was to of course 'not stick to what I know' but to write about segregation in the '60s in New Orleans. The main character was a sassy, sexy, forceful black woman. Reviews focused on the brutal language and the [very] graphic scenes. Again how such a sweet girl can use curse words like this? Last book? A teenage girl in the '90s US choosing to live like an outlaw. My editor at some point called me to congratulate me on the content as when the work was assigned to him, after reading my bio, he expected it to be a romance. Fuck, no.

See the problem yet?

Lemme fast-forward: I now work in a full-time D&I role in Ireland. I am not a POC, nor queer, no special needs. So from an outsider's perspective, I got no incentive. And the inner artist kicks in. Years of empathizing with the hero, the villain, the outcast, the supporting character. Walking in their shoes, learning how to think like them, experience what comes their way under their consciousness, well, it kinda gets to you. And if the characters are not fictional, but yours and your peoples' [Very conscious about the impact of personal experiences in storytelling, but I choose not to share because it shouldn't matter, as it would be forming some sort of bias in you, friend reader], then it becomes something more -> you choose the word. I know my own.

It's that inner artist that has been reading lately about Stephen King's and JK Rowling's slam into the Woke cult. Or [for years] reading all the whining tweets about Oscars' [non]diversity. The non-stop judgement of art and artists and art industry for not taking the stance everyone wants. Lemme break it down to you: art[ists] = freedom of expression.

My inner artist gets confused. 'I thought art is not about the creator is about the art itself' she asks. Naive? Comfortable? Am I hiding from the problem?

Yes, art is political. The vehicles carrying over the promotion of the artists are political. The very meaning of the art piece might be political. But the artist should be measured against their ability to make art and no more. Right? I find myself googling away the very definition of art, to test my sanity. It's not the Wokeness that has me confused, this has always been very clear. It's its extremes that I never got to understand, the tunnel vision. Wokeness is not the problem. Is the loud, militaristic even, protest without a solution. A wall being built with no gain on either side. And when it comes to art, this wall equals annihilation.

Rewarding the artist [only] based on their diversity is leading towards a cast-based art production that needs to fit specific measures to please all. In other words, every mind-numbing B-family movie you've ever watched would be an accurate representation: everyone is happy in the movie, all the family members are happy because of their own "representative" is happy and everyone's intellectual challenge is officially dead. If every queer person was performing in a film as a queer person how would the artist grow? If a writer sticks "to their own" how are they going to evolve their writing voice? The issues that an artist is concerned with should not only be their own. That's the fucking beauty of being able to create; emerge into other problems, become one with the collective consciousness. But art is not only beneficial to the artist themselves; it's the viewers/readers/listeners that are protesting against or for someone's work. And they do well. Rightfully or not, they are art's only metric.

But not the defining factor of the artists' interest or opinion.

And behaviourally we are so far past the line that the line is a dot to us. Artists need to be artists. Their product needs to be the product they have envisioned and not measured against the ticking boxes of the so-called "political correctness". There lies the risk of self-negation and concealed censorship. Culture gets cancelled by its advocates -whether artists or receivers of art. Diversity is the freedom to be you as you are, externally and internally. Allyship derives from empathy and the one thing that you can't take from an artist is that very empathy that leads them into understanding through creation of the human next to them. Perhaps art creation is the best exercise to practice that diversity, understand it and accept it. And when it comes to the artist's diversity, the same terms and conditions should apply.

It's the artist's approach that I have in my day to day tasks but most importantly, it's the artist's awareness of lack of knowledge that keeps me constantly learning, never assuming, and not taking what I see as what is. And that's an everyday reality check that I am happy to have.