Exposing American Mythology
April 4, 2008
The word myth is defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as “a traditional story concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events; a widely held but false belief, a fictitious person or thing, an exaggerated or idealized conception of a person or thing.” Diana Secchiaroli of the Yale-New Haven Teacher’s Institute defines it as representing “a culture’s values and ideals and/or helps explain to people where they came from.”
Secchiaroli points out that all people groups have “some sort of creation myth.” For Americans, our creation myth is the American West:
The story of the West helps us develop our identity as a people and understand where we come from. The Frontier is our most popular myth. We came over from Europe to a savage nation. We conquered the land and lived through the weather. Once we settle in the East we courageously headed west. Our brave, independent men fought the barbaric Indians, converting the enlightened ones and removing the useless ones. Pioneers built a democratic civilization, as we know it today, and once we conquered all we needed to, a new chapter in our history was written. The myth goes something like that. This myth has had such power in our culture and it has influenced many. Unfortunately, our actual history is much different from this story.
In the words of Australian blogger John Jensen, “we are now living under is the myth of progress, the myth of peace through violence, the myth of consumerism without restraint… the myths of redemptive violence, and existential spending, are not only taken hold, but are almost unquestioned.”
How can American Mythology be debunked? Jensen contends that “the way we stand against this empire” is through creating “a subversive story, a story that says things not only can be different, but should be.”
Visual art & debunking American Mythology
Visual art is a powerful way to debunk American Mythology. Visual artist Martha Rosler, who works with both words and images, says, “A truly political art is not simply propaganda but an art that contains a permanent challenge to both the outside world and oneself.” She believes that artists can “stand in a different social location and call attention to problematic things in all spheres of our lives” instead of “maintaining the system in which they produce their work.”
Rosler says that capitalism’s current phase is “redefining the world territory and producing certain kinds of abstract space that are linked to information flow.” The people lowest in the “new world order…are treated like garbage.” Rosler asks, “What can artists do when they are deeply bothered by situations like these?” She answers her own question by reminding artists that they can try to dispel stereotypical “specters” that inhabit our societies, occupy our minds, and support other people’s suffering. Artists can remove the elements of myth-making from potent images that are signifiers manipulated by political figures, and ruling ideologies, and integrate them into the larger context of social life.”
Jenny Holzer turns declassified government documents into art
Jenny Holzer uses declassified government documents as a basis for her word-based art. Obtaining the documents from the National Security Archive, Holzer turns the documents into photo-silk screens which are printed in a variety of colors. “She purposefully selects her subject matter as a calculated political act and, it could be said, as a means of facilitating historical memory,” Cathy Lebowitz wrote in an article for Art in America magazine.
Holzer created night projections, titled “For the City,” of the declassified government documents for the outside of New York University’s Bobst Library. According to the website for the art organization Creative Time, “The artist’s public presentation of these documents, her first in New York, explores the need to achieve a just and workable balance between secrecy and transparency.”
“I show what I can with words in light and motion in a chosen place, and when I envelop the time needed, the space around, the noise, smells, the people looking at one another and everything before them, I have given what I know,” Holzer said.
For the City, Jenny Holzer
Thomas Hirschhorn’s Superficial Engagement
Art critic Jerry Saltz said Thomas Hirschhorn’s exhibit “Superficial Engagement is a “walk-in manifesto, a book of the dead about the psychic place where mysticism, modernism, mayhem and terror collapse into one another.” Hirshhorn mixed gory images “of mainly Arabs in Iraq and Afghanistan who have been blown to bits.”
“If you want to have an impact on something, first you have to touch the surface. You need to have a superficial engagement before you can go any deeper,” Hirshhorn said. “An alternative interpretation is that Americans are only superficially engaged psychologically in the carnage pictured,” Saltz said.
Swiss-born Hirschhorn points a finger at American Mythology and shows it to be a farce. As Saltz put it, “Hirschhorn creates a kind of reverse Eucharist whereby Americans “consume” this flesh but rather than drawing life or redemption from it, draw shame and poison. We see our pathological lust for victims.”
Art critic Gregory Volk described “Superficial Engagement” for Art in America:
…reproduced photographs, both large and small, of mangled bodies; enlarged newspaper headlines alluding to crisis, nude mannequins or pairs of mannequins bristling with nails and screws; four homemade coffins (for returning American soldiers) sporting scrawled homages and messages of love; many more scrawled messages elsewhere; and various sings were basically everywhere-platforms and in ante chambers, taped or
otherwise attached to the walls, suspended from the ceilings and packed into heaped-up clusters.
Superficial Engagement, Thomas Hirshhorn
Consuming War
The exhibit titled “Consuming War” at Chicago’s Hyde Park Art Center features a number of artists who address how the U.S. mainstream media and “consumer culture” manipulate and influence how Americans perceive war. According to Hyde Park’s website, it “offers an innovative platform in which the complex and multifarious connections between war, capitalism, American consumer culture, and our everyday lives can be re-situated and critically examined.”
Michael Lithgow from the website Art Threat characterizes Consuming War as “a provocative collection of artwork and installations by artists exploring how consumer culture and American media have influenced the perception of war in the United States.
Curator Barbara Koenen said that artists were chosen for Consuming War “because they have been compelled to address the war in their practice. They had to shift what they had been doing because they could not continue production without addressing aspects of the growing dilemma.”
Public response to Consuming War has been positive. “Many people have expressed gratitude or relief to me that an anti-war show and its related events are being presented,” said Koenen.
Consuming War, Hyde Park Art Center
Nancy Spero revisits the Vietnam War
During the height of the Vietnam War Nancy Spero created drawings, titled ‘War Series 1966-70,” depicting the results of the U.S. military occupation of Vietnam. Spero revisited her works in 2004. The timing, one year after the invasion of Iraq, gives her drawings new meaning.
“The timely resurrection of Nancy Spero’s passionate antiwar imagery–produced nearly four decades ago against the backdrop of the conflict in Vietnam–seemed a thinly veiled reminder that history repeats itself,” Johanna Burton wrote in an ArtForum article. According to Burton Spero’s works should cause us to consider “the current political climate.”
Thomas Mcevilley, writing for Art in America, described Spero’s works:
The Spero works on the two big facing walls at the Drawing Center revisited the Vietnam War. Screaming figures were condensed into tight images. Helicopters crept around the walls at ceiling level, seeking their prey among art viewers. In one corner, a flock of seven or eight of them flurried around an airplane. Elsewhere, a ghostly helicopter of transparent blue dropped grenade-shaped bombs bearing more screaming figures. These two long wall pieces, each 13 by 48 feet, were dated 2005 but recapitulated selected motifs from the ‘War’ series and subsequent Spero images of torture victims based on Amnesty
International case histories.
The Bush Helicopter Victim, Nancy Spero
Subversive Graphic art
At the website Anti-War.us graphic artists use their talents to create anti-war messages. The objective is to “make a real difference by providing clear anti-war messages.” The images are free and can be used to create posters, flyers, and postcards.
No Child Left Behind, Christopher Kaufman
War Games, K. Wordsworth
Connecting art and social activism
Works of art that debunk American Mythology coupled with social activism can help uproot American Mythology from the fertile soil it has flourished in for so long. “The field of art can be highly effective in contributing to social justice along with other fields, but only if it contributes first to the structure of change, instead of the structure of change being modified to fit the arts,” said Peter Pennekamp, executive director of the Humboldt Arts Foundation in northern California.
“Authentic engagement starts with the dreams, aspirations, and problems of people, working with them to develop their collective authority and ability to build their community. Art can greatly enhance this process, because cultural change is made possible by the connecting influence of cultural exchange,” said Craig McGarvey, an independent consultant for foundations.
Art has the power to motivate people to affect social change. Cultural and creative expression is needed in order to create the possibility for an American society to develop where myths like the American West are scorned. As an essay titled ‘Community-based Art for Social Change’ puts it, “If we want freedom, we must
promote free expression. If we want equity, we must have equal access and support in expressing ourselves. If we want respect and love and beauty among us and all our many communities, we must actively and systematically promote it through our art and through our teaching of others.”
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A powerful article, Marie. Nationalism has a place, but it needs to be an honest place, and the glorification of war and militarism could be better directed at climate change, poverty and developing sustainable technologies and economies.
The example America has set has been followed by other nations who model themselves on the American system, but which slant it to their own ends.
The amount of energy the people’s of nations pour into destructive industries compared to that of constructive industries is the mindset that needs to be changed.
But even activism itself seems to be commercialised today. “Support” and “Donate” seem to be a huge ongoing cry from every sector that has a cause, and an axe to grind. These would be better supported by the budgets for destruction.
Trying to raise funds for constructive endeavors when so much is dedicated to death, destruction and the manufacture of lifelong disability seems to me to be an indictment of our priorities and sensibilities.
I do sincerely believe that if mankind is to survive and manage the ecology and environment correctly then it needs to create peace, end war and fix the planet.
And if that is not the agenda then frankly, I see no hope. Just more of the same, which would mean in the end that this is what the majority really want, and that mankind is no better than a lemming.
We see the events of history, the world’s entire history, through the eyes of just a few individuals. Makes you wonder what was it really like….I guess that makes it all the more important–to write.
@Terry - I think that’s a good point. Writing things down recording events, truly, is an important thing to do. It offers insight from different perspectives that are not just official lines or dogma.
But with the internet we’re seeing events through far more than “a few individuals” we’re developing a repository of far greater significance, and it is rich with story potential in so many ways. This of course has its own potential for abuse as we see, but I’m encouraged by such things. I think it’s a positive step in the right direction providing we approach with caution.
I also think Marie’s last remarks are interesting:
“If we are ready for the end of empire…if we are ready to embrace a “new way of living,” then how do we create it? The first step is to create works of art that expose American mythology for the farce it really is.”
I don’t think there’s any if about “being ready for the end of empire.” I think the end of empire is pretty much here. I think Lennon had it right with his song Imagine and that he captured a vision with such astute simplicity that it will stand the test of time and prove to be a guidon for many.
From a creative perspective though I don’t think creating works of art is the only way to go to end this particularly disastrous deathstyle that is our current way of living.
I also would err on the side of caution when it comes to such creations, that story still needs to be important, and that it must be interesting, entertaining, thought-provoking and above all free of dogma of any kind. Rather such works should demonstrate the folly of dogma, propaganda, and how important it is to be engaged as an individual in every aspect of life and not so narrowly as we have been through the process of educating for specialization while neglecting the importance of the humanities and creating a perception of them as ’second rate’ and of lesser importance than commerce, finance and manufacturing.
I think it’s important to make sure that the educational system, our art & entertainment industry is not as captured by industry, commerce and corporations as it currently is. That the conglomeration model is useful up to a point, but beyond this has a point where it is inimical to life. I think America current demonstrates this notion but that it is not the only example.
We need to establish some new ideals and one of the best ways to go about this is by being aware of the global situation and then utiilzing it, and aspects of it to drive for a more principled way of life, which I think is what Marie is getting at.