It is often assumed so – as Lincoln said the Harriet Beecher Stowe, “So you’re the little woman who made the little book that made this great war!” – but I’m skeptical. E.g., would the course of non-musical history really be any different if the Beatles had never existed? I rather think the music of the '60s, to the extent it had any social or political relevance at all, was an effect of the troubled times rather than a cause. And Stowe did not create the abolitionist movement, she only gave it a voice, but it had many other voices.
Every successful piece of artful advertising represents a micro-example of artists changing the course of events (and if advertising weren’t ever successful, there wouldn’t be such massive amounts of money spent on it).
And if art can influence individual behavior in small ways, I’d be inclined to believe that it can influence the world in larger ways, either directly or by all those small influences adding up.
In particular, one thing that novels, movies, TV shows, etc. are good at is making things personal, putting a face on what would otherwise have been an abstract issue, and thereby make people aware of, and make them care about, something because they’ve “seen” it happen to someone they “know.”
Spinoff from this thread, BTW.
Artists against South African apartheid helped turn companies and countries against that policy.
The CIA seemed to think so.
I like to think that certain parts of the world are much better off due to Bob Geldof and Bono’s work.
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” is credited with starting the movement to institute standards in the food processing industries and the eventual creation of the FDA.
Notably the parts of it that don’t give Bono’s music any airplay :).
I don’t think artists can create a public movement out of nothing. But I think sometimes artists can take an idea that’s “in the air” and articulate it. And then this articulated message gives the idea much greater strength and can lead to a popular movement.
Stowe didn’t create the idea that slavery was wrong. But she made the idea clearer by putting a face on it.
It’s not clear Bob Geldof, noble though his intentions are, has much helped anyone.
Bono you can make a strong case for - but Bono hasn’t helped anyone because he recorded “Achtung Baby,” he helps people through his use of his celebrity and wealth to organize charitable efforts and influence politicians. Bono is of course a very extreme case - he is arguably the mot legitimately effective celebrity activist who ever lived. But the nature of his art is quite irrelevant. It wouldn’t matter what kind of music U2 made, or even if Bono had gotten rich and famous as an actor instead of as a musician.
Off topic: I’ll tell you, I heard Bono do an interview on some right wing radio show a number of years back, and that guy knew his shit. It was - this is no exaggeration - one of the best interview performances I have ever heard by anyone on any subject. He was in a semi-hostile environment in the sense of being in a right-wing, why-help-the-cullured-folks situation - although in fairness the host seemed pretty happy to meet Bono - and he absolutely nailed it and really spoke to his audience, eloquently and intelligently but speaking to what the likely listener would want to hear without patronizing or lying. I don’t remember his exact words but one of his central points was the notion of the USA as itself being a brand, and how helping Africa while heavily branding it as American would not only be of benefit to Africa, but also to America; he went on in some detail and I was just floored by his salesmanship, his passion, and his command of the subject. It has been commented upon many times that his grasp of the issues is very advanced, and he is noteworthy for consulting with economists from all sides of the political spectrum in an effort to ensure he isn’t blind to good arguments.
I think everyone would agree Adoph Hitler influenced history.
Not everyone here knows Adoph was an artist:
“Adolf.” And, again, his influence over history had nothing to do with his artistic influence.
Andy Warhol made canned soup popular with younger people.
The Water Babies influenced anti-child labor (labour?) law in England: the year after it was published, chimney sweeps could be fined ten pounds for employing children (back when a maid’s annual wage was twenty pounds).
Yup. Society is complicated. Many things influence society. Art is one of those things.
If art was completely unimportant, freedom of artistic expression would not be worth fighting for.
I think it’s a chicken and egg scenario. An idea embeds itself in an (occasionally crazy) head that is then regurgitated onto their medium of choice through the lens of their mind.
In my mind, this is not really all that different from how everything else relating to humanity arises:
Einstein didn’t make the Theory of General Relativity, but he did express ideas he had in a way that gained mass appeal (…to physicists, at least).
Edison didn’t invent electricity and even discredited aspects of it we require in it’s use, today (AC distribution and such).
Charles Darwin’s theories can be traced back to influences he had from his naturalist grandfather Erasmus.
We credit each of these men for their achievements, but it’s not so much the achievement that is meritorious, but the lens they gave to ideas that already existed.
Each man stands on the ideas of the men before them. In science, it can build things from simple electricity flowing to light bulbs into computers and smart phones. In art, it enriches those that appreciate the lens and feel resonance with the piece, be it music, painting, book, sculpture, or otherwise. Whether or not a piece of art is somehow influential depends, I think, on the number of people that can feel this resonance.
You hardly have to look back fifty years to find examples - just last year we saw the release of Zero Dark Thirty, a movie made with the CIA’s assistance that coincidentally insinuated that the CIA’s campaign of torture helped capture Bin Laden rather than the resulting misinformation actively hindering the search.
Of course, if what the CIA believed was worth jack shit, they wouldn’t have needed the movie in the first place.
Punk drew a great deal of attention to the fact that young people in Britain in the seventies were really, really pissed off (and not terribly concerned about musicianship.)
Sure it would. The whole point of art is that it has no subjective importance. Things which are functional are not art. You know, art for its own sake.
Well, I have read (in James Howard Kunstler’s The City in Mind, chapter on Berlin) that Hitler’s whole public career was a kind of performance art. And it has been said of Franco that he was not really a fascist because he was “a cop, not an artist.”