ART & ARTISTS RACE & GENDER

MY DIVERSE TV SPEECH

So 'Diversity in the media' - a catch-all term for the presence or lack thereof of black male people, black female people, white female people, ability impaired people in our media. Lots of labels. Too many labels for me - I simply see art and artists, not what you are, but who you are.
What I want to try and do is explain my perception of this issue in context.
I want to talk about what makes good art and bad art - the effect it has on our cultural out-put.
I want to talk about the impact of our shared history on the present.
I want to talk about conformity and it's damaging effects and then I want to talk about some of my experiences.

The difference between good and bad art is the extent to which the creator strives for a truthful expression of their perception of experience.
When someone makes good art, makes us laugh, makes us cry, we are connected to ourselves and humanity, we are engaged, entertained, we are grateful.

But, unfortunately, there is a lot of bad art, be it stodgy television, repetitive, derivative films or boring mindless music.

Bad art is the product of conforming minds seeking gainful employment in the arts and entertainment industry. It comes from people who have a passion for success but no passion for real creative expression.
Conforming minds are created by the mindless consumption of bad art and the belief that people in general are not really discerning enough to desire anything else, let alone demand it.

This leads to a nation whose cultural muscles are weakened by a flabby narrow mainstream, in which we all drift mindlessly, atrophying into a semi-conscious brainwashed state.

The question is; Who determines the political racial gender dynamics in this flabby mainstream? Who helms the reinvention and regurgitation of our experiences for our nations viewing pleasure? 

Well, not enough 'good artists' and too many conforming, unworldly minds.
The key to improving our cultural landscape is in the collaboration between artists and producers who seek to explore the truth of human experience and to push the boundaries of our art forms. In this pursuit, race, gender and ability status are irrelevant. Nature does not bestow talent, intellect, passion, creativity on people based on race, gender or lack of disability, nature gifts the muse and the fire to souls who have something to say. The good artists who seek transcendent connection with others through themselves.

Right now however there are too many souls that society isn't listening to, souls that need to be heard, that deserve to be heard.

Why?

Well, that's why we're here right? So why are we here?

History pretty much tells us all we need to know, our social, geographic political history that has brought us to this point, this place, this era.

I'm pretty sure everyone in this room knows that we are living in a world that has systematically disenfranchised the majority in order to protect and serve the few.

While racism served as an advertisement for slavery, sexism served as justification for the control and enslavement of women.

The tools with which the advantaged maintained the status quo have not changed that much. So powerful and prevalent was the propaganda of oppression that it has seeped into our collective consciousness like the disease of greed.

Century after century as the world industrialised and the profit margin became mans obsession, men, women and children were systematically and legally robbed of their human rights, freedoms and dignities to make a sociopathic minority rich and then told repeatedly in pamphlets, books, posters, essays, vile insipid tomes...and now mainstream television and film that they categorically, biologically deserve no better.

That's where we find ourselves today.

The racism, sexism and classism that is very often at the heart of bad art is what perpetuates the mindless conformity which strangles our culture and suffocates change and innovation in societies collective consciousness.

Conformity is the enemy of change.

Or, to quote the American Ralph Ellison, author of 'The invisible man' ;
"Whence all this passion towards conformity anyway? Diversity is the word. Let man keep his many part sand you will have no tyrant states. Why if they follow this conformity business, they'll end up forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a colour but a lack of one. Must I strive towards colourlessness? But seriously and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain."

It's only when we take responsibility for identifying and shaking off the mental shackles of our social conditioning that forms us into fearful conformists who have accepted the propaganda of oppression which serves to suppress change, extinguish innovation and deny those souls who burn to create a chance to infiltrate and inspire the mainstream, its only when we do this that we can claim to be changing the world for the better.

Years ago, I urged a director to go through a cast-list of a show we were making so we could establish which parts were racially non-specific, so we could consider black actors. He looked at me with anxiety and fear and said. 'Its a can of worms,' and in that moment I realised that the difference between he and I was vast, that my experiences, gender, up-bringing and environment had led me to explore and address the nature of my disadvantage and the disadvantage of others. His had not. He was scared to get it wrong, to open the can of worms in his own head that seemed to represent the part of his brain that was primed and conditioned to believe unquestioningly the rhetoric that reinforced his choice to reflect the world through the prism of his privilege and the wilful denial of the control and limitations that that privilege put on his ability to create truth, to create good art.

So I suppose I am here today to ask commissioners, producers, directors and creators to fearlessly mine your souls, to dig into your own can of worms, because I'm telling you, theres gold there.