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How can a work of art, music, or literature act promote social change?

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The Crucible is an example of how literature can promote social change and an awareness of important issues facing society - in Arthur Miller's case - the persecution of innocent people. Like Miller did in this play, today's artists, musicians and writers can use their medium as a form of activism to bring about social change. Miller's play provided an artistic platform for an allegory of how society continually repeats persecuting marginalized groups. Even though The Crucible acts as a warning of the devastating results of this oppression, people are still mistreated today because they are marginalized. The art of the Black Lives Matter Movement today reveals the grim reality of the injustice that members of the black community experience in the United States, and it is an important medium for social activism.

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This is America by Childish Gambino is a music video that critiques current American society. The video exemplifies the prevalence of systemic racism, injustice, and violence.  Through the lyrics and images in the video, Childish Gambino - taking on the role of the activist - illuminates that the justice system in the United States unfairly targets members of the black community. Glover’s character, who represents how white American culture oppresses black people, periodically kills innocent performers - which demonstrates how people who are marginalized are unfairly persecuted even today. The video echoes the violence that members of the black community are subjected to at the hand of police officers and promotes the values of the Black Lives Matter movement. As Gambino tells listeners to “watch me move,” in the background people are being chased by police. Just like Arthur Miller does in The Crucible, Gambino uses his art to exemplify an unjust system whereby people are wrongly persecuted.  In The Crucible, Miller used witchcraft as an allegory for the persecution of liberal minded individuals by the government, while Gambino's production is a powerful reflection of what it is like to be black in America.

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Childish Gambino - This Is America (Official Video)

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In the wake of Alton Sterling's death this month, many mourned what seemed like just the latest in a series of unjustified police shootings of black men. Some people took to the streets in protest. Others reflected and grieved in private. Langston Allston started painting.

Allston, a New Orleans-based artist, has been using his artwork to address social change and stoke conversations since he studied painting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2010. When he heard about Alton Sterling, Allston hitched a ride to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he picked up a paintbrush to contribute to the city's anguish and healing. There, Allston painted murals, including a portrait of a local protester called Lil' Smurf, who Allston said made an impression outside the Sterling memorial. A photograph of his artwork was later featured in the New York Times.

We spoke to Allston about his murals and why he sees painting as a viable form of protest.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

VICE: How did the mural at Alton Sterling's memorial come about earlier this month?
Langston Allston: I've been super active in terms of including in my art how fucked up the world is. I've kind of always had a particular thing about police brutality in my work because it's something that's always been close to me. I went to Ferguson [in 2014] and that kind of made me more radical about it and interested in dismantling the police and the police system, so when I heard something happened in Baton Rouge I was like, I've got to go and see if there's a way I can be useful. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do, but we ran into some people who had paint and were willing to let me paint their wall, so I ended up doing that out of the blue. It was a very spur-of-the-moment type thing.

You painted someone who was down there protesting, right?
Yeah. I'm not from Baton Rouge, and I don't know [Alton Sterling] or his family, so I was like, it's probably better if a Baton Rouge artist does the actual portrait [of Sterling]. But we ran into a lot of protestors who were really inspiring-people from the community who came out and were just mad-so I just pinpointed a guy we were talking to earlier in the day named Lil' Smurf. Lil' Smurf was out going hard and protesting and I was like, Man, I've got to immortalize this somehow. Because it's sad how quickly this activism reacting to a sad event fades away. If there's any way to keep people visually energized and plugged in, I think that's a useful thing to do.

Do you see your paintings or murals as helping people in some way?
I personally don't think a mural by itself is an incredibly helpful thing. But I find as I'm talking to people that sometimes the things I paint take on a life after I've left that they didn't have when I was there. They mean things to people over time. Creating emblems and icons for people to gather around and talk about is definitely a useful thing to do, but I think there's more that has to get done. The visual element of any movement is always critical because it helps people remember it, helps people identify it, and helps people plug into it who weren't previously plugged in. But everything else has to happen in addition to that. There's definitely room for art in activism, but it's not end-all-be-all by any means.

What are you trying to accomplish with your artwork?
I really want to do work that lets people understand that the issues we're grappling with are complicated, but also understand that they're reversible and changeable. Activist art is something I've wanted to avoid, even though my art features activism, if that makes sense. I want stuff that will talk to people for a long time because these issues haven't gone away. We've been fighting this fight since slavery, basically, to get respect and to get people to stop murdering black people in cold blood. It's obviously going to be ongoing and obviously individual incidents really polarize people or pull them together. It's really important to remain active and aware of what's happening, but it's also important to understand things as being broad issues that affect everybody all the time.

If you don't categorize your work as activist art, what would you categorize it as?
I guess I would just call them paintings. I aspire to be active and affect change, but at the same time, I think that my paintings are just paintings.

Do you see this current movement-specifically, the Black Lives Matter movement-as something as significant as the civil rights movement?
I think I do see it as being equally significant. Really, it's a young movement; it just started. But those things we're looking back on and talking about like the civil rights movement or black power, those were things that started as young movements in times where it was necessary for them to exist. There was a gap where people really weren't polarized by it and the conversation wasn't happening on a national scale, and I think we're overdue to readdress this kind of shit because I don't think it's gotten better. In many ways, it's gotten worse.

Where I live in New Orleans, all these problems are extremely real every single day. There's no getting away from the reality of it. The law, in many ways, has lost its legitimacy-especially here in Louisiana. It's the incarceration capital of the world, so everybody down here is on papers in some way. Cops representing justice isn't really a thing. You don't see police come through New Orleans or Baton Rouge and think, Oh that person represents justice and fairness and equality. You already know they have the power to fuck up your life and probably will at some point. It's extremely necessary to start addressing that huge problem we have-especially here, because it is so fucked up. Little changes would do a lot. We just need to get a little bit of movement.
Follow Sean Neumann on Twitter.

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A Black Lives Matter Painter Explains How Art Can Be Activism

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In the wake of Alton Sterling's death this month, many mourned what seemed like just the latest in a series of unjustified police shootings of black men. Some people took to the streets in protest. Others reflected and grieved in private. Langston Allston started painting.

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Everyone is talking about THE HATE U GIVE, in which a young girl finds her voice and the courage to use it. Learn more about the inspiration behind it here!

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(4) There are Birds Here (for Detroit) - Jamaal May

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(4) There are Birds Here (for Detroit) - Jamaal May

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There Are Birds Here by Jamaal May | Poetry Magazine

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(5) No Country for Black Boys - Joy Priest

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(5) No Country for Black Boys - Joy Priest

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Instructions for reading a contrapuntal: This poem contains two or more POV's or melodic lines, which have been combined in such a way that they establish a harmonious relationship (technically, but perhaps conflicting in content), while retaining linear individuality. This poem is to be read as follows: 1) Left column with centered lines 2) Right column with centered lines; and 3) across.

Joy Priest was born and raised in Louisville, KY. she holds a print journalism degree from the University of Kentucky with a concentration in Creative Writing. She is one of the newest members of the Affrilachian Poets, and has been published in pluck! Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. She was awarded a fellowship to Callaloo Journal's 2013 Summer Creative Writing Workshop at Brown University. You can find her on Twitter @Dalai_Mama_ Read about where Joy writes here.

This entry was posted in Guest Post and tagged Affrilachian Poets, Contrapuntal, Joy Priest, No Country for Black Boys, Trayvon, Trayvon Martin.

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Instructions for reading a contrapuntal: This poem contains two or more POV's or melodic lines, which have been combined in such a way that they establish a harmonious relationship (technically, but perhaps conflicting in content), while retaining linear individuality. This poem is to be read as follows: 1) Left column with centered lines 2) Right...