the importance of art and safety.
(in this period of descent into fascism)
If you're a liberal/left-leaning person like me, you have been voraciously keeping up with local, provincial/state and federal politics, and with the world news, using all avenues available to you to try and make sense of the tumultuous time were living through. And thus, with each passing day, you've probably been inundated with the F-word more and more from the news/political commentators you follow, from the images attached in the articles you read, and the academics and journalists you trust. Fascism. With the recent ruling from the UK Supreme Court saying that the legal definition of a woman is solely going to be rooted in biology and seeing the jubilant celebration surrounding it, I can’t help but feel like we just took one more monumental step in the global death march towards fascism.
I’m scared and very worried.
Of course, this isn’t really about my own personal feelings of fear because overall, I will be quite alright. I’m a bisexual, leftist woman and arts and culture person living in Canada, in a dependably liberal-to-progressive riding and city. Yes, my country has a federal election coming up and there is a chance we might (strong emphasis on ‘might’) elect a right-wing reactionary buffoon of our own in the form of Pierre Poilievre, but center and left-of-center Canadians were given a hail Mary in the new liberal party leader Mark Carney, who’s performing better in the early polls everyday. So, we might not have to worry that much at all. Yes, the cost of living is still abysmal (as my friends and I keep saying: girl, the tariffs), and going through life’s very human struggles is still excruciating but ultimately, bearable. Spring, the best season, is well on its way and the days are getting longer and you see that your neighbour’s tulip bulbs are peaking out from the soil and you’re able to go home and give your cat a big kiss on the cheek as they reward you with an annoyed and disgruntled meow.
And so you feel emotionally regulated enough to then go on your daily news binge and find that another university student in the US got black-bagged for expressing pro-Palestine views, you see images of the destruction of Gaza and the concentration prison/camps in El Salvador, and then that the boomer British lady who authored the books that have been bringing so much joy and fulfillment to your art practice donated 70 000 euros to a feminist organization that was the plaintiff fighting to disenfranchise an already marginalized minority group. And you’re left feeling quite… dirty and doom-ridden and powerless while standing in the middle of the cushy imperial core.
Your cat who was annoyed you picked them up earlier has forgiven you now, though, and is headbutting you for some catnip.
But this isn’t about me, not in the slightest. I/we know how these things go. I’m not a history buff by any means (though I really want to be) but I have a basic enough understanding of world history to know we’re already in the throes of fascism: with the targeting and scapegoating of vulnerable minorities like the trans community or the complete hatred and want for disposal of migrants – I feel a deep and suffocating grief for my fellow comrades.
This pain, I believe, is all our duties as human beings with the gift and responsibility of empathy, to feel.
I’m also hyperaware that with the downward fall into fascism comes the defunding and eventual erasure and censorship of art. Now I’m not saying my art is worthy or important enough to be censored. But I am saying we need art; we need as much of it as there can be for our emotional needs which is imperative for our survival. I don’t mean to say this in a hyperproduction/hyper consuming way, of course, we just need human artists, humane art (whatever that means to you) now more than ever.
I’m a political person, and my leftist and feminist principles and values I think show up quite plainly in my work but again, I don’t think I’m making anything radical here – my art I think is just one small piece in a greater human need to make and experience art. Therefore, I’d be remiss to say it wasn’t important. I know my work is important in that I know it means something to people. This community here for instance, or on twitter/x, Instagram or tiktok, which I feel like the luckiest person alive to have somehow conjured, that means something to me, and I’d be glaringly obtuse if I didn’t acknowledge it. So, I sincerely want you to know my art exists not only as the physical manifestation of this vocation of mine, but also as a source of safety and comfort for your senses, if you need it to be.
As much as I want to be, I’m not an activist, I’m just an artist. And my art is the one (I hope) iron-clad thing I can give to the world and the beautiful, worthy of lives of dignity, people within it. Joy and comfort aren’t a solid political program on its own and I know art consumption alone is not going to lead us to liberation, self-determination and lives of dignity. But, my god, do we still need joy, comfort and safety in the form of art to get through each day.
To my nonbinary and trans friends and siblings, I am so, so fucking sorry powers greater than us are using you as pawns for political theatre, and that so many restless people are using you as political punching bags. The world we’re living through is incredibly unfair and unjust at the moment. Your pain is our pain, none of us are free until all of us are free. So, I want you to know that my little pictures and I are here, fighting alongside you.
I know Harry Potter, the IP and the storyworld with its characters, isn’t what’s causing our dissent into fascism. And I know, realistically, I’m not the devil’s spawn for still liking it, for making cute artwork of the titular main character’s best friends for its fandom. I can’t explain in words why I feel such an affinity to this story, this very entry-level story about fighting fascism, with its anti-social megalomaniac villain and its painfully liberal/reformist politics. My pull towards it is deep, abstract, and almost spiritual, and if I could succinctly put these feelings and magnetism into words, I probably wouldn’t be making this much art like my life depended on it. And the awful truth of it is, I’ve never been more artistically fulfilled. I’m so happy while making this work and my cup becomes fuller after each drawing, I selfishly don’t want to stop. Does that make me awful?
A lot of my peers, fellow fanartists, have been considering leaving the fandom altogether and it’s left me feeling a kind of panic because, quite frankly, I don’t want to. Not until the creative reserve (which is rooted in my love and other abstract feelings for the story) within me has run dry, which it hasn’t. And after I realized this, I felt a little ashamed that I wasn’t feeling what others are also feeling, but I think the knee-jerk reaction to leave and disavow this community because of the cartoonishly mean-spirited author (who ironically made this story about love, friendship and fighting fascism) also feels hasty and reactionary. I understand the impulse, I really do. I recognize I have a vested interest in saying this, but I sincerely think we need art now more than ever, if any of my peers are reading this: your art. Thoughtful art, art that is an exercise in empathy. I’m also saying this because I feel a deep sense of responsibility to my friends (majority of whom are also queer and trans) I’ve made through our shared love of this story, to fellow fans and the people I’ve been privileged enough to have touched with my art.
This discomfort of still harboring love for this flawed but ultimately lovable and beloved story during this time of political unrest and chaos, and continuing to express my love for it by creating artwork for it… is something I will just have to live with until it’s run its course. I don’t think this is a righteous grief by any means – I think the mundanity of it is what’s making it especially annoying.
Quivering in the face of good art is I think one of the best feelings in the world, and though I sincerely believe the HP story to be good and adequate in its political and class commentary, this squirming isn’t exactly that. I’m immensely (and selfishly) resentful to JKR for being the mean-spirited bully/troll that she is, not only do I wish she weren’t a right-wing reactionary, I wish her tomfoolery didn’t make me squirm uncomfortably (the word I’m looking for here is ‘cringe’) while still genuinely enjoying this work. Nonetheless, I’m confident in my ability to engage with this story intelligently and I hope to continue to share my thoughts and love for this narrative through posts and meta/cultural analyses and many, many drawings of Ron and Hermione kissing. I am also steadfast in my political convictions, which are so much older than the just-over-a-year-old love I have for these books. My political convictions which have always been and will always continue to be pro-trans, feminist, anticapitalist and grounded in my love and empathy for people.
I don’t have all the answers to how and why we are so drawn to certain stories and characters and tribes (because fandom in a fundamental way acts like a tribe), and why we so profoundly need to keep making and keep experiencing art. Or how to even best live with the contradictions that exist within and outside of us. I’m just a young artist, still in the infancy of my career in many ways, but something in my bones is telling me this is important work, and I should keep doing it – with all its squirming discomfort, and its wonderful, beautiful fulfillment.
Again, we are living through incredibly difficult times, but we must make it through, and we will. I will keep making work that I hope is thoughtful and politically principled, and I hope you’re able to find some joy and comfort in them as I do while making them.
- nus :)
