We cannot deny that only with creativity that a society can continue to evolve and develop. It also helps to shape the cultural landscape of a community and not to mention it encourage the expression of ideas. However, when we are talking about expression of ideas, do we actually mean there should be no limits whatsoever? Or do artists, who claim to be the beacon holders of cultural development, get free passes to all ideas that are exempted from social scrutiny?
Bill Henson, recently know for a public spat with the authorities over the portrayal of a nude teen, is having a new exhibition opening this week. There is no doubt about his talent and he proved to be a top notch artist. One of the first responses to the exhibition is “if you don’t like about the nude teen thing in the past you will still not like this one and it will offend people”. Now I don’t know about that and can’t make any judgement on this particular exhibition as I have yet to see it. However, this kind of feedback does at times worry me. I am sure most artists, even I, will see things that are beautiful and hard to resist and want to share them with the world from our own point of view. However, we must also agree that, not everything we see is beautiful and socially acceptable for everyone. Does that mean we need to censor ourselves? No. I don’t think so, but I, personally, will think about what kind of impact would there be when these creations go public. Social convention is a complicated thing. As societies are made up by huge variety of people, conventions are developed so that these varieties of people can live together in a “mutually content” manner. There are conventions they I don’t agree and whenever possible get extremely passionate to fight against, but then at the same time I will also consider the impact on others. The issue with Bill Henson’s nude teen photograph is whether it encourages paedophilia in a public arena when people are fighting to protect children from invasive sexual advances. Bill and some other people may find them beautiful and I am sure they have their artistic values, but are they socially responsible? Or in this case, do artists need to be socially responsible?
Another thing that bugs me lately is a new show about brides competing in a reality show to be the top bride and for winning each week’s challenge they receive a plastic surgery to perfect themselves for the day. The catches are, all surgeries can be performed back to back within a few weeks and the groom wouldn’t know what their brides look like until they walk down the aisle on the wedding day. I am sure there are lots of people who are not happy with how they look like and would love to “improve” upon that. I was one of them but I never had the money or courage to do that. However, having back to back plastic surgeries within a short period of time? Even plastic surgeons said that under normal circumstances they will not do that because it is detrimental to health. The producer of the show said it is the creativity and beauty part they emphasise on and the contestants obviously are fine with that. So they don’t see a problem. Yes it may not be a problem if we don’t need to see that play it out on TV. Is this really creativity or it is just a cheap shock factor using creativity as disguise. Also how socially responsible is it to have the groom to wed a bride that could look completely different from the woman he originally proposed. One of the contestants said that she knows she can now be the “perfect” woman she wants to be for her groom. But for me, if my bride shows up at the altar looking completely different and plastic (trust me, so of them look hideous after the surgeries), I will be so shocked that I doubt whether I can marry her.
Some people may think that I am too conservative blah blah blah. But the fact is I don’t really give a damn on how other people see me and as an artists I do think I need to push my own creativity boundaries. However, at the same time I do think that artists have to be socially responsible, have the conscience to protect people who are vulnerable, instead of being so self-inflated to think that under the name of art you can be as shocking and as irresponsible as we wanted to. We may be able to do that if we run our own cult but let’s be honest, that’s not most of us. We can challenge conventions, social ideas, political issues etc. etc. but at the end of the day, we still need to be responsible so that when we push the boundaries, we have credibility under our belt to fight against the “authority”.
