Brave: an adjective meaning ”able to face or endure danger or pain”. There was a time when the works of artists were declared ”undesirable”. (And not because they were plagiarising their colleagues). It was a time when actors who were engaged in street theatre could be arrested for ”constituting an illegal gathering”. When an arts festival could be banned for being a ”threat to national security”. Then, poets and writers were detained without trial. Perhaps a few were tortured. Some were placed under house arrest. Many went into exile.
Looking back, it might have been a time when artists immersed in the anti-apartheid struggle could have been considered ”brave”. But it was unlikely that they thought of themselves as such, not least because there were many activists who experienced more real dangers through what they chose to do. Engagement in ”culture as a weapon of struggle” may have carried some personal risks, but then there was more risk of getting lung cancer from passive smoking than dangers from the apartheid authorities (who were definitely a ”regime”).
What does it mean to be a ”brave” artist nowadays? To subject one’s work to the vagaries of ”the critics”? To risk an audition when there are a thousand other hopefuls? Simply to be an artist?
I ask this because, among the feedback I’ve received to a play I’ve had at the Market recently, is the consistent refrain that it is a ”brave” play. Newspaper critics, audience members and private conversations have repeated this theme. Which has me worried. Is there something in the play that was potentially dangerous or painful and that I had overlooked and had forgotten to excise?
Sure, the play deals with contemporary themes, but no more than one would read about in newspapers on a daily basis. Yes, the imagination is used to explore power and its effect on individuals, but little more than an average artist would do. And, of course, some awkward questions are asked, but these could be asked anywhere, except that they have meaning for us, here, now. And anyway, isn’t that what artists are supposed to do? To ask questions, pose dilemmas, make people think, challenge our comfort zones?
We’ve just celebrated our first decade of democracy. It’s almost 11 years since the demise of repressive state machinery that silenced dissent. Nearly 11 years of the constitutional right to freedom of creative expression. What does it say then about the psychology of our nation when so many people consider a play with contemporary themes to be ”brave”? What can we deduce about the levels of self-censorship that prevail out there? What may we assume about the absence of more public discourse or the retreat of public intellectuals? And what does it say about how critical discourse or commentary is dealt with in our national life?
Where have all the firebrand artists gone? Have we simply wimped out? Why?
What’s the worst that can happen? Someone will brand us racist, counterrevolutionary, handmaidens of the neocolonialists? Is that it? Are we scared that upsetting someone in authority might have us permanently removed from the cocktail circuit, or excluded from some position on an official cultural body? So what? Or maybe we fear alienating those who now disdainfully brush off crumbs from the public-sector table to the outstretched hands below? Ho hum. These are hardly comparable to a time of detention, bannings, house arrest and torture, a time when artists worth their salt didn’t have much money anyway, but produced provocative pieces of art that were aesthetically outstanding.
One only had to watch last week’s television broadcast of some of the work that marked the end of the celebrations of 10 years of democracy to see how utterly boring, inane and self-congratulatory ”official” art — with resources from the public purse — can be.
For the sake of the quality of our art, maybe we need less public-sector support. For the sake of our democracy, we need artists who will not disempower themselves in the wake of real and imagined dangers. Artistic practice and freedom of creative expression are not the preserve of the brave or the courageous. After all, we are not in Iraq. Or Zimbabwe.