FOURTH OF JULY SPECIAL:
REAL ARTISTS AND REAL AMERICANS
PETE SEEGER AND WALLACE SHAWN

I've pushed my concept of Real Art here at Real Art many times: Real Art is consciously political; it concerns itself always with improving the condition of humanity. For my money Real Art is the art which matters most. But at the same time I've pushed this idea, that artists ought to play a political role in society, I've also strongly asserted that all Americans ought to do the same thing in whatever ways are most appealing to them--when you get right down to it, I actually have much more respect for foaming-at-the-mouth psychotic conservatives than I do for Americans who are apolitical or consider themselves to be somehow above the fray; at least the right-wing nutcases care enough about the country to make themselves heard. Anyway, my point is that Real Artists in the United States are necessarily Real Americans, too. They're people who take their citizenship seriously, trying to make this country a better and more just nation.

Today, for your Independence Day pleasure, I've dug up some TV interviews with two such men.

From Democracy Now, an hour with legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, speaking here about his father:

We Shall Overcome

He was originally in charge of the music department there at the young age of 24, the youngest full professor at the university. But along comes World War I, and he’d been radicalized, as people tend to do when they go to Berkeley, and he made speeches against imperialist war.

My mother said, “Can’t you keep your mouth shut?”

He said, “But something’s wrong, you should speak out about it.” The whole New England idea, goes back to Sam Adams and before that, I guess.

Well, he got fired.

Click here to watch or listen to the rest.

I have to admit that I've only recently started to appreciate Seeger's influence. I've always been a bit suspicious of the whole folk thing: it strikes me that a lot of the "respect" for the common man is just so much posing condescension. On the other hand, it's not fair to dismiss an entire social movement simply because some adherents to the scene are posers. Seeger's the real deal, and it was only when my own songwriting became political that I was able to understand that. He really is as great as they say.

Check out the lyrics to his great Vietnam era protest song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy."

But wait! There's more. From PBS's Now, an interview with actor and playwright Wallace Shawn:

a bubble of denial, distracted by gossip,
entertainment and our own, acquisitive habits

DAVID BRANCACCIO: So you have for instance Jonathan Schell write a piece about "Invitation to a Degraded World" in which he believes that terrorists know how to get to our collective psyche through the violent narratives that we've grown up as Americans seeing in films, seeing on television.

He writes: "The very quality of public events has seemed to undergo a certain deterioration, as if from that day forward history was being authored by a third rate writer rather than a master or is being compelled to really follow the plot of a bad comic book."

WALLACE SHAWN: In a way the invitation to a degraded world in a sense was offered by Bin Laden to Bush. And Bin Laden, influenced by American comic books, influenced by disaster movies says: "well this is the way I'm gonna look at life from now on. Would you like to join me?" And Bush says: "Yes I think that's an absolutely wonderful way to look at the world and I will also enter into that disaster movie frame of mind and my actions will mimic yours really."

Click here to read the transcript, or here to watch the interview (be sure to find the video section at the bottom of the page).

Of course, I've loved Shawn for many years, in Woody Allen films, as a TV character actor, which includes his work on DS9 as the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi, and, can't forget this one, as the evil mastermind Vizzini in The Princess Bride. I had no idea how political his plays are until I read his extended monologue The Fever a couple of years ago.

Here's an excerpt from it that I've performed in class:

About a year ago I spent a day at a nude beach with a group of people I didn’t know that well. Lying out there, naked, in the sun, there was a man who kept talking about “the ruling class,” “the elite,” “the rich.” All day long, “The rich are pigs, they are all pigs, some day those pigs will get what they deserve,” and things like that. He was a thin man with a large mustache, unhealthy-looking but very handsome, a chain-smoker. As he talked, he would laugh—sort of bitter barks that came out always unexpectedly. I’d heard about these words and these phrases all of my life, but I’d never met anyone who actually used them. I thought it was quite entertaining. But for about a month afterward a strange thing happened. Everywhere I went I started getting into conversations with people I met—on a train, on a bus, at parties, in the line for a movie—and everyone I met was talking like him: The rich are pigs, their day will come, they’re all pigs, and on and on. I started to think that maybe I was crazy. I thought I was insane. Could this really be happening? Was everyone now a Communist but me?

Actually, I think I posted this a while back, but, what the hell, it's the Fourth of July! I can repeat myself today, of all days, if I want. Ah, no, sorry. Google informs me that I excerpted another section of The Fever, so I guess I'm not repeating myself. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that I think Shawn is so fucking great.

Anyway, happy Patriot's Day.


Pete Seeger


Wallace Shawn

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