TW: Mention of white supremacist violence, and brief discussion of dick pics

A long time ago, before I became entrenched in the farthest regions of revolutionary socialist politics one can possibly get into without going into the pretension that is the “post-left”, I was a simple artist. Now ordinarily I don’t discuss art in and of itself in an article because frankly I can do that on the hellscape that is Twitter. But one particular idea caught my eye and it was worth interrogating. I’m not going to post the tweet or quote it verbatim (since unlike a certain e-celeb I know damn well how likely & easy harassment is with that info), but the thesis goes like this: Art should be uncomfortable, it should disgust and anger you, stop being so loving of censorship & grow up. And believe it or not this didn’t come from this incel-ass, fedora wearing, GamerGate leftover, but from folks on the left. And since rightist aesthetic arguments have come up, the first thing from me this decade is dealing with this bullshit.

Now, one thing we must mention straight away: Under no circumstances is the antithesis immutably true. There are plenty of things that art can, has, and should discuss, and at often discusses in brutal terms. One example we may cite is white supremacy. Whether in the psychological terror of Jordan Peele’s Get Out or the popcorn ready hootenanny of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, white supremacy is depicted unambiguously as violent and worth opposing violently.

Here we enter into the real meat of the discussion: Content. Of course it should be noted that one of art’s most historic social functions is to facilitate discussion on uncomfortable subjects, but there is a meaningful difference between saying something and spewing jibberish. Let’s take, for instance, two things: A love poem and an unsolicited dick pic. Now, both things can be art (the latter only because photography is an art form), but what is actually there? What is being communicated? For what purpose is it being communicated, and why is it being communicated this way?

Art considered socially cannot simply “be”. It has content, it is a product of physical & intellectual labor. It has both an individual & a social context. Even the most nihilistic art conforms to this truth. That in mind, let’s return to our example. Both the poem and the dick pic are expressing some kind of affection, but are doing so in very different ways and have very different purposes. The dick pic, in general, doesn’t mean much other than “I want to fuck you and I don’t understand/care for boundaries”. The love poem, meanwhile, can be romantic, it can be erotic, it can be saddening, it can be humorous; The distinguishing factors here regarding the content & interpretation are context and delivery.

So how does this help us make sense of the edgelord claims at the start? Must art be shocking? Must it be vulgar, upsetting, grotesque? No. Again, the antithesis is not constantly true, but the thesis is not entirely correct. Art considered socially does have the role (and, one could argue, responsibility) to affect & discuss society, but art, as a product firstly of intellectual labor, gives us the freedom to explore these subjects in a variety of ways. Earlier, we mentioned artistic depictions of white supremacy, and while it is true that any explicit depictions of it must include the fact it is violent, it also can be depicted in a way that remains honest yet universally digestible.

Plenty of us grew up on cartoons with PSAs in them, at least one of which included the fact that it’s not right to bully someone based on skin color. A child could understand this. The art didn’t need to be shocking to convey the message, it was fairly basic. In truth when these edgelord aestheticians say that art MUST shock, what they effectively communicate is that they lack the ability to imagine (and by extension, the talent to convey) that a message can be given to the audience without blood, semen, and vulgarity. It is the view of a child who was told by mommy they couldn’t watch an R-rated movie, the view of a teenager who views “maturity” and “explicit subject matter” to be synonyms, and the view of grown ass adults who make “triggered” jokes on /pol/ because they think it’s brave.