When Politics Campaigns in the Arts, Creativity Ends

On June 30, 1939, Congress shut down the Federal Theater, a project of the Works Progress Administration.

It had been the focus of the first House Committee on Un-American Activities, chaired by a reactionary Texan, Martin Dies Jr. Congress’ current attack on the National Endowment for the Arts is reminiscent of that investigation and dismemberment of 50 years ago.

What “un-American activities” caused Congress to throw its weight against a successful program that had taken thousands of theater people off relief and put them back to work entertaining millions?

The Cold War had not yet begun, but Congress was on the lookout for communists. Hallie Flanagan, head of the Federal Theater, was under a cloud because she had once visited the Soviet Union. Many people in the project could have been communists, because, hell, they were theater people weren’t they? Throughout the hearings, the committee offered no proof. At one point, Dies even questioned Christopher Marlowe’s credentials. Plays produced by the Federal Theater were suspect because some had a message.

A specific play, “The Revolt of the Beavers,” was introduced as evidence of communist propaganda. It was a children’s drama about fair play and working together. About beavers.

As Flanagan wrote in her book “Arena,” “It was the fashion at that time to laugh at the Dies Committee: It never seemed funny to me.” She complained: “The Federal Theater was ended because Congress, in spite of protests from many of its own members, treated it not as a human issue or a cultural issue but as a political issue.”

What has all this got to do with Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) versus the NEA? Helms’ logic is: Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for pornography. Many agree with him. But like most political concepts, this is simplistic and faulty.

We have a National Endowment for the Arts because we wanted one. We voted for people who voted for it. Should the American people decide to end a program like the NEA, so be it. But as we spend billions for defense and other odds and ends, it seems like a good idea to spend a relatively tiny amount--$200 million or so--on the arts.

The United States is, without question, supreme in the creative arts. In popular film, popular music, painting, sculpture, modern dance and “new music” we are head and shoulders above the rest. In classical music, opera and ballet, in theater, literature, poetry and design, our “best” is as good if not better than theirs.

Most of the art we export is commercial. The trade balance is in our favor in these areas. Our commercial film and music industries do not need support.

What needs it? The unusual, the esoteric and work by unestablished artists. We don’t need the NEA to produce Steven Spielberg films or Madonna records. We need it to assist the Sundance Institute and Philip Glass operas.

The NEA has problems and faults. What federal bureaucracy doesn’t? Considering the size of its budget, its effectiveness and impact is amazing. It gives support to hundreds of institutions and individual artists in every field. Outside the commercial world of film and television, it would be hard to find a creative artist in the United States not touched in some way by the NEA.

Rather than listing every good and bad point of the endowment, this is what happened to me, specifically.

I came to New York in 1975, and, in the next five years of making my work, I was financially destitute, trying unsuccessfully to get grants. I finally received $5,000 from the NEA in 1980. This money did not solve my continuing financial crisis--rather it was an honor conferred by my peers and a tremendous boost to my then-battered ego. My work was not easily understood--it was “different” and still raw. Many times I wanted to hang it up. Considering that I was living on something like $6,000 a year, the money did alleviate my feeling that I had made a big mistake going into the arts.

So the grant gave me momentum. Two years later, I was awarded another $5,000 grant to work with Tad Savinar, an artist based in Oregon, through the Portland Center for the Visual Arts. We began work on a performance called “Talk Radio.” The play became an Off-Broadway hit and a successful film.

When I received the second grant, my work was virtually unknown by anyone other than people working in the arts. The grant could not have been awarded except by a jury of peers.

This is why the NEA employs the method it does for selecting recipients. Everyone has an opinion on the arts, but few have an informed opinion, based on knowledge of the entire field.

A good friend of mine, established both in Hollywood and on Broadway, said it is obvious what “good” art is and what is “bad.” But is it? Last week I performed at Lincoln Center to full houses. From the response I guess I fall into the “good” art category. But that was not so in 1982. In 1982, people walked out on my shows, complaining they were too hard-edged. If I had stopped working then, if I had not been supported, I might not have made the shows last week.

Do we really want the “average Joe” deciding what art should be funded? What would Joe choose? What would my producer friend choose? What would you choose?

People love to romanticize, they love to believe in a “Golden Age” when everyone was a master making masterpieces. But no Golden Age ever existed. Even in the best of times, the amount of shoddy or awkward work far outnumbers excellent work. And mixed in with that “bad” art is the work of tomorrow’s masters and the work of people who follow a special muse meaningful to few.

About the only way to find these people is through panels of peers. This is the democratic way.

A golden age is a fiction. But a dark age is not. The Federal Theater program was destroyed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. A few years later, a Senate committee, under Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, was responsible for ruining many lives and careers in New York and Hollywood. Blacklists were the reality. Fear and censorship ruled. A dark age existed. This is not the democratic way, this is the totalitarian way.

Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.) says we should ignore Helms and his ilk because all they want is attention. I don’t agree. Helms has struck and he has tasted blood. Like sharks, politicians are attracted by blood and grow bolder with every strike. Do we have to wait for blacklists before we act?

The NEA is problematic for reasons beyond the content of individual art-works. But if we want to support the diversity and liveliness of artists, then we must approach a complex problem with complex answers. That is what the NEA is attempting to do. I wouldn’t have a career without the NEA, whether I agree with all its policies or not.

Robert Mapplethorpe made shocking and violent work for a society that has become insensitive to its own obscene gestures. No one is forced to go to a Mapplethorpe show. On the other hand, public hangings and massacres run on the evening news and no one seems to mind.

The Helms-NEA confrontation is political. It has nothing to do with values and everything to do with power. If we let it, censorship, hatred and intimidation can again afflict the arts in our country. If we don’t stand up against people like Helms, this may happen.