Foreword to Howard Zinn's "Artists in Times of War", translated into Arabic as "Stories Hollywood Never Tells" by Hamad Alisa
Published by Al Maaref Forum, Beirut, Lebanon, 2012
By Paul Cochrane
You
hold in your hands something powerful: the texts of speeches and
essays by the late Howard Zinn that could very well alter the way you
see and interact with the world. That is a bold statement, but it is
no hyperbole. Zinn had that power as a writer, political activist and
historian to make people question power, society, politics and
entertainment.
One
of Zinn's abilities was explaining an idea or a period of history in
engaging, straightforward prose. On first read the thrust of his
statements are clear, allowing further re-readings to be the fodder
for deeper reflection on his concepts. That was one factor
contributing to the success of his most renowned work,
“A
People's
History
of
the
United
States”
(1980). But writing
style is a means to deliver content,
the story,
and
Zinn did this by rendering the past, as the title implies, from the
people's perspective, which is not that of the elite, that line up of
history's usual suspects: kings, emirs, presidents, generals, ladies
and gentlemen.
History
is more than dates and names of big men – behind those figures,
slightly blurred out of focus in the lens finder of the cameraman,
are the unheralded people: the masses, you and me. Among us are those
that support and work to forward the aims, wittingly or unwittingly,
of the current political-economic set up; others are ambivalent about
power and those who wield it; there are those who complain of the
ills of the status quo and others who want to tear down the system by
any means necessary – everyone plays their microscopic part that
contributes to the macro level of human history.
Zinn
uses this approach to engage the reader, to show that the past is
indeed interesting, as interesting as the present, and that there is
a crucial need to understand history to help us understand the world
we live in. This can come through discussions with “ordinary”
people who have lived the history being discussed – the eyes of my
97 year old grandmother have seen the world transformed since her
birth in 1915, and instilled in her are the stories of her own
grandmother, which means going back well over 150 years. The past
really is not that distant. But for numerous reasons, history is not
taught like this in most schools. What is taught is selective, and to
fill in the gaping moments in between, one must apply one's own
initiative.
Which
returns us to this collection of works and interviews in the twilight
of Zinn's life – he passed away in 2010. The first two speeches
were written in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks – Zinn
wanted people to question government motivations and uses history as
an example, highlighting individuals that resisted and spoke truth to
power.
Zinn
considers this a primary role of the artist, of creators, especially
in a time of conflict. This is where the importance of “edutainment”
comes in, educational entertainment, which Zinn superbly addresses in
the third speech, “Stories Hollywood Never Tells”. It makes one
think comparatively of all the stories that could be told of the Arab
world's long and vibrant history that are not being told in musalsals
(soap operas) and Middle Eastern films. Indeed, this pamphlet, while focused on the
United States, can be a spring board for ideas.
The
events of the Arab uprisings (and the counter-revolutions that
followed), where the people rose up to challenge and overthrow power,
are a testament to the role of the people in history. From this
pamphlet (in which pamphleteering is the subject of an essay in this
collection) the reader recognizes the struggles that took place in
American history, short though it is by global standards, involving
the Industrial Workers of the World, Emma Goldman, and others. After
all, American history, like the rest of the world's modern history,
is one of struggles by, and for, the people.
Hamad
Alisa has done a great service to humanity in translating such a
succinct pamphlet that is crammed with possibilities and lessons to
be learned from history. How the pamphlet “Artists
in Times of War” was passed from hand to hand
to finally be received by Hamad also speaks to its authenticity as a
document of the people, as I was first given it by a friend, Karim,
as a photocopy, and I in turn copied it for Hamad when he was
visiting Beirut. When Hamad decided to translate the pamphlet into
Arabic, he beefed it up by adding a 2009 essay by Zinn on President
Barack Obama that was published inThe Progressive magazine,
and two interviews with Zinn, of which one is a debate
with Thom Yorke, an artist and the lead singer of British band
Radiohead, on the artist's role in saving the world.
“Artists
in
Times
of
War”
could
not
come at a better time
in translation, given what is happening regionally and globally. What
is going on is not a straight-forward affair and cannot be viewed in
the black and white of mainstream media portrayals. The boundaries
must be pushed for there to be progressive change. And artists are at
the forefront of this.
Occurrences
like what happened in March, 2012 in Kuwait City when an exhibition
by Kuwaiti artist Shurooq Amin called “It's A Man's World” was
shut down by the state censors must be challenged, if not just to
embarrass those in power. A crucial point is that power wants to be
taken seriously – by laughing at and ridiculing the authorities we
undermine their power simply because we do not take them seriously.
An
event last year (2011) neatly exemplifies this, when the Sharjah Foundation
in the United Arab Emirates dropped a film it had commissioned by
Iranian-American film maker Caveh Zahedi, which was on, of all
topics, “art as a subversive act.” The film was banned because
Zahedi poked fun at the ruler of Sharjah. As Zehadi remarked: “In a
place where there is no freedom of speech, you cannot say there is no
freedom of speech.”
Let
us not be in any doubt. Artists, writers, teachers and the wider
populous have a duty to stand up and speak out in the Middle East, as
anywhere else on the planet. As Zinn writes of the need for people to
participate, whether against war or in political policy in general:
“The historian says, 'It's not my business.' The lawyer says, 'It's
not my business.' And the artist says, 'It's not my business.' Then
whose business is it? Does that mean you are going to leave the
business of the most important issues in the world to the people who
run the country? How stupid can we be?”
We
are living in extraordinary times, and it is not a time to be
consumed by the spectacle flickering on TV screens but by what is
real, and to actively be involved in progressive change. This can
only happen when the public opposes and challenges those in power,
and does so with those most dangerous of weapons: knowledge and
ideas.
An
anecdote from the Hungarian uprising against the Soviet Union in 1956
is worth relating: A dissident is taken in for questioning by the
secret police. He is asked if he is armed. The dissident replies
“yes”, and reaches slowly into his jacket pocket. He pulls out a
pen and puts it on the table.
Today
a dissident may well pull out a smart phone or a laptop rather than a
pen, but the saying the “pen is mightier than the sword” still
holds true. Power can be challenged via a computer keyboard, a
camera, the artist's brush, the graffiti artist's spray-can or the
musician's microphone.
I
will end this foreword with the poem “Questions from a Worker who
Reads” (1935) by the German writer Berthold Brecht. This poem is
also found in the introduction to a book inspired by Zinn's history
of America,
which became a book on
Zinn's
own
book shelf:
Chris
Harman's
“A
People's
History
of
the
World”
(1999).
Who
built Thebes of the seven gates?
In
the books you will find the name of kings.
Did
the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And
Babylon, many times demolished
Who
raised it up so many times? In what houses
Of
gold-glitering Lima did the builders live?
Where,
the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did
the masons go? Great Rome
Is
full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did
the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only
palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The
night the ocean engulfed it
The
drowning still bawled for their slaves.
The
young Alexander conquered India.
Was
he alone?
Caesar
beat the Gauls.
Did
he not have even a cook with him?
Philip
of Spain wept when his armada
Went
down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick
the Second won the Seven Years War. Who
Else
won it?
Every
page a victory.
Who
cooked the feast for the victors?
Every
ten years a great man.
Who
paid the bill?
So
many reports.
So
many questions.
Note: The Arabic translation of the foreword was an abbreviated version of the above.
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