Unquirky: Art promoting activism
I associate every year of high school with a social movement. When I think of freshman year, I see the pink beanies with cat ears that everyone wore to the Women’s March following Donald Trump’s election. In my sophomore year, I marched down to Washington Square Park with so many other New York City teenagers and demanded gun control laws after recent school shootings. Junior year was marked by metal straws and “Skolstrejk för klimatet” posters. And senior year, after the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many others, the Black Lives Matter movement took off once again.
But after four years of protesting for these various causes, very little change has been made. Right now, many of you might say to me that this inaction is because of our country’s current leadership. I wouldn’t disagree. But I think there’s more going on here.
Activism is generally pretty formulaic. It is usually first ignited by outrage. Something bad happens, and people are upset. As a result, people take to the streets to protest for change. Either change occurs or it doesn’t, and eventually, we all settle back into our daily routines and the movement subsides. It’s hard to avoid this activism burnout, and every activist is susceptible to it.
Generally, activists fight for immediate change. They protest for new laws to be passed and old systems to be restructured. But the more important (and less popular) side of activism is that which fights for gradual cultural change. We often disregard this side because it’s more subtle and indeed more difficult, but if more of us focused on it, the efforts of protesters wouldn’t feel so futile. Movements wouldn’t fade away when hashtags inevitably stopped trending on Twitter.
As an artist, I’ve always thought of art as a tool to fix society rather than escape it. And here’s why: Since early childhood, our worldviews are formed mostly by lived experience, but many of us grow up sheltered from much of the world and may not experience it until we are adults. The arts and media generally fill the blanks that are left in our worldview.
Our perception of things we haven’t experienced usually comes from movies, TV shows, books, etc. If we use them to promote the kind of society we want to live in, instead of the society that already exists, we can normalize the cultural change we want to see and wait for the real world to catch up. We have to push the perspectives that have been ignored for so long into the mainstream.
I don’t necessarily mean that you have to give up your guilty pleasure I-just-got-home-and-need-to-relax television habits for heavy, dramatic, Oscar-winning social commentary. But we have to be more conscious of the art we consume. Entertainment and social consciousness are not mutually exclusive. Art should be both. Committing to cultural change means being quite a bit more thoughtful about what kind of art we choose to support.
If you forgot the name of a character in the show you’re watching, could you describe them with the phrase “the ____ character” (substitute ____ for Black, Asian, gay, etc.)? Does it pass the Bechdel test (two named female characters talking about something other than a man)? Does it show women and people of color in powerful positions? If it doesn’t, then it’s on you to stop watching it.
If we evolve our criteria for what good art is to include social consciousness and diversity, we will be making the first step toward achieving a cultural shift. Find media that shows a new perspective or normalizes a cultural change and share it with your friends and family. Commit to consuming this type of media and push it into the mainstream. Use a fraction of the energy you have for activism to promote long-term change.
Anna Velychko is a freshman writing about art and pop culture. Her column, “Unquirky,” runs every other Wednesday.