Ugh. Being bored and sick last night, I figured what the heck — I’d tune into the end of the Grammy awards to see Eminem perform with Elton John. A lot of people I know were upset at the idea that Eminem might win the award for best album. My response to that worry was that there’s only one thing you ever have to know about the Grammy awards — these folks once awarded Milli Vanilli a Best New Artist award. ‘Nuff said.
Anyway, before Eminem performed Recording Academy President and CEO Michael Greene came out and gave a brief little sermon about how art always shocks, our parents hated Elvis, blah, blah, blah. I almost expected him to add that if Shakespeare were alive today he’d be writing lyrics like contemporary rap stars. Among other things, Greene said,
People are mad, and people are talking. And that’s a good thing because it’s through dialogue and debate that social discovery can occur.
Listen, music has always been the voice of rebellion — it’s a mirror of our culture, sometimes reflecting a dark and disturbing underbelly obscured from the view of most people of privilege, a militarized zone which is chronicled by the CNN of the inner city — rap and hip-hop music. We can’t edit out the art that makes us uncomfortable. That’s what our parents tried to do to Elvis, the Stones and the Beatles.
…Accept the fact that musicians, movie stars and athletes are not perfect, they make mistakes and can’t always be counted on to be role models. Art incites, entices, it awes, and angers, it takes all its various incarnations to maintain the balance, vitality and authenticity of the artistic process. Let’s not forget that sometimes it takes tolerance to teach tolerance.
What an absurd claim about art. Certainly no government official should prevent Eminem from making his music or stop Hollywood from making films in which the brains of a living human being are eaten (as is done in the movie Hannibal), but to say that essentially anything constitutes art is simply wrong.
Do we really need people like Eminem to provoke discussion? I think not. Under this sort of definition, Fred Phelps is a performance artist rather than a hateful bigot. I’m waiting for one of these Hollywood liberals to defend cross burning as artistic expression.
I think The Onion best caught the absurdity of such rhetoric with its classic story, ACLU Defends Nazis’ Right to Burn Down ACLU Headquarters. In a free society we shouldn’t look to the state to censor distasteful works, but neither should we expect that cultural elites will embrace as art anything that sells millions of copies simply by appealing to the lowest common denominator.