The problem is political
Each time some loudmouth politician leads the charge against a work of art, an impassioned debate breaks out regarding the «provocative» piece and the limits of what is aesthetically tolerable. What should be discussed instead is what are the limits of tolerable political behavior. Leaving aside the pros and cons of specific works, let’s look at what makes a politician feel that his heroic intervention on behalf of family and fatherland will bring him votes rather than a storm of derision and a hail of rotten tomatoes. One explanation is that our public life is a cloud of chaos, a little like the Universe in the first seconds after the Big Bang where everything is all over the place: Church, State, Left, Right, populism, nationalism, communism, modernism, art, politics, neoliberalism, racism, anarchy, medievalism, the avant garde, internationalism, isolationism, interventionism, and whatever else our tradition drags along with it, is imported thoughtlessly or springs from nothing. Within these toxic fumes are born comets, stars, planets and behaviors. It is unbelievable that after so many years of independence and democracy the relationship between all these ideas and behaviors, and those who represent them, has not begun to clear. To generalize (and thereby do an injustice to the few bright exceptions), we may say that in our public life the protagonists loot each other’s territory at will, according to their needs of the moment. Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Christodoulos feels that he can act like a political party leader, politicians try to exploit the sensitivities of the religious members of the electorate, journalists try to influence the course of the country rather than reporting and analyzing events. The overabundance of laws and their lax enforcement maintain a permanent sense of confusion in which everyone feels that he can do as he pleases as long as this brings greater public attention and, thereby, greater influence. Such a state of chaos benefits all kinds of opportunism, oversimplification and intellectual brutality. As in the Big Bang, the most dynamic elements attract others and grow stronger. When state institutions do not clarify their position with regard to those who act arbitrarily, then the arbitrary becomes an institution in itself. In this atmosphere, those who should normally be on the fringes of society are able to exploit our political system’s lack of self-confidence and so set the agenda. They are able to draw from the ideological stew of public life whatever suits their needs; they can exploit the patriotism and insecurities of citizens without anyone shooting down their claims; they can pretend to be the arbiters of everything and protectors of some mythic national superiority while feeding the national inferiority complex. They simplify everything in order to present the world in black and white, in a way that makes their arguments look simple and effective. The greater the confusion, the more our society and politics head toward a dead-end and the stronger these «political forces» become. Our national identity is already all mixed up when all kinds of adventurers exploit it, they distort reality and shape the wretched and fruitless public dialogue that we are all witness to. When serious politicians abdicate the responsibility for shaping politics and accept to play on the field of television politics, at the same level as the demagogues, then it is natural that the public will not be able to separate one from the other. Indeed, when serious political forces look benevolently on the development of dangerous political phenomena such as Giorgos Karadzaferis’s extreme right-wing populist LAOS party in the hope that this will cost their rivals votes, then all politicians share responsibility, unless they clarify their position otherwise. In this way, the extremists gain ever greater power and, encouraged, feel that they can impose their will on others. Evidence of this is Karadzaferis’s opportunistic invasions of the art scene in the Outlook exhibition before the Athens 2004 Olympics and again a few days ago. Karadzaferis himself is no prude but he knows how to get attention, especially now that his party looks likely to get into Parliament in the next elections. And, through their passivity in allowing such dangerous populism to pass as tolerable political behavior, the major parties have only themselves to blame. Fortunately, some members of society react with ideas, with articles, with their art. In the case of art, when it is prosecuted, it finds its greatest reason to exist, illustrating clearly the poverty of our political life and, by extension, our intellectual life.
