by SDG Morgan
Po·lem·ic - /pəˈlemik/ noun
speech or piece of writing expressing a strongly critical attack or political opinion
Polemics aren't art.
Just ask Bill Watterson.
Why? I’ll get back to that. But first, if you’re an artist on any side of the aisle, you’ll likely have noticed that much of the cultural chatter is political in nature. And politics has a nasty habit of bleeding over into polemics. And artists often create from the environment they exist in. So a great deal of art also has become incredibly polemical of late. Not only is polemic in the air, sometimes we as artists are told that silence is violence, and who wants to be silent and violent?
I mean, we want our art to be meaningful, don’t we? So, *sigh*, I guess we all have to do our bit and include a little polemic in our art. It’s just being a good citizen, right?
No.
Why?
Let’s go back to the Calvin & Hobbes code…
CALVIN: The reformer John Calvin taught that man is totally depraved. Give one man all the power, and they will always become a tyrant. Hence all power ought to be decentralized. Thus “Calvin” roughly represents the ideals of a generalized political right.
HOBBES: Thomas Hobbes agreed with John Calvin that man was inherently untrustworthy and bestial (and so he’s represented by a tiger), but Hobbes with the same basic beliefs came to the opposite conclusion. For Hobbes, man must be controlled by a large centralized government or else he would war forever, and the little people would suffer. Thus Hobbes roughly represents a general political left that believes in strong, centralized government in order to keep life from being “nasty, brutish and short.”
CALVIN & HOBBES is code for right & left. And so the strip is Watterson’s internal monologue between the right half of his soul and the left. The instinctual half of his soul and the traditional. The boyish half of his soul and the adult half.
That’s the code.
But you don’t need the code to enjoy his art, because none of it is on the surface, because Bill Watterson didn’t intend to create a polemic about politics. In fact, you have to know philosophy and political science to break his code.
Watterson studied political science in Kenyon College then started his career as a political cartoonist. That is to say, he mixed his politics and art on purpose. But his newspaper fired him before his contract was up. Maybe that’s where he learned that polemics aren’t art.
Watterson also named Calvin’s teacher as Miss Wormwood, a nod to C.S. Lewis (who wrote Screwtape Letters where Wormwood was a demon). Besides a sly joke suggesting that school is hell, Watterson is also hearkening to the overall philosophy of C.S. Lewis, who wrote:
“I am a [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man.
I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government.
The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation.
Like Watterson, only very astute scholars of C.S. Lewis can tease out his personal politics. Lewis frequently went to great lengths to be apolitical (though you can find his personal opinions in his private correspondence).
Lewis wanted his stories to be about right and wrong, not right and left. Why?
Bill Watterson and C.S. Lewis knew what so many modern artists have forgotten. Polemic destroys art.
Your role as an artist is not to bash your audience over the head.
Have a viewpoint, of course. But always remember…
An artist activist is bad at both.*
(* Unless God has given you a specific call. In which case, ignore me. Be an activist artist, as there are a few wonderful exceptions to this rule.)
But don’t we have a moral imperative toward justice? Isn’t empathy the domain of the artist? Shouldn’t Christians emphasize morality over art?
Yes, and also no.
In Romans Paul writes: "“Do not conform to the pattern of this world.”
In Greek, the word translated “world” is αἰῶνι aiōni, which is where we get the word aeon, or a chunk of time, a generation, or a cultural moment.
John wrote: “Do not love the world” and here the Greek word he used is κόσμον kosmon, which means an arrangement, or an order, and by extension a cultural order.
As Christian artists, you’ve probably heard that you’re supposed to be supposed to be in the culture but not of it. In the excitable decades of this young century, our culture has been insistent that politics is truth. We are told that only polemics matter.
Yet culture always shifts. C.S. Lewis also lived through an intensely polemical era in art, and he inversely describes this phenomenon in his book Screwtape Letters.
The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers whenever there’s a flood; and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly [gone under].
Yes, every generation of artists is fooled into running around with fire extinguishers during a moment of flood.
For example, look at the art before WWI, and you will see the fashionable cultural hype around courage, patience, and loyalty (admittedly, all amazing virtues), but they were being used to prepare a generation for a foolish war.
After WWI, culture hyped the virtues of peaceableness, quiet, and humility, but those were very near to the vices of passivity and apathy, right when the world needed courage and boldness to counter the rising threat.
In the 1950s the cultural moment lionized the virtues of gentleness, submission, and quietness, right in the moment when conformity and blindness to injustice was choking a generation.
Now we’re told by culture that the only valuable virtues are kindness, love and justice…
But I’ve run out of space to discuss that, however, I could cite examples for every generation going back through history, to demonstrate the accuracy of C.S. Lewis’ rule. Culture will always run around with fire extinguishers during an era of flood, and build levees during a massive inferno. It’s repeated consistently throughout the Bible that every culture is an ocean current moving you away from God, truth, and wisdom. If you’re not swimming against it, you will naturally flow with it.
So dear Christian who is also an artist, if you want to speak grace and truth to our age, then you can’t do it by conforming to the pattern of our age. Follow the one who embodies all of the virtues, not just the fashionable ones. Grab a fire extinguisher to use against a raging fire and build a levee against a flood.
So when current culture says all art must be polemical, and when digital mobs shout that you must engage in politics or else, then if I were you, I’d ignore them and just go and make some art.
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Thanks for the insight into Calvin and Hobbes. I knew something was there, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it! Also, thanks for the encouragement to write against the zeitgeist.
Awesome breakdown of Calvin and Hobbes. I've been reading Wattersons comics since I was a kid. Well before I understood the deep context. Looking back it has definitely shaped my philosophical and political stances today. Great read!