No one would deny the significance of the role that art plays in human life. It ranges from aesthetic pleasure to encourage people to act for the benefit of their nation. In the current paper, we will analyze the role of art as a call to action through the perspective of the two works: Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994) by Anna Deavere Smith and The Art of Protest (2005) by T.V. Reed. Our point is that these two works consider art as activism. Analyzing various social movements along with the role of art in them the authors encourage the readers not merely to understand the necessity of these or those changes in society but to act to approach the day of those changes.
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is Smith’s drama that deals with issues of racial prejudice and awareness. The springboard for writing the play was Smith’s “search for the character of Los Angeles in the wake of the initial Rodney King verdict” (Twilight XVII). The representatives of police who beat Rodney King were tried in Simi Valley. This place is important for understanding the essence of the problem as it is situated far from the social, economic, and racial problems that Los Angeles experienced at the time. What is more, the place was miles away from South-Central Los Angeles, the epicenter of the riots where the undeclared war between the residents and the police broke out.
The title of the play comes after Twilight, an ex-gang member who expresses the necessity to “speak from another point of view, like speaking another language,” to break the bonds and restrictions of racial identity (Twilight xxv). Twilight’s idea is that one “cannot forever dwell in idea/ of identifying with those like me/ and understanding only me and mine” (Twilight XXVI).
The play depicts a wide range of people: the African-American, Caucasian, and Korean-American communities affected during the disturbance are vividly described by the author. The description is presented in detail, individual eccentricities of speech and appearance are offered by Smith. In this or that way these aspects reveal the problem of race. Still, it would be a mistake to say that the play focuses only on the regions associated with the riots as Smith also considers the state of affairs in segments of Los Angeles communities that are not involved in riots. Though they are not directly affected by the violence they feel its consequences as well.
The interviews that serve as a basis for the author’s investigation render the atmosphere of tension and fear that riots bring. We read about the fears and hopes of the Hollywood agent, one among those whose property was destroyed in the riots, feel the aspirations of the sheltered sorority girl and proud of the courage of the woman who saved a man’s life from an angry mob. Though the interviews present a wide range of human feelings and emotions, different views, and various speech patterns, what unites them is the natural human aspirations for peace, security, and fraternity. The value of the work under consideration is rooted in the author’s writing skills as she does not merely render the atmosphere of the time but creates both static and dynamic images of the human soul.
The diversity of the author’s interviewees is important for getting the general picture of the riots. Korean grocers, street kids, the former Chief Police, Black intellectuals’ words, gestures, and facial expressions are studied by the author and help her transform from race to race, class to class, and gender to gender. Smith concludes that the riots result from existing tensions that do not simply imply the black versus the white eternal problem. In the Introduction to the play we read:
My predominant concern was that my history, which is the history of race as a black and white struggle, would make the work narrower than it should be.… I am a strong critic of the insularity of people in the theater and of our inability to shake up our traditions, particularly about race and representation issues (Smith 4).
We are inclined to think that Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is a wonderful example of how history mingles with documentation and a mix of documentation, in its turn, mixes with literature. In terms of this mixture, both documentation and literature are kinds of art that encourage to act. Using her work the author encouraged the dialogue across the representatives of power and race. The audience is encouraged to act as long as it realizes the tragedy of the situation described. The first and the simplest step in solving the race problem one can make is to discuss the issues that the work explores with a person of another race or another social class. Through establishing understanding between such people on the local level the race problem will be solved on the global level.
The second work under analysis that is concerned with dramatic social movements in the United States is The Art of Protest (2005) by T.V. Reed. The author explores the civil rights movement, placing music and religion as forms of culture at their center. The work offers a new perspective of looking at the movement; we will call it artistic here. The thing is that the rise of art happened simultaneously with the rise of people’s awareness of the necessity of changes. “Three clusters of events in particular are key to the rise of both the music and the movement: the Montgomery bus boycott, the student-led sit-ins, and the Albany, Georgia, movement” (Reed 16).
The author depicts the role that a musical band from Albany, the freedom Singers, played in the movement. They sang the movement’s story and raised funds for it through their concerts. The book shows how freedom songs united people and served “litanies against fear” (Reed 25). Music shaped the personal and collective identities of the movement’s activists. The author’s point is that though the music was not the only force uniting people over the movement and shaping its directions, it was a strong one.
What acquires especial importance is the author’s emphasis on the fact that both cultures influenced the movement and the movement influenced the culture. As an example of the latter, the author speaks of the women’s movement in the past fifty years. It has significantly changed everyday life because of the changes in laws and political institutions. Poetry was one of the tools used to make the changes possible. According to Reed, this form of art is well equipped to challenge the separation of private and public spheres and the split between emotions and intellect (Reed 91). A peculiar feature of the women’s movement is that more than any other movement it enhanced the division between the cultural and the political:
“Some social scientists divide social movement activity into (serious) ‘instrumental’ social and political action, and (merely) ‘expressive’ cultural activity. We will never find the real women’s movement if we use these categories. Culture was a prime ‘instrument’ of change for the movement, not some decorative, ‘expressive’ addition” (Reed 79).
The interconnection between art and social movements becomes clearer for the reader from chapter to chapter of the book as all of them offer a new and new aspect of it. The book opens with analyzing the crucial role of music in the African American Civil Rights movement. Then comes the explanation of the distinction between culture and politics by the example of literary drama and “theatre” of politics case. Further, the author focuses on the role of poetry as one site of feminist consciousness-raising action and a source of information of diversities within feminist identities. Another aspect that gets the author’s close examination is how social movements are rendered to the masses. In particular, the film industry is considered as one of these ways. Pop culture and various art forms that it brought are also examined in the context of its organizing power. The analysis of social movement in their interconnection finishes with considering the impacts of the Internet culture on the globalization movement.
Thus a wide spectrum of movements is analyzed to show how culture and art, in particular, can affect it. All in all, the book under consideration explores the problem in three dimensions: social movements as sub- or countercultures; various art forms in and around social movements; how art forms have shaped the whole American culture.
Everything stated above considered we conclude that both authors explored social movements and encouraged their readers to act and not to be passive observers of the current events in the local and global arena. If Reed’s work analyzes social movement in close interconnection with art developments, Smith’s one focuses more on the characters’ feelings that the movements aroused and serves as a sample of art as activism itself. The value of the two works consists in the fact that they do not leave the readers indifferent to the issues described, emphasize their importance and the necessity of the immediate actions to take.
Works Cited
Reed, T.V. The Art of Protest. Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2005.
Smith, A. D. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. Anchor, 1994.