If art is unimportant, why is it the first thing totalitarians seek to control?

A couple of events last week show the importance of art. The first was Kendrick Lamar’s brilliant Super Bowl halftime performance, and the other was Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center. The latter seems as arbitrary and ego-stroking as his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and declaring Canada “the 51st state.” But if you look at art and the desire of tyrants to control it, his action makes chilling sense. 

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was an idea started during the New Deal and brought to fruition during the Cold War. The National Cultural Center Act of 1958, signed into law by President Eisenhower, provided the legal foundation for the first federally funded center for the fine arts in the country. As President Kennedy said to promote the completion of the center:

Every major capital of the world, and a good many capital of states which are not large, has a center which displays the performing arts, serves as the place for exhibiting the finest of the nation’s cultural life. Washington does not have one and I think this country suffers not only in the minds of its people, but I think in the general impression of this society of ours as being one that is interested in many forms of human activity. I think if we can build this Center it will be a very good thing for our country.

No wonder the center was renamed for Kennedy after his assassination.

The Kennedy Center also demonstrates the importance of the arts for upholding values for its citizens and projecting an image for the rest of the world. How much of Ancient Greece is still projected by its plays and architecture? Or the British Empire by Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, and the Beatles? How have our views of Japan changed by anime and Studio Ghibli? But no nation has projected its image around the world through the arts in modern times like the United States. Our music, movies, and fashion are consumed and emulated around the world. Even our mortal enemies enjoyed Disney movies.

So even democratic nations seek to control the messages provided by art. We saw that in Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show in the character of Uncle Sam played by Samuel L. Jackson. He chides Kendrick by saying, “No, no, no, no, no! Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto.” And later, “That’s what I’m talkin’ about. That’s what America wants, nice and calm.” But then Kendrick breaks out the diss track we all wanted to hear, “Not Like Us.”

Kendrick Lamar reminded us while art can be watered down, it can’t be fully contained. That’s because art comes from the disadvantaged, the discriminated, and the persecuted. The music, movies, plays, dance, and books we enjoy and consider distinctively American come from Black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, and LGBTQ+ and other communities. Elites don’t produce art. They’re focused on accumulating wealth and power. Or they’re too enmeshed in the system to have the fearless outside perspective necessary to create art. This becomes obvious when they try to control it.

In the early days of the Third Reich, Hitler sought to purge what he considered “degenerate art.” These were modernist pieces, especially from Jewish artists. In 1937, the Nazis held two art exhibits. One was the Great German Art Exhibition that featured the German art he deemed pure and upheld Nazi values. The other was the Degenerate Art Exhibition with the works he deemed unacceptable and subversive. Hitler’s approved art was panned as “mediocre” while the Degenerate Art Exhibition got twice the number of attendees as the Great German Art Exhibition.

Art has also been an engine of social change. It makes people aware of injustice and inequity, offers affirmation and support to marginalized groups, and moves people to action. 

“Not Like Us” inspires us because it’s more than just a beef between rappers. It shows how the music industry discourages authenticity, rewards imitation and inoffensiveness, and tolerates abuse. As Kendrick said in the introduction to his song, “Forty acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music…Yeah, they tried to rig the game, but you can’t fake influence.”

The elites’ latest attempt to control culture has already sprouted a new generation of protest songs. The latest on my playlist is “How History Goes” by Gianna Branca.

This message is brought home by the song’s chorus:

Hey, ho. Can you hear us singing?
Real hope comes out ringing.
If we go, we’ll go down swinging, swinging.

It’s our home, and we’re gonna make it.
It’s our choice, and you don’t get to take it.
It’s my life, and you don’t get to break my soul.
But don’t you know how history goes?

And history shows how futile it is for the powers that be to control art, even as they control media and persecute artists. As long as creative people raise their voice, true art will never vanish. And this art is how our nation will be judged by the rest of the world and by history.