Voices flock to controversy like bees to honey. The case surrounding the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High shooting is no outlier — without delay, a multitude of sentiments regarding the affair has peppered the national landscape. As in prior responses to tragedy, we have heard vehement accounts from survivors, onlookers, afflicted families, and of course, politicians. This is precisely what we would hope for in response to an unthinkable calamity, is it not? Hardly.
In turbulent times, art and its artists find themselves thrown into a space of ambiguity and with it comes a host of questions regarding their purpose. Artistic and political space inevitably intersect. Is this by accident or by unbending intent? More broadly, what is the role of the artist? For Kadie Salfi, a local Ithaca artist and an active member of the Alice Cook House community, these questions are addressed through an invitation for dialogue. Located in the Willard Straight Hall Art Gallery, Salfi’s exhibit Red Guns is part of a poignant and enduring conversation about gun violence in America.
Swedish, indie pop-rock group Radio Dept. walks the line between complacent and passionate. Their sound in Running Out of Love, released this October, mixes easy to listen to harmonies with fast paced, energetic beats and shocking lyrics. The three merge to unpack social frustrations. With an eerily calm tone, their lyrics call to mind serious issues and leave them unresolved.
When Michael Moore responded to the deaths of 12 innocent high school students with Bowling for Columbine, no one could have argued against the film’s political significance. A fiery critique of congressional negligence to curb gun violence, Moore’s impassioned documentary was so charged with a palpable, collective anger that many still refer to it as one of the most compelling political statements made by any documentarian. Even watching Bowling for Columbine nearly a decade after its initial release as an Australian high school student did little to weaken my appreciation of its persuasive fury. And the fact that U.S. legislators have failed to account for the thousands of victims of gun violence and have written off their deaths as an acceptable cost for the preservation of a 200-year-old constitutional amendment has only strengthened the contemporary legacy of Moore’s most important work. Moore’s latest film, Where to Invade Next — despite being deceptively titled to suggest a censure of American foreign policy — focuses on social welfare offered by other countries that Moore believes America ought to imitate.
