Meeting Creativity with Creativity

Winning the Culture Requires Thoughtful Engagement

This Piece by Andrew Klavan in City Journal was a lot to think about. Somehow it is easier to condemn things in the culture than creatively speak into it. Klavan says: "Many conservatives often seem to have given up on culture or not to care. There’s a strong strain of philistinism on the right. When we talk about “culture wars,” we usually mean preventing the courts from redefining marriage or promoting abstinence instead of birth control: culture, in other words, as the behavioral branch of politics."

He goes on to point out that culture should be seen as "the whole engulfing narrative of our values." We cannot "fix" things with well-meaning legislation. We need to remember that those who speak effectively into our culture seek not so much to rail, but to relate. Conservative culture is too quick to slay the messenger.

We have good and important stories to tell our young people. We need to dust them off and enter the realm of the arts that is where the young live. That is why a film like Bella is so important. It takes art to the issues that really engage us. Indeed it would seem that many honest artists WANT to gravitate toward such honest cinema. No matter how much art flirts with denial of reality it always returns to themes of heroism and redemption because WE require them. We love strong heroic characters and owe it to our children to give them voice.