Political analyst Rachel Maddow speaks with Pillow scholar Suzanne Carbonneau in a 2009 PillowTalk. Maddow humanizes the political context of the early years of Jacob's Pillow and then offers her personal perspective on the meaningful role that the arts play within an evolving democracy.
Political analyst Rachel Maddow speaks with Pillow scholar Suzanne Carbonneau in a 2009 PillowTalk. Maddow humanizes the political context of the early years of Jacob's Pillow and then offers her personal perspective on the meaningful role that the arts play within an evolving democracy.
Norton Owen: Welcome to PillowVoices, a production of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival with content from the Pillow Archives. I'm Norton Owen, the Pillow’s Director of Preservation, and it's my personal pleasure to introduce this episode revisiting a 2009 PillowTalk with political analyst Rachel Maddow and Pillow Scholar Suzanne Carbonneau. In this conversation, Rachel Maddow humanizes the political context of the early years of Jacob's Pillow forming during World War I and then illusrtrates and advocates for the meaningful role that the arts play within an evolving democracy.
Rachel Maddow: As a person who understands more about news and politics and war and peace than I do about dance. When I think about arts being important in the country, I think it's sometimes interesting to consider what else was going on in the world when people were making the big, brave, bold decisions about the arts that brought us the institutions that we've still got today, like Jacob's Pillow. So, sort of looking into what was going on in the world at the time that Ted Shawn and others made the decisions that they made that brought us what we've got today. Just for context, Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Dennis founded the Denishawn School of Dance in 1915, but in 1917 we got into World War I and Ted signed up, so he was in the army. By this point he was already an accomplished, successful dancer, and legend has it that being a male dancer in the army (audience laughs) during wartime, stopped being a liability and started being a little bit of an asset once Cecil B. DeMille had to ask his base commander to let Mr. Shawn out for the weekend so he could go dance in a film with Gloria Swanson (audience laughs). That was called, I think, don't quote me on this, but I think that one was called Don't Change Your Husband, was the name of that film (audience laughs). It was World War I, Ted Shawn is in the army, Ruth St. Denis and the Denishawn Dancers sold Liberty Bonds, along with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and lots of other famous people. I did think that there were going to be about ten people here today (audience laughs), and so I, I brought a photograph (audience laugh), that I thought I'd pass around (audience laughs). I don't think that's going to work. It's, uh, the Denishawn dancers in ginormous pleated dancers, pleated dresses and headbands and a really surly looking army officer. And they're all selling Liberty Bonds. Can, can you verify that?
(audience laughs)
Suzanne Carbonneau: Exactly as described.
Rachel Maddow: Yes. But then you think about what was going on around, in the country at the time that Ted Shawn founded, Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers. Their first performance was in 1933. 1933, the single worst year of the Great Depression. Unemployment, 25%. If you had held on to your job at that point since the crash in 1929, on average that meant that your wages had dropped 43%. And you were lucky. Time for Men Dancers, right? (audience laughs) But they made a great run of it, seven years. Among the things they performed were the butchest possible things they could imagine. The Sinhalese Devil Dance, the Maori War Haka, the Dayak Spear Dances. They did a sports suite that included a dance called Basketball Dance (audience laughs). They were men dancers (audience laughs). And of course they were terrific, but it freaked people out. Anyway, even as this troupe was really successful, they worked like dogs for seven years. They would play dozens of towns in as many days. You know, they'd go from, I looked at some schedules from the 30s, Owensboro Senior High School in Kentucky, Veterans Auditorium in San Francisco, the University of Idaho, the Anaconda Kiwanis Club and High School Auditorium (audience laughs). Here's a sample stretch for them in, in December, starting December 6th, 1937. And this is year four into what they've been doing here. In, on December 6th, they're in Edmond, Oklahoma. The next day, Denton, Texas. Day after that, Nacogdoches, Texas. The day after that, College Station. One day off. Then San Antonio. Then Harlingen, Texas. Then the next day in Kingsville, Texas. Then Houston. Then Waco. Then Abilene. Then New Orleans. That's a typical two- week stretch for these guys at this point. And people sometimes threw rotten fruit at them. One writer said that before he saw them for the first time in Burlington, Vermont, he thought, What? Men dancers? Must be a bunch of pansies. But then, he said, he went to the performance and saw, and I'm quoting, , saw that Ted Shawn was, quote, splendidly well knit (audience laughs).
I don't know either (audience laughs). In their traveling, um, heyday, there was quite literally a headline in a paper in Atlanta, I think this was also like 1937, and it was about the Men Dancers, and the headline, I'm quoting here, Ted Shawn's dancers create real art, semicolon. They are not sissies! Exclamation point (audience laughs). And of course some of them totally were sissies (audience laughs). And I mean that in a good way, but, it is, it is, it's a reminder of the world they were operating in and the context in which they made these decisions. So, the Men Dancers founded in arguably the worst year of the Depression, 1933. They have a really good run for seven years during horrific times. And then in 1940, they disband. It's over. Why was it over? Because they all enlisted. Because it was World War II. Now, Tanglewood and the Berkshire Playhouse shut down for the duration. But Ted Shawn decided to keep Jacob's Pillow open, during World War II. He was about 50 years old himself by that point, and the younger Men Dancers all went off to war. But he kept the Pillow going, and he told an interviewer later, quote, I never felt that wiping out all cultural life was the patriotic thing to do. On the contrary, during war times, the people as a whole need to be fed spiritually and artistically even more than in peace times.
When they raised money to build what they were calling the Jacob's Pillow Dance Theater, they sent a letter that included this appeal. Quote, I feel that we Americans are fighting to preserve a way of life, but that we must preserve that way of life while we are fighting for it. I have pledged myself to keep Jacob's Pillow alive and operating for the soldier dancers to come home to. And so help me God, I will keep that pledge. Our soldier dancers need a place for dance to come home to (audience laughs). Corporal William Miller wrote to Ted Shawn from the front, quote, not the war itself, but the fear that I might never be able to return to dancing has been the most depressing feature. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for the promise of the rehabilitation program for soldier dancers at Jacob's Pillow, and if I survive, I will return to take advantage of it. Later in life, another of the man dancers, Barton, how do you say his last name? (Carbonneau: Mumaw). Mumaw. He was Ted's lover for a long time. He described that period this way, he said, All the men had to go in the army and I thought we'd lost the battle. But afterward, men on the GI Bill came to Jacob's Pillow. The class was jammed. And then I began to hear that dance classes all over the country had men in them. Not beginners, not young men, but men who had seen us during the tours, meaning before the war. And who were liberated to the extent that when they came back, they could say F you to anyone who objected to it.
When William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, he said, It is the artist's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice, which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man. It can be one of the props, the pillars, to help him endure and prevail. Sometimes I'm, I think we choose to serve our country in ways that are pretty, pretty widely thought of as noble and, and dignified and heroic. And sometimes we choose to serve our country in ways that get rotten fruit thrown at us. Sometimes a part of the country doesn't particularly want the kind of service that you are offering as service to your country. Or that they think they don't until they actually go see you and they're forced to conclude that actually you're splendidly well knit (audience laughs). Sometimes we choose to serve our country in uniform, in war, sometimes in elected office. And those are the kinds of means of serving our country that I think we are trained to easily call heroic. It's also a service to your country, I think, to teach poetry in the prisons. To be an incredibly dedicated student of dance. To fight for funding, music, and arts education in the schools. A country without an expectation of minimal artistic literacy, without a basic structure by which the artists among us can be awakened and, and given the choice of following their talents and a way to get there, get to be great at what they do, is a country that is not actually as great as it could be. And a country without the capacity to nurture artistic greatness is not being a great country. It is a service to our country, and sometimes it is heroic service to our country, to fight for the United States of America, to have the capacity to nurture artistic greatness. We are a country that is at war a lot now. This fall we will start the 9th year of the war in Afghanistan. This past spring we started the 7th year of the war in Iraq. The counter terrorism chief John Brennan, gave a speech this past week where he admitted that we don't really plan on calling what we're doing abroad war anymore. But boy howdy does it involve a lot of troops. In other words, even just in our use of language, we're adapting as a country to being one that is at war all the time, and that's no longer a crisis. When the President gave his speech in Cairo recently, he painted a picture of an American future in which our troops aren't at war all the time, and we're not at war all the time as a country. He said, The world we seek is a world where American troops have come home. Which is awesome. But of course, we're seeking to reach that future awesome world by fighting a lot of ongoing wars now. And so we're a country that's at war a lot now and not just in wartime, but especially in wartime. And not just in hard economic times, but especially in hard economic times, the arts get dismissed as sissy. Dance gets dismissed as craft. Creativity gets dismissed as inessential to the detriment of our country. And so when we fight for dance, when we buy art that's made by living American artists, when we say that, you know, even when you cut education to the bone, you do not cut arts and music education because arts and music education is bone, it is structural, it is essential, you are, in Ted Shawn's words, you are preserving the way of life we are supposedly fighting for. And you are also splendidly well knit (audience laughs). And it's worth being proud of. So thank you for letting me say that.
(audience applauds)
Suzanne Carbonneau: You know, it's amazing to be having a discussion about the arts. Talking about them as something that is important as Rachel was bringing up, for who we are as a people. We usually talk about that only in economic terms. In the 80s when people began turning against the arts, that is using the arts as a kind of punching bag, in the culture wars, that one of the things that, um, we lost was our ethical way. And losing our ethical way seems to me to have led us into this crisis, the military crisis that Rachel talks about, but also the economic crisis where people can game the system, um, where they're only interested in their own benefit and not what they're doing to other people. And it seems to me that not having the arts is one of, one of the problems that leads us there. I'm wondering if you, what you think about that?
Rachel Maddow: Yeah, I, I I think that art is, has a million functions and some of them aren't functional at all, but one of the ways that they interact with politics, and I really think sort of national greatness, is that they can be a way to. exalt certain things about our way of life, the way we are and the way we act. They can also be a way to, um, to bring about accountability for things that the artist judges. And I think that's why the crisis about NEA-funded art in the 80s unfolded the way it did is, because it was artists who were politically minded who were using their art as a form of holding people accountable who really didn't want to be held accountable by these upstart artists. Um, and so they quashed and demonized art for their own purposes. But also tried to demonize the whole idea that art would be that anyway. You'd hear these arguments made by people against funding the NEA for, saying, why aren't we funding, you know, the Norman Rockwells of the world? Why aren't we funding other art that I find to hold me less accountable because I don't understand it? (Carbonneau: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm) (laughs) How dare we fund these people that make me feel bad or that make me feel less than, less than cosseted about my own country (Carbonneau: Mm-hmm). And that's a way of trying to discipline the art world so it stops, so it stops playing this very important role in keeping us, uh, keeping us, keeping us sort of on the straight and narrow in terms of our ethics. I think that's right.
Suzanne Carbonneau: Actually in the founding legislation for the NEA in 1965, It reads in part, one of the artist's and humanist's great values to society is the mirror of self-examination, so that society can become aware of its shortcomings as well of its strengths. No wonder they're in trouble, right?
Rachel Maddow: As long as, as long as the people whose shortcomings are being pointed out don't get to decide who gets funding (laughs) to do art. That seems like a bug in the system (audience laughs).
Suzanne Carbonneau: Of course, one of the things that was happening, um, with these, those attacks on the NEA, , you know, It was obviously part of larger culture wars that were going on with attacks on universities, and public intellectuals, and PBS and NPR, but, there was a, there was an agenda too. This was at a time when AIDS was, really in crisis. There was no effective treatments at that time, , and it was being treated by the government as a moral crisis rather than as a health crisis. And, I think those things are actually related. I think this was also an attack on people who are gay, who are represented disproportionately in the arts. And so, all of that sort of converged, I think.
Rachel Maddow: And I think you've, you've seen this, this happens over time. The critique that art is made by degenerates, and that anybody who is, um, who chooses to primarily define themselves as an artist is not, A, not productive, uh, toward society, but B, is themselves morally suspect, um, lacks, or even some sort of potential source of infection. So I think you saw that happen around the time of AIDS, art and gay art being demonized, um, by, in, in, in the Reagan era. And it all, it all became very explicit, but it's not, it didn't just happen then. That's a, that's a specific way that artists have been, have been demonized in time. And I, I, I think that there's a great speech to be made and I certainly didn't just make it, but I, I think there's a great speech to be made. I think there's, you know, great bumper stickers to be written. I think there is, there's a little patriotic chest pounding that could be done about what value arts are to a country. Not in terms of their propaganda, but in terms of, as, in terms of the arts as a sign of national greatness. That a great country nurtures great artists. , and that a great country is measured, the greatness of a country is measured in part by its freedom, and artistic freedom is one of the measures by which a country shows its greatness. And it implies a sort of confidence and resilience. It's always seemed to me like the most important type of strength is to be able to take a punch. Not necessarily to be able to deliver the strongest punch, but to be able, to be able to endure and stay up and keep doing what it was that you were going to be doing and not being so nudgy and thin-skinned and terrified about the way that artists judge people and judge societies and hold people accountable. Is this, is it, is this, is a form of national strength that fell apart and has repeatedly fallen apart whenever we get censorious. And, uh, I think it should be really exalted as one of the things to be proud of as an American when we get it right.
Suzanne Carbonneau: So we've been in this, what I call the war against art now, since 1989. Exactly 20 years. We have a new administration. And it included arts policy in, uh, its platform. And that's the first time that's happened, too. So, um, we're loo, I thought we could talk maybe some policy, since that's what you do. We're one of the only major industrialized countries in the world that doesn't have the equivalent of an arts ministry. And, there was some, there was some agitating right around the inauguration of Obama. Uh, Quincy Jones had been, put out this idea, a decade ago about making a cabinet level position in the arts and, there was a serious petition drive right around the inauguration to do this, to have a secretary of the arts and, uh, or an arts czar. What do you think of this idea?
Rachel Maddow: It would be so fun to see cabinet positions and cabinet level agencies abolished every four years and then re-founded every four years and then abolished every four years. I mean think about it. That would be like, it would be instead of the gag rule being the thing that the new president did on their first day whenever the White House switched parties. It would be the abolition or the reformation of that cabinet level agency. Which would be fun. I like that. I would, the reason it would be red meat to Republicans but, in the process of making it red meat for Republicans and giving them this nice soft target that they'd get to knock down every time they won the presidency, or they'd get to defund every time they got control of the House or the Senate, it would also force Democrats to pick a side. And it would force Democrats to defend it. as Republicans attacked it. So, I sort of like making people defend what they believe in. I sort of like, I think, I think things like that can be clarifying for political parties. On my show recently I had a congressman from New York, Anthony Weiner, who introduced, after hearing in the healthcare debate all of the members of Congress who are opposed to healthcare reform, invey against government controlled health care, how evil government run health care is and how the government can never run health care in this country. It would be a total disaster. He introduced a pill asking his Republican colleagues who had made that argument to please vote to abolish Medicare (audience laughs). Not because he wanted to abolish Medicare, but he was like, really? Alright. Let's, let's have a clarifying moment. And I think having an arts agency in the federal government would be politically clarifying, and might therefore gin up a little more Democratic support than the arts have received, because it hasn't been a rallying cry for Democrats. Um, although I do think the Obama administration is trying. As to whether or not they could actually make the country better at nurturing art, I guess you'd hope.
Suzanne Carbonneau: One of the things that we're talking about is how invisible the arts are in our public life. And, and, um, as you said, uh, in your introduction, how much they actually have to say to the nation. And I'm wondering if, if you have any thoughts about how we could integrate the arts and culture into our, into our larger policy discussions, and maybe let's start with prisons, because I know that's one of your interests.
Rachel Maddow: I don't know, what do you think? (both laugh) No, I mean, what do you, what, in terms of how we would, how we would talk about arts, when we talk about policy, talk about arts policy or how we would use the arts to, in order to, to make our conversations about other kinds of policies smarter.
Suzanne Carbonneau: Well, I actually, I think both of those things, I think that the idea that, um, the arts, are usually left out of that it, the discussions are always economic and military (Maddow: Yeah). And that what would happen if we started including arts in those discussions, um, economy, education, immigration, any of the sort of hot topics?
Rachel Maddow: Well, I, I sort of feel like it would, I think that would be a dramatic change because I, I don't think that arts are thought of like religion. But I think they're closer to being thought of like religion than they are to being, you know, thought of as like those other forms of policy. I think that there is, especially now, having been through the demonization of government funded art, government support for the arts with the NEA and with all the other battles we've fought over that, over the years. I think there's a little bit of an inclination, and I have a little bit of this, although I have a lot of other feelings about it too, that just as the separation between church and state is, um, both good for state and good for church, a little separation between, between government and art is also, also has some, something to offer. The idea of arts policy being debated by Jim DeMint in the Senate right now doesn't feel like a step forward (audience laughs). When, what, you know what I mean? I mean, I'm sure he's nice, but I can't imagine. I can't imagine. I mean, right now they're talking about how health care reform is a secret plot to kill old people in the, in the Congress (audience laughs). You know, I, I, I hesitate to think what they do about, you know, like, paintings made with mixed media including body fluids (audience laughs). I don't know. It would, but, um, it's, there, there has to, that's why I say that I think there could be a great speech written and some great bumper stickers made, in order to try to get us to think about artistic achievement as American achievement. We could really use that, while still holding that frankly, it's not in government interest to be in the interests of generating specific types of artistic content.
Suzanne Carbonneau: Mm-hmm. The art, the stimulus bill that was passed in the spring and, that the arts were included. It was very small. It was 50 million dollars, which was one sixth of one percent of the total. It was very interesting to see what happens. Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, immediately threw them overboard , saying, Oh, well it's not (Maddow: Shocker) (Carbonneau and Maddow laugh)...and I think there was some implication that arts workers aren't real workers. You know, aren't real Americans. What did you think of all of that?
Rachel Maddow: Well, it's not just that art isn't economically useful work or nationally useful work. It's that art workers are suspect. I mean, that's sort of what I'm trying to get at with this idea of degeneracy. There is this idea that if you devote yourself to art, that there is something a little (whistles), a little hinky about you (audience laughs). That you're a little dangerous, but not in a, uh, not in a, um, dangerous street thug way, but in like a you're going to infect us somehow (Carbonneau: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm) kind of way. It's a, it's a, I mean, I, I think when we get, that's why I was talking about sort of wartime and, and hard economic times, in that we end up, I think, fetishizing, forms of efficiency that are very easy for us to understand when we, when we get into hard times (Carbonneau: Mm-hmm). And art isn't efficient, but it's essential.
Suzanne Carbonneau: Mm-hmm. Don't you think that there's some idea that's been floating around since Reagan that, the pursuit of happiness is defined only in economic terms. And so, artists come along and suggest that actually there are other ways to define happiness, that there are other ways to, want to be part of America, and that's also what makes them suspect?
Rachel Maddow: There's also great art about money (laughs). And about, even about the pursuit of money. I mean, yeah, I, I, I think that, again, we get, we get into territory that I think is uncomfortable. We get into territory that is about whether or not in government support for art you're asking the government to choose the content of art that it supports for, it's, for propaganda purposes. And to not only discriminate against art that it finds challenging, but also to promote art that it finds supports its own political agenda. So yes, we need policy that is shaped around support for the arts being important for the country, or the state, or the locality, but we also need a little church and state wall there (Carbonneau: Uh-huh), because artistic freedom can't be, can't be anything but protected. You can't promote artistic freedom, you have to create a fence around artists that allows them to have that freedom.
Suzanne Carbonneau: And in policy terms, how, how would you do that?
Rachel Maddow: Well, I think that you have to isolate decisions about content from the people who are controlling the money (Carbonneau: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm). I mean, that's I mean, certainly…
Suzanne Carbonneau: In the NEA's founding legislation, um, it was quite explicit that, that decisions were, were to be made only in aesthetic terms, and politics was not to be a part of it, and politics really got injected in, well, really starting with Reagan, but in a big way in 1989 with Mapplethorpe and Serrano.
Rachel Maddow: That's why you need the awesome speech. I mean, really, that's why, that's why you need, like, to quite literally patriotically rally people around the idea of artistic freedom.
Suzanne Carbonneau: So who makes the awesome speech?
Rachel Maddow: Who makes awesome speeches in American politics right now? (audience laughs) Um, is it Jim DeMint? Is it Dianne Feinstein? No, I mean, we are, we are in an era in which we've got a president, as you said, who included an arts platform, without being forced to, survived that through the presidency, has made a at least symbolic show of promoting the arts, quite literally within, in the White House, since being there. It seems to be privileging that in terms of the symbolic activities of the First Family. That all seems good. But if we are going to talk about a big change, if we're really going to talk about, either through stimulus money, or through a wholesale, different kind of approach to the NEA, it's gonna take, moving people, it's gonna take some suasion. And you're, you have to do it in a way that is about, that is cognizant of, of the traps that we've fallen into in the past when government tried to dictate content. You have to exalt artistic freedom. I mean I can try to do that on MSNBC, but there's a guy who lives in Washington who would be better at it doing it for the country.
Suzanne Carbonneau: Mm-hmm. Does he have the political capital to do that?
Rachel Maddow: I've stopped believing in political capital. Remember when George Bush, um, right after he got re-elected, if you don't count Ohio (audience laughs), and he said that since he had political capital he was going to spend it now, and what he was going to spend it on was privatizing social security? And then he went around the country doing, I'm going to privatize social security town hall meetings. And nobody got arrested or hospitalized like they do now at health care meetings, at town hall meetings about health care. But it was, it was a circus. It was, he was a laughing stock. And he thought that he had political capital because his [unclear word] experts told him that, and on paper he did. But I think the way that you actually accrue real political capital is by leading. By, um, by, and when you lead, you win, and when you win, you supposedly get more political capital. But it is, is when you are actually, I think, bringing people along in a direction that they feel moved to continue to move in, that you have brought the country along to what you're trying to do, that's how you both accrue and spend political capital at the same time. I don't think it's a zero sum thing. I think you win more by winning. And I know that's a little bit esoteric, but, If George Bush had political capital to spend when he started trying to privatize Social Security, does that mean he had less when he had stopped trying to privatize Social Security? I don't actually think that it works that way. I think good ideas and good politicians, win and build momentum.
Suzanne Carbonneau: Hmm. So the response of the arts world to those attacks have been to start to make the case of the arts as an, as an economic engine. You know, that the arts contribute so many billions of dollars to the economy and to taxes and, and they revive inner cities and so forth and so on. And the whole idea of, of that the arts do something other than economics has been left out. Do you think about the economic, and I, and actually Rocco Landesman, the new NEA chair, was interviewed, the interview appeared in The New York Times today, and he was also talking about the arts as an economic engine. Is that something you think that that's the way to go, or do you think there's another way to go?
Rachel Maddow: I think that's sort of a, um, that's sort of a, a front parlor argument. You sort of make that with people who you feel like can't absorb larger arguments (audience laughs). You know, it's, it’s sort of the condescending argument about arts. It's almost like arts is junior sports (audience laughs). People buy tickets, they sit in rows, they watch people who have talent and practice do things (audience laughs). You know, we could have stadiums. It's true that arts can be an economic engine. It's also true that if arts were not an economic engine, we would have as much of a national interest in promoting them. I think that arts are necessary food for a national soul and for the ethical fundament on which you build, not only your values, but your politics. And without art, you're starving yourself, ethically and morally. And we need that (audience applauds). So, even if it costs money and doesn't make money. And it does happen to make money sometimes, so make that argument to your, you know, to the more simple among us. But, um, don't, I don't think we should talk ourselves into the idea that that's the best reason to support the arts.
Suzanne Carbonneau: Mm-hmm. I think we see what happens when the arts get starved, which they have been, for the last twenty years, at least. And that what we end up with in terms of culture is Disney and porn, right?
Rachel Maddow: And please, God, never the twain shall meet (audience laughs). Too late! (audience laughs again) I'm very sorry.
Suzanne Carbonneau: That's okay. So I'm wondering actually if you could talk a little bit about the arts and education, um, the place, for that. You, you started to talk a little bit about that earlier, but I'm wondering if you could say more.
Rachel Maddow: I live in the Hilltowns here in Massachusetts, as we have been through round after round after round after round after round after round, after round of budget cuts for schools, and for basic services. One of the things that has been inspiring to me, is to see local parents and local folks who are not political activists get really ticked off about the prospect of losing arts and music education. And it's not, it is something that activists are good at fighting for, just like activists are good at fighting for whatever their causes are. That's why you call them activists instead of just folks. But to see people who have not been politically active otherwise and not been inspired to sort of get involved and make arguments otherwise, remember what arts and music education meant for them as a kid, even if they ended up as a carpenter or even if they ended up as a state legislator, or even if they ended up as somebody who does not do a lot of viola playing anymore remembering the importance of arts and music in their own education and not being able to imagine sort of all, like, in an, in an, in an emotional, cringing way, not being able to imagine, having to imagine their kids not having the same opportunity with arts and music, having that expression as a kid, not just wait until you're older and being able to express your opinions and choosing it, but actually having artistic output expected of you as a seven year old, is, it's moving. It means something. It's, I mean, to me it's the sort of the, in the same way that you see, human empathy about animals in distress as something that's almost an uncontrollable thing. None of us make a decision to feel bad when we see a racehorse fall, but the, the entire country seizes in heartbreak when it happens. It's the same sort of thing, it's the same sort of feeling that we have about protecting our kids from a life without art (Carbonneau: Hmm), or a life without music. It's And, I think that emotional energy around it is, was to me, kind of galvanizing. I don't have kids, but boy, this is something that I recognize as important.
Suzanne Carbonneau: One of the things, that this brings up is that the arts are always being called elitist. And we have, elitist has turned into such a dirty word in this culture. Um, as though elitism is somehow, anti democratic. The way the term is used. I'm wondering if you could address the idea of the arts and elitism.
Rachel Maddow: The whole idea is like, oh, how dare you be good at anything (audience laughs). How dare you be a smarty pants. It's, I mean, it's a, it's a form of fake populist anti-intellectualism. That is just not actually true about what art and being an artist means. It's just not, it's not the way that art works. And yeah, there is elite art, there's also elite sports, man, you know, there's elite fishing (audience laughs). Um, and, you can (laughs), it's, it's, I mean, American fake populism is a great sport that goes back to the founding, right? But, it's worth mocking, I think, just because it's, it's easily patently disprovable.
Suzanne Carbonneau: You wrote something about the arts for The Los Angeles Times on March 1st and , some of you may have seen this, she said that she wants our artists. She was talking actually about wanting our country to be great and she said that she wanted our artists to be total international badasses. (audience laughs). In what…
Rachel Maddow: Elitism.
Suzanne Carbonneau: In what way would they do this, be international badasses?
Rachel Maddow: (Laughs) I mean, I want American artists to be top tier artists. That was a, The LA Times had asked a whole lot of different people, you know, imagine a new NEA. Like, if you had a vision for what the NEA is going to be like under Obama, what would you want? And I said, well, the only reason I have an opinion on this is because I am, um, bit of an American chauvinist, and I sort of want us to be oorah, great at everything. And in order to be oorah, great at everything, we need to be cultivating artistic talent. And we need to be not only cultivating it in places where it's okay to be an artistic elitist, and where we haven't had to cut services to the bone, and where arts and music are considered the bone, but we need to be cultivating it everywhere. In the same reason, for the same reasons that we, we can't achieve artistic, we can't achieve national greatness while being a country that is discriminatory. Because we need to tap all pools of talent for everything that we need people to be awesome at. I mean, if, if girls can't be scientists, we're not going to have as good an American representation in sciences than if everybody could be a scientist and we picked who was best. It's, it's sort of elementary. And so I was suggesting that the NEA, if I could wave a magic wand, um, I would want the NEA to focus on the sort of part of its mission that is arts for all, and one way to do that, one way to do that dramatically, in a way that would require a good speech to explain it, would be to really, really like quadruple down on arts education in prisons, and jails and juvenile facilities. And the reason is because, A, you are selfishly trying to tap all populations in the United States, and boy howdy do we lock, lock a lot of people up, who don't have access to a lot of social resources, almost by definition. But B, we also need artists and poets and musicians and everybody else who feeds into our national greatness in terms of our artistic and artistic output. We need them to have jobs doing art and teaching art. And so, teach prisoners art, poetry and music. Employ artists and poets and musicians to do that, and thereby expand the pool of talent that is being tapped by our country to see, uh, work who we can cultivate, um, into being international art badasses. In terms of what it means to be an international art badass, I think that is self-explanatory.
(audience laughs)
Norton Owen: That’s it for this episode of PillowVoices. Thank you for joining us today. On behalf of Jacob’s Pillow we look forward to sharing more dance with you through the films, essays, and podcasts at DanceInteractive.jacobspillow.org and of course through live experiences during our Festival and throughout the year. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for helping launch this podcast series. Please subscribe to PillowVoices wherever you get your podcasts and visit us soon, either online or onsite.