Onward
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It’s a weird time to be alive, and it’s a weird to be a creative type. Us writers and artists and so on like to think that what we do makes a difference. That we’re making a dent.
But are we?
Are we even changing the culture, whatever that means? Is politics really downstream from culture, as the aphorism goes? Is culture really what’s been leading to the widespread societal changes we’ve seen? Or has it been other factors like academia, news media, and plain-old, flat out raw power? It’s all psychological warfare, but what part does culture really have in this?
Is the dominant culture dominant for any other reason besides the massive amount of money propping it up? Sure, tons of it is garbage, but it’s garbage that never seems to make the producer face any financial repercussions. In the history of the 21st century, I can’t think of a single example where “get woke, go broke” actually happened.
Those of us writers who are, shall we say, not in the mainstream, often said that shoehorning political messages into art leads to bad art nine-times-out-of-ten. The difference between us and the mainstream is that, if nobody reads our books, then we lose. If nobody reads mainstream books–or sees the movies, etc.–the studios don’t lose anything because they have millionaires and billionaires financing them. They’ll declare victory, write off the losses, and mode on to the next one.
Therefore, it seems to me the sanest thing to do is just what I believe movements like the PulpRev were designed to do and set out to do from day one: create art that is as good as humanly possible that appeals to as wide an audience as possible, and don’t worry about the messaging. Don’t worry about a “culture war.” Just create the kinds of things that you would have enjoyed reading, or watching, or seeing, or experiencing, share it with the world, and try to get as many people you think want to come along for the ride to join you.
That’s how you do it. There is nothing wrong with art for art’s sake. All fiction is message fiction, but not all fiction–or messages–are good. Create good fiction with good messages, even simple messages like “the good guys sometimes win.” The rest will follow.
My books are not heavy handed despite having Christian protagonists. They’re just fun.
