Self-Censorship and Making Money: A Cross-Cultural Thing

Something about this quote from Alex Ross's New Yorker piece on classical music in China made it stand out for me:

“By 1992, the Party had given up trying to purge all dissident voices and opted instead for the strategy of urging all arts organizations to strive to earn more money.” Those who work within the system may be expected to reach a stage where they can win prizes, obtain sinecures, hold illustrious posts, and be well paid for teaching. Artists end up censoring themselves—a habit ingrained in Chinese history. Behind the industrious façade is a fair degree of political anxiety. Reviews often read like press releases; indeed, I was told that concert organizations routinely pay journalists to provide favorable coverage. Critics feel pressure to deliver positive judgments, and, if they don’t, they may be reprimanded or hounded by colleagues. One critic I talked to got fed up and quit writing about music altogether.

“If you are not free yourself, how can you interpret music freely?” the former music critic told me. We met in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Beijing, above Oriental Plaza, the most opulent of Chen Ping’s malls. Businesspeople negotiated deals at neighboring tables while Norah Jones cooed on the speakers. “It’s very sad,” the critic went on. “Freedom is the biggest thing and it affects everything. People are scared, and they act in a way that scares others. I’m not just talking about music; I’m talking about many professions. There is a lot more to say, and sometimes I don’t know where to begin. Many things are stuck in my head.”

Although it was obviously inspired by the nature of the Chinese state, I think the former music critic's question--“If you are not free yourself, how can you interpret music freely?”--is something that should resonate for artists and critics everywhere. Ross's friend is most obviously talking about political freedom of speech, but the question verges onto other kinds of freedom: economic freedom; artistic freedom; freedom from personal bias or inner censors; the freedom to advance one's career. Total freedom-- freedom from just-enumerated constraints and all others--is something none of us will ever be able to claim, and our lack of it impinges on our experience of art. Clearly this isn't in the same way as the Chinese music critic's, but nonetheless his or her words and situation make a good counterpoint, a flesh-and-blood reminder that to some degree we all deviate from this ideal.

And yet, for as much repression as Chinese artists face, I was taken aback by how much of these two paragraphs could transfer to critics elsewhere. There is no doubt that there is pressure in the U.S. and in other democratic states to provide favorable coverage; perhaps it comes more in the form of economic or career-interest pressure, but it is still present. And when pressure to dissemble is not outright, then, at the very least, many talented American critics are faced with what amounts to a stifling professional atmosphere--albeit one instilled by capitalism and not government (although, when the government is so overwhelmingly allied with capitalism as ours has been lately, that division begins to break down).

Perhaps the thing that disturbed me the most about this quote is the very first sentence, which seems to imply that the Chinese government has discovered that a far better way to censor artists and critics than through heavy-handed commands is to simply encourage them to try and make a living off their work. That first sentence resonates with the last few, the ones that appropriately begin "Freedom is the biggest thing and it affects everything . . . " Considered from that perspective, Ross's article is more than a piece about the devleopment of classical music in China; it's a look at how a community of artists responds to changing conditions vis a vis freedom, and thus seems to be something that speaks far beyond the territorial boundaries of China.

Related:

• My post about Alex Ross's book on 2th-century classical music, The Rest Is Noise