"The community has an awesome responsibility for creating context, for creating places in which people who are true artists can express themselves. That has to be part of the analysis. Otherwise, we are powerless, helpless victims."

ON THE INTERFACE BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY AND CULTURE: A Dialogue with Michael L. Penn, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Franklin and Marshall College

PART III - ON THE MONOPOLISTIC CONTROL OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF CULTURAL INFORMATION

KRM: Which brings me to my next point. Writer Walter Mosley, in his book Working on the Chain Gang, which is actually a collection of essays, says that: . . ."capitalism and democracy make strange bedfellows."1 With that statement in mind, one of the things in America today that concerns me is the concentration of ownership and control over how public and cultural information is disseminated. It is my experience from study and observation, and as someone who is actually involved in a field where culture is reproduced, that this concentration and control in the information and culture industries causes a great deal of alienation amongst people.

MLP: What do you mean by alienation?

KRM: We, as citizens living in a purported democratic society, are not getting a diverse range of human ideals and concepts, which goes back to why I asked you about how market values impact people's psyches.

MLP: I'm not sure I share with you the view that large conglomerate media companies are the only avenues in which those that constitute the American culture express themselves artistically. In other words, my feeling is that there are many, many avenues of artistic expression, which are not controlled by, multi-nationals. . . Take for example what happens every Sunday in the churches across the country. Clearly, this is an expression of people's hearts, people's creativity, people's music and it reaches into millions of millions of homes and it is not controlled by a conglomerate corporation. In other words, there are many, many different levels in which our people express their creativity, manifest their creativity. We are seeing, for example, a revival of family reunions. In family reunions, they are creating new art forms. They are dancing. They are singing. They are saying that they are more than what appears on Channel Zero. So I think we need far more of that.

KRM: As an appropriate response to the situation I characterized?

MLP: As an urgent need of the human heart to express itself without these chains that say that you can only express yourself this way if you want to be on TV. The goal must not be to be on TV. The goal must be to express what is in the heart and spirit.

KRM: Therein lies the whole purpose of this website Art and Survival. If I am a painter, I have to buy brushes. I have to buy paint. I need canvasses. I need a shelter in which to paint. In that shelter, I have to put on lights and I have to pay rent or mortgage. All these things cost money. So how does one utilize his or her talents in exchange for earning the necessary funds that one needs just to exist in a capitalist society, other than having access to other human beings who are willing, in exchange for experiencing their art, exchange with them x amount of dollars?

MLP: I have no expertise in this area, so I can't answer that. I am the worst businessman. (laughter)

KRM: (laughter) This is what I am suggesting. The way I believe that it has historically been done is that if one decides to become an artist as a vocation or to be an entrepreneur involved in the arts as a vocation, we need an audience. We can call that audience a by-product of the market. An artist needs some segment of a market in which to exchange their services in order to earn revenue. What I am suggesting to you is that access to other human beings is becoming supremely concentrated in the hands of the few entities who control the flow of cultural information on a mass level. Now, when we have this kind of concentration in a market economy, you will agree with me that the highest value in that kind of economy are market values?

MLP: Yes, definitely.

KRM: So, what gets lost in our society when the only artists or people who recreate and distribute culture on a mass level are dogmatically adhering to prevailing market values?

MLP: Right. I understand. At this period of half-light, when we seem to be standing on the crumbling edge of a society that has to be considerably remolded, considerably renamed or it will die, it is very clear that we are not producing the kind of human beings that can sustain a civilization -- certainly a civilization as complex as this one. If you look at the kind of children we are producing because of the kinds of art we are exposing them to . . . My wife and I were recently at a movie, called "The Others." We were in the movie for about twenty minutes and there were two children that came in and the children were about five and six and they were sitting with their father. The movie was so horrible in terms of its impact on our internal lives, we were so shaken by this movie that our thinking went immediately to these children. We were thinking, "These children in the next two hours are going to have such stuff put into them that it will take maybe ten years to get it out of them." I was so concerned about what this was doing to the spirit of these children, because as an adult, I was so hurt by this, so assaulted by this that I had to walk out. It is very clear to me that if our culture has as one of its tasks the production or the nurturing of future generations who will be responsible for the care of this culture, we are not doing that very well.
 
Artists have always at critical times in the life of cultures rescued the people from the abyss of loss. Because the artists were willing to make tremendous sacrifices to say what needed to be said even though they themselves did not appear to profit financially. In fact, many artists have from age to age given in their lives so that the culture might awaken to itself and might prosper and might go on. I think that the artists that are alive today should not be asking the question fundamentally, "How do we increase our market share?" I think that is the wrong question. I think the question that artists should be asking today is, "How do I give to a culture so desperately in need, that which I am inspired to give, whatever the consequences of my giving that?" Otherwise, the artists will simply be prostitutes, marketing themselves to the highest bidder. He will not be a servant of the people, he will be a servant of economic forces. In that sense, they will not really be artists. They will be something else. Maybe entertainers. (laughter)

KRM: (laughter) So, is it possible for our great artists, and this transcends race, class, religion, I am talking about that intangible quality you spoke about, that quality that transcends biological influence. . .

MLP: And when people come into contact with that, they are attracted to it and they want to be around it. They will make sacrifices for it. In other words, I think that to the extent that artists are true to that spirit and are truly artists, have really been called to this . . . Perhaps I am naive, but I truly believe that the human spirit is attracted to beauty, is attracted to excellence, wants to be around it, hungers for it. And so, when they see examples of it, they say, "We want this person." This is what the Harlem Renaissance did, I think. The Apollo Theater was a success in its early days principally because they said there are these people out here that you have never heard of, but they are great artists. They are filled with extraordinary spirit of vitality and they are unique. For example, Moms Mabley as a comedienne was not a cookie-cutter CBS, NBC comedienne. She was a comedienne that was born in the bosom of the community, that grew up there and spoke to the community in very powerful ways. The community said, "She is ours." I mean in part what artists have to do is create art.

KRM: Do we that are concerned about the state of affairs with art, have a responsibility to facilitate our great artists given the present political economy we live in?

MLP: Definitely. The artists cannot survive by themselves. The artists alone cannot create the infrastructure necessary in order to enable them to do their work and maintain themselves at the same time. The community has an awesome responsibility for creating context, for creating places in which people who are true artists can express themselves. That is not simply a matter of fighting against a conglomerate industry. We have more power than we suggest when we say that the only way that this can possibly be done is if we get rid of these oligopolies. I agree that we should try to influence what the television shows, because the television has a profound impact, but I don't think that we should simply allow the community to play dead until these huge corporations decide to change their ways. That has to be a part of the analysis. Otherwise we are powerless, helpless, victims.

KRM: In the book Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black America, edited by Cornel West, artist and humanitarian Harry Belafonte offered a passionate dialogue which profoundly affected my consciousness. In this dialogue, which I will paraphrase in pertinent part, Mr. Belafonte talked about what it was like growing up in Harlem as an artist under segregation and oppression. He recalled that if he walked the streets long enough he would bump into people like W.E.B. Dubois, Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson and Joe Lewis Yet sadly, Mr. Belafonte lamented that he did not think that young people today have any expectation of bumping into the icons and heroes of their time, and that in a way maybe they (young people) were lucky considering who some of these icons are. As a result of the aforesaid scenario, Mr. Belafonte felt that we as a community are alienated from each other, and that we no longer know much about one another. In Restoring Hope, Mr. Belafonte ended his dialogue with a powerful passage, which I prefer to quote directly. He says:
 
"If we do not seriously examine what the obstructions are to our freedom of expression, if we do not seriously analyze what stops art from black artists from reaching black people, we will have lost the vision to do anything. Because as long as we have to go through that other mechanism, we will never, ever -- trust me!-- ever be able to tell the truth about us and the world -- to the world.2
 
So, what intrigues me is that as I travel throughout this country, I always run into "genius" people in the arts that I believe our communities should be hearing about. And by using the term "genius" in this context, I am adopting the definition articulated by writer Walter Mosley in the introduction of the collection of essays found in the book, Black Genius: African American Solution to African American Problems. Here, Mosley understands "genius to be that quality which crystallizes the hopes and talents and character of a people. The kind of genius we all share . . . . the possibility for a people to look into their hearts and to see a life worth living."3
 
However, today, when I look at the world and attempt to access its possibilities, there seems to be no uncorrupted viable mechanisms for us to gain access to one another on a meaningful mass level. The only thing we seem to be able to hear about on a national/international level are given to us from people far removed from our communities and our day to day realities.
 
It used to be that our various regions were not such a great barrier that kept us from each other. There used to be radio stations throughout our country that would service our various cultural communities. Today, radio is supremely concentrated, monopolistic, and dominated by the market imperative.
 
So I am concerned that one of the things that stops the community from helping artists build infrastructures that will advance what they create is the fact that we are losing access to each other. Twenty-five, thirty years ago, if you were a recording artist, there may have been twenty-five to thirty independent distributors that could help you get access to audiences. And we are not talking about artists who are creating their art to become millionaires. I think that is a misconception that pundits assert any time artists are concerned about making money. Most artists and arts entrepreneurs are like any other human being. They have bills to pay, children to feed and educate.
 
There just seems to be no way in the year 2001 for "uncoopted" artists to gain access to human beings in a way that they can build some type of infrastructure whereby they can at least pay the bills. To me, I think this has a chilling effect on the culture because it stagnates how much we know about each other. I say this because I believe what motivates a lot of human behavior is a sense of community. A sense of being reaffirmed by others. When we no longer feel a sense of community with another and we can no longer get to each other for reaffirmation, I am afraid that we start to lose our cultures because every culture I believe has to regenerate and renew. One of the ways we renew and regenerate our cultures is by connecting to one another.
 
So what happens to us as a people when we are living under market conditions where so few seem to invest a lot of money and energy to ensure that people, artists, entrepreneurs, and consumers outside of their web of influence can no longer connect to one another? What does that do to the psychological makeup of people in the years to come? What is that doing to us as human beings?

MLP: That is such a fantastic question. I am so glad you prefaced it in the way that you did, because I have a much better understanding of what concerns you having listened to you say it in this incarnation, in that particular way. I think it is a really important question. I think it is really critical that we explore this question as a community carefully.
 
The psyche of a people is brought forth, is matured because we serve as catalysts for one another, that is to say we stimulate one another to be more than we are by interacting with one another. We bring one another forth in our interacting with one another. If we are not interacting with one another beyond the superficial level, or we are not interacting with one another in any meaningful way at all, then fundamentally what happens is we don't come forth as a people. We become stagnant as a people. We begin to tell one another the same stories over and over and over again. We begin to imitate ourselves rather than create. I think that is absolutely critical that we not be merely consumers of information from far away created by corporations or organizations that don't know us, that don't have any interest in us, that don't have any connection to us. We must absolutely find ways to bring artists who are of us close to us, so that in interacting with one another we come forth as a people. I think it is very important.

Part IV