The Truth is Expensive

Pounds of fake cocaine ain't cheap

Double Negative Dispatch Issue #78

Honesty comes at a cost. I’ve addressed 2 out of 3 ways artists struggle with honesty, and today we’re hitting a sticky one. The dreaded…Number 3:

1. Honesty about their skills or limitations

2. Honesty about who they are and what they should be making

3. Honesty about their experience (self-censorship out of cowardice)

Strap in, number 3 is a doozy.

And I’m going to step on a landmine with the closest example I have at hand.

What is Christian art?

(Honestly, I don’t know, I’m asking.)

I’ve been doing some digging on this subject lately, because I live in the Bible Belt (hint: my state was the first to join the confederacy) and it seems that Christian art is largely seen as something that directly references Christ in some romantic or worshipful way. “Faith-based” seems to be the cultural label for this genre.

The problem though, is that most modern “faith-based” music or movies…aren’t that good.

They are sterilized, cheesy, and tend to portray an inaccurate picture of the human experience and need for hope, in my opinion.

Hope is the whole ball game, when it comes to making something even remotely Christian, I think. But the need for hope doesn’t really translate when one is portraying an idealistic, Mayberry-esque world. A “faith-based” movie is never going to feel like a Martin Scorsese movie, but, I’d argue….maybe it should.

I just watched the incredible docu-series on AppleTV, Mr. Scorsese, and boy, is it eye opening. He’s always pushed the envelope with gore, violence, language, and sex, and yet, none of his movies are going out of their way to be over the top like a Tarantino movie might be. They aren’t cartoons, they are a portrayals of real life. One of his first movies, Mean Streets, is about lower level Mafiosos in Little Italy doing various degenerate and criminal acts. Robert De Niro’s character is based off a real guy doing real stuff in Scorsese’s neighborhood growing up, and censoring it would have been a disservice to the ultimate truth of the film.

I’d argue The Wolf of Wall Street is more effective because of all of the debauchery it shows on screen. You think this stuff isn’t real? You think these kinds of brokerage houses weren’t snorting cocaine off women’s butts? Of course they were (and are).

But the modern versions of what is considered faith-based or Christian art doesn’t depict this kind of world, and therefore, it’s not as effective in it’s ultimate goal. You’ll find that a lot of these movies lean on disease and sickness as the driver of plot rather than the inherent corruption of men. It’s sanitized for the sake of the people that want to continue living in a closed-off evangelical bubble.

I just finished watching the new HBO show Task, and I struggled to get through it, if I’m being honest. Not because it’s bad, quite the opposite actually. But because it’s pretty dark, especially when it comes to kids. (I struggle with things where kids are in danger in any way) By the end though, it has one of the most powerful depictions of hope and forgiveness I’ve seen in recent years, which stands out more against a backdrop full of drugs, brutal gangs, kids being kidnapped, and inter-family drama. It would probably be a pretty valuable show for many Christians to watch, quite honestly.

What am I getting at here? Number 3 of this series is about self-censorship in one’s art. Why would that be a problem? “Self-censorship” implies there’s a reason you’re not saying what you mean to say. And I’d argue, it’s fear. Fear of upsetting people, fear of getting booted off a social media platform, and so on and so forth.

The word “un-alived” is a thing people say now purely because TikTok shadow-bans or deletes posts that simply use the word “kill” or “dead”. There are a lot of reasons to use those words that aren’t some sort of grisly murder content, and yet, the word “un-alived” came to be in order to avoid censorship. It means the same thing, it just sounds way dumber.

But the reason I built my argument around Christians is because Christian culture is often a really powerful censorship force. It often isn’t direct (although it certainly can be), but rather societal pressure to look and talk in a particular way. Many Christians I know take on this bizarre way of speaking that is meant, not to spread hope of the Gospel, but rather, signal to other Christians that they are in the club. Stuff like, “God laid it on my heart to become a realtor.” Or a woman in a strangely breathy voice will say something like, “We had such a sweet time with each other and the Lord” when they refer to crushing a Grand Slam at Denny’s. Phrases like “stumbling block” or “discipleship” or “blessed” are all Biblical words, sure, but they are used in a way to identify oneself rather than be useful for what they were intended.

Many clubs or tribes of people have words like this, artists do, political people do, and so on. But really, it’s just a way to beat around the bush. It’s indirect-ness out of fear of judgement from one’s peers. If you’re a photographer that’s worried about what other photographers think, you’re going to only make photos within the bounds of what other people in the group make, because you have one eye to the audience and another eye to the group you want to impress. The more invested one gets into a culture, the harder it is to tell the truth, because it can come at the expense of the group you’re so attached to.

Telling the truth in our art is the whole point. That should be the only goal when making something. I have read it over and over again in every book by artists or the rare theologian that mention art: Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Andrei Tarkovsky, Werner Herzog, Francis Shaeffer, etc. Every book about making art says the same thing: tell the truth.

The truth is expensive. You’ll lose friends, income (Just think about how much money Scorsese spent on fake cocaine!), your mom will judge you, and you won’t fit in anywhere. Honesty isn’t rewarded all that often (especially in Christian circles believe it or not), which is why everyone is so incentivized to create facades around themselves.

Pursuing the truth will always cost you something.

But.

It’s essential to our work. It’s the only way to make anything effective.

So, in the spirit of truth-telling: I have a confession.

I’ve started writing fiction.

It’s the most liberated I’ve ever felt. I’m pulling out a lot of weird stuff that has been lurking in my subconscious, and it’s not always clean. It’s not always appropriate for the more “traditional” world I’m surrounded by. I’ve felt twinges of fear around the idea of sharing some of the stuff I’m writing because I’m afraid of how I’ll be perceived. Not that any of my characters or stories are based in any kind of full-on reality, but aspects and events very much resemble or take pieces from real things I’ve experienced.

But I can’t get enough. I’m obsessed. In fact, next year, I plan to start releasing some of my short stories, so this series about honesty and art can be revealed for what it really is: Me coaching myself.

Oh by the way, here’s a video about how fear manifests in photography: