Fear no art?

The other day, I saw a bumper sticker which said, “Fear no art.” Now, since I’m just the sort of guy who’s great at jumping to premises, I immediately inferred the backstory: “Don’t be afraid of art, and therefore don’t censor art.” Seems pretty bland, as far as it goes.

But why, exactly might this person feel the need to reassure those inclined toward art censorship that they needn’t be concerned? Well, the ostensive reason would be that art needn’t be feared because art isn’t dangerous, and the reason it isn’t dangerous is because it doesn’t really have any power. Unfortunately, it makes no sense that someone putting a message like this on his car would say art doesn’t have power.

Quite the contrary. In his mind, art is terribly important and hence must be protected against those villains who favor censorship. If it weren’t, why bother defending it with a pithy adhesive slogan?

So why is art so important? Well, it’s power to express, influence, affect, and shape people and culture, presumably. In other words, art is a terribly important form of social power. Agreed. But this raises a fairly obvious question. Which story are you telling? Is art the sort of impotent thing no one should ever fear, or is art just the sort of powerful thing which society has at least some reason to care about precisely because of its ability to affect people?

Despite the vast array of useless art, neither artists nor those inclined to censor it are foolish enough to believe this means art hasn’t enough power to take seriously. So now we have an interesting confluence of beliefs. The one thing artists and censors both strongly agree upon is the power of art. Naturally, all power entails the potential for both benefit and harm. Following the logic, then, the real question to ask is how to decide when art (in whatever form) might constitute a serious danger either to individuals or to society. From there, the second layer question is how best to contain or minimize the threat, if at all.

It’s true we live in a society which goes to extremes to protect freedom of expression, surely a core value of our culture, so essential that we don’t even censor those who advocate censorship. Yet the reason we protect art, literature, and music so vigorously isn’t because they have no power, but rather precisely because of their power. And even though we believe in such robust protection, anyone who discusses art, expression, and censorship should at least be honest enough to admit that the thing in question is terribly powerful and hence at least sometimes well worth fearing. Pretending otherwise is naïve and usually self-contradictory, even for a three-word bumper sticker.