PUPPET POLITICS

The introductory readings assigned this week dealt primarily with defining what exactly constitutes cultural activism, an ever-growing spectrum of techniques and methods for practicing cultural resistance. Jennifer Verson, in an excerpt entitled “Why We Need Cultural Activism” from her publication Trapese Collective, relays a number of varying kinds of activist techniques social revolutionaries have attempted and adopted in the past. This included practicing fine and public Art in the service of the people, like the Muralist movement championed by Diego Rivera in1920’s Mexico telling “the history of the nation and created a national mythology, painting on public buildings… to unite and educate the people”, the subvertising of publications like  Adbusters today, which practices culture jamming or “making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements in order to make a statement” (178), as well as the idea of carnival, a kind of reversal of the present order and state of things (an idea which is practiced through "non-violent civil disobedience... against the sheer stupidity of capitalism and war" (183) by the tenants of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army).

Similarly, forum theatre and performance were two areas of political resistance that came to a head in the late 20^th century and allowed the people to consider their relation to the societal ills that were taking place around them. Groups like the Bread & Puppet theatre practice a kind of “character based action performance” (180), putting on fantastical three-day pageants addressing the contemporary ills of our society (like our addiction to oil, a depleting and overall harmful natural resource when viewed from a social context). By performing these pageants the Bread & Puppet allow people to think critically about their role in these greater social problems and formulate some kind of recourse to take for future action. The politics of the Bread & Puppet seems to be very direct but still holds some thread of allegory, which requires personal interpretation and reflection. The troupe also often includes the crowd that attend each pageant in different parts of the performance, further involving them in the allegory and allowing them to concretely effect some kind of change, even if only in thinking, on a personal level.

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