Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which presents the assassination of the Ancient Roman leader, has long been used to comment on the politics, and heads of state, of the day. Orson Welles imagined Caesar as a fascist dictator reminiscent of Mussolini (1937). More recently, an Obama-like Caesar was killed off in Minnealpolis’ Guthrie Theatre (2012). A recent Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar has caused a furor, however, with sponsors pulling out because they considered the play to be in “bad taste” for depicting a Trump-like figure being stabbed to death by “ethnic minorities and women.”
To understand this, it is worth thinking through the bigger question of art and politics. Art as political critique has a long and well-known history—Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953) used the story of the Salem Witch Trials to denounce the McCarthy era ‘witch-hunt’ of alleged communists, for instance, and more recently, Ai Weiwei, the Chinese dissident and conceptual artist, produced work criticizing the Chinese government’s corruption and human rights abuses. But are there, or should there be limits regarding ‘taste’ when it comes to (literal) character assassination, as opponents of the recent Julius Caesar production suggest?
The unacknowledged legislators
The idea of the artist as political sage owes much to the Romantic notion of the role of the artist, or poet, as a sort of philosopher, whose wisdom and truth-giving abilities are beneficial and necessary for the functioning of society.As Shelley puts it in A Defense of Poetry, 1891, “The instigators of laws and the founders of civil society… poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” In this essay, Shelley argues that the poet’s role is important and virtuous, because poets are the moral arbiters of society, defining and protecting moral and social norms.
‘Poetry’, or culture, he says, “awakes and enlarges the mind itself by rendering in it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought.” For Shelley, poetry is innately concerned with unity and harmony, and that it is, therefore, a positive influence to have in society. Order is produced by the imaginative and creative faculties, not simply “rational faculty.”
While poetry, and culture more generally, may indeed possess these virtues, it is naïve and even irresponsible to ignore that culture is concerned with dissonance and ugliness just as much as harmony and beauty. Art may involve and promote immorality or amorality as well as the morals that Shelley speaks of. Poetry and culture are not innately “good”; the expression of emotion does not always result in the perpetuation of social norms beneficial to society. The poet’s role in society is more complex than Shelley, and his descendants, allow.
Poets (and theatre directors) may well be the “unacknowledged legislators of the world”— but are they taking their role seriously enough? Is there too much provocation and too little thought and substance in such “political criticism”? Should artists take full responsibility for provoking negative responses from their political critique, or should we leap to their defence no matter how distasteful we consider their work to be?
It isn’t necessary for art to be sensationalistic and ritualistic for it to be provocative, weighty and important. The greater challenge is to provide thoughtful political criticism without descending into crass sensationalism, even if that form of expression is protected by our democratic freedoms.
Julius Caesar is an excellent and relevant enough without incorporating shock tactics that merely detract attention away from the play itself, and away from the actual flaws of the current head of state. Instead, this production has given Trump supporters a reason to defend him and portray him as a victim.
Aside from this recent production of Julius Caesar, various high-profile cases of political satire such as the infamous illustrations of Mohammed, and various Charlie Hebdo comic strips, and Kathy Griffin’s stunt involving a severed mannequin head resembling Donald Trump, have drawn people to doubt the absolute freedom of art that provokes and offends.
The question of backlash
It would be foolish to criticise these provocative producers of culture without mentioning the backlash that writers, artists and satirists have historically suffers—and why, therefore, our defence of them matters.Disapproval following such artistic endeavours has manifested in firings (Griffin), loss of sponsorship (the Julius Caesar production) and even massacre (the killing of the Charlie Hebdo staff by ISIS militants in 2015).
While such projects may even have been accused of ‘inciting hatred’, violence has often been directed at the artists themselves rather than the original targets, however. Yet in the Hebdo case, while many people showed their solidarity with the victims by using the “Je Suis Charlie” slogan, others found it problematic, given the nature of the cartoons they published—usually intentionally offensive and violent, in the name of satire.
A hint of snobbishness
In other cases, a hint of snobbishness creeps in, as well as disapproval on the grounds of morality.While Shakespeare's Julius Caesar may be the height of considered, weighty commentary on political history, an adaptation in which a Trump-like figure is brutally killed by a mob of ‘women and ethnic minorities’ may be accused of dragging the play into the realm of cheap ritual and effigy-burning, rather than ‘high culture’.
But what is the difference between highbrow theatre and base ritual? Is it what people call ‘taste’?
According to David Hume’s On the Standard of Taste (1757), defining artwork as of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ taste is entirely subjective, and yet the properly educated critic may be able to tell the difference.
Even then, however, Hume says that there is a margin of inevitable disagreement: taste, a form of opinion, is individually biased by political beliefs and other preferences. If one takes this approach, then there is no such thing as objectively bad taste. Someone, somewhere, will be entertained.
Freedom versus approval
When opponents of political criticism talk of “bad taste,” they are really saying that the play is immoral. They are asserting that certain opinions and tastes should not be allowed in society. After all, artistic efforts can easily be stifled without the first amendment being undermined (as Kathy Griffin knows).These issues are, in the end, matters of opinion, however. I may think that certain productions are not very tasteful, but others clearly think that there is some worth in them. Does good taste trump free speech, then? No—and it never should.
But whether or not we are obliged to defend the right for even the most sensationalist art in our culture to exist, we are not obliged to support it, aesthetically. Standards of taste should not be confused with principles of law—and yet, in an age of sensationalist tabloids and popular culture, perhaps we need them more than ever.
