As so often happens, this topic is up for debate again, this time from publishers who are striking certain works from their catalogues, apparently because their content, or even simply their title, has offended some anonymous but highly sensitive person. It’s been suggested that the villian is not the publishers, but the ubiquitous organisation used by many people to transfer payments.
Seems like a very good argument for taking control of your writing by self publishing. I’ve done this because poetry is not marketable, and publishers quite reasonably don’t want to lose money, so to get my writing in print I have used modern print-on-demand technology to make professional-appearing books. After that, it’s up to me to find readers, even if publishers can’t. There are indie bookshps still that will take half a dozen copies to put on their shelves at a price you suggest.
The USA has a constitutional guarantee of ‘free speech’, which extends to published work as long as it does not contravine other laws, such as those relating to libel or intellectual property. Nevertheless, there are righteous and fairly powerful people and organisations which want to control what we may read. This is censorship, tailored to the desires of certain minority groups in our society who want to be able to eliminate certain ideas which offend them, usually on specious religious grounds. This is despite constitutional protections for the practising of religion, which it seems they feel are not adequate to keep from being spattered by other people’s filth, or at any rate, what they wish to label as ‘filth’.
Most societies can tolerate a certain degree of censorship in a war situation, where it’s clear that some information can be damaging to the nation or to its sevants. But censorship based on either religion, or personal whims of people with power, is unacceptable. That’s why ‘news’ about the sexual and other peccadiloes of prominent people like politicians can be told, no matter how much it embarrasses the individual concerned. Yet it seems they never learn that ‘truth will out’ and there are few real secrets that can remain secret.
The days when people could contemplate invading the nation’s bedrooms to make sure that no ‘forbidden’ practices were taking place are over. But there are those who would turn back the clock, even as far as mediaeval times, to bring our world more into line with their private preferences.
You make some interesting points here, any of which would benefit from development and consideration and any of which could fill a whole book!
Throughout history art has depended on patronage, not simply for its actual existence but for its form and content. A patron would commission a portrait, or an ode, or a piece of music to celebrate his birthday, and the artist would oblige and thus clothe himself. The concept of ‘art for art’s sake’ is a relatively modern one, perhaps no older than (in the case of poetry) Wordsworth and the Romantics who placed personal experience, memory, etc at the centre of their art. Even after art became principally a mode of expression it still attracted patronage. Or not, as the case may be; Van Gogh hardly sold a picture in his life, but his paintings now attract large prices.
The supposed democratisation of art… all right let me narrow it down to poetry… via the internet has to a large extent removed the need for patronage and the need for money from the picture. As a person with anarchistic views I do not mind too much the idea of eliminating money, although I will add the caveat here that in order to make use of the ‘blogosphere’ and other forms of self-publishing at all one needs a level of affluence to own or use a computer or to pay for the services of a publishing house, so this ‘democratisation’ only seems to extend to the more wealthy parts of the world.
The ideal money-less world, however, would have to consist of independent but inter-dependent communities living by the maxim ‘to each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities’. The trouble with attempts to live by this maxim before is that the determination of ‘needs’ and ‘abilities’ was in the hands of the State, and we all remember where that led. Communities can function as micro-democracies with open assemblies where everyone has an equal voice. However, where there is no such inter-dependence and where ‘freedom of speech’ is privatised, becoming an ‘idiotikos’ rather than a ‘politikos’ – as we have in the blogosphere – then the idea of ‘from each according to his abilities’ goes out of the window. I spend a certain amount of time each day surfing the ‘poetry’ tag here at wordpress, and I can say, with my editor’s hat on, that there is a heck of a lot of bad poetry out there. Whilst it represents freedom of expression it neither represents an ability nor fulfils a need. Possibly. It’s all arguable. Maybe it is a circle we can’t square.
Anyhow, the phenomenon to which you draw attention is, in its own way, little different from any form of patronage. The power of lobbies and interest groups to control what is or what isn’t published is only a slight shift from the power of a Duke or a Cardinal in days gone by to say what should or shouldn’t be painted, or for the chairman of a corporation to decide what young artist’s work will grace the board-room wall. Sometimes this power is sinister – books may be placed on an index of the forbidden, or actually burned, and the genius of, say, Speer or Riefenstahl may be the only genius to emerge – but always it is there.
What do we do about this? Do we need a filter to artistic expression? Can worthwhile art be seen if it is only a drop in a talentless ocean? What is the value of freedom of expression in a world of inequality? These and others are philosophical questions of some profundity.
Thank you for a thought-provoking post this breakfast-time.
M
__________
Marie Marshall
author/poet/editor
Scotland
http://mairibheag.com
http://kvennarad.wordpress.com
By: kvennarad on February 26, 2012
at 4:13 pm