Art is not the enemy

What a weird week this has been. There were two really dumb reactions that hit the Internets in response to art. I'll get to my commentary about that in a minute.

The first silly outrage was around the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Paris. They had a scene where Dionysus, the Greek god of partying and wine, engages in a party, known as a bacchanal, a party where people tie one on. Admittedly, Dionysus isn't one of the more prominent gods from the mythology I learned about, which is to say I remember the name but not much more. What people freaked out about was that they thought it was a scene mocking DaVinci's "Last Supper." Obviously, Greek mythology predates Jesus, but there are also paintings that likely are a closer fit, like "The Feast of The Gods." This wasn't the only history and art overlooked in that ceremony, as people (amazingly) didn't get the headless Marie Antoinette reference, or the woman riding the horse on the Seine, which was representing Sequana, the goddess of that river.

Then there was the kind of sad-but-hilarious "protest" of the new Deadpool & Wolverine movie. Some cats had a viral opposition to the movie, declaring it as "anti-Christian," satanic and blasphemous, for any number of reasons. I mean, if you've seen the trailers, let alone the previous movies, you had to have known that it was going to be super vulgar. Why would you even go see it? Even then, the vulgarity was not targeted at the people most offended.

Maybe my bigger issue though, is this ridiculous victimhood that is typical of the fundamentalist "Christian" right that insists the world is out to get them. I see things like, "'They' are out to get us and demean us," when the reality is that most people who are not in their camp do not care about their faith, or their right to exercise it. It's the epitome of irony, in many ways. These are the folks who see anyone who is not like them to be in the wrong, and are happy to make as much noise as possible to that effect. In reality, the people they seem to hate have on interest in what they do, as long as it doesn't in turn oppress them.

What really concerns me is that any art, and especially books, that they find offensive, become a scapegoat that they lean into and protest. If you draw a Venn diagram of those folks with the people that who declare that "liberals" are "woke snowflakes" that are offended by everything, it's basically the same people. You can't really play that both ways and not look kinda ridiculous.

Art can certainly be offensive. I get that. But to even determine what qualifies as art is completely subjective. There are a lot of terrible songs and movies that are, ostensibly, art, but I wouldn't call them good. So I just move on. Because art in a broad sense is not about agendas or this insane accusation of "indoctrination" for whatever it is that these idiots are afraid of. The only effective indoctrination (sometimes) is what parents do to their children. Get a life.

Art is not the enemy. People who want to keep you from making that determination for yourself are the real threat.