A History of Opposition - from November 2009's Hullfire

Art has a long history of undermining the more assertive aspects of state control. Partly, that's because the artist is often in an ideal position to observe the workings of a state system and is the sort of person most able and likely to articulate their opinions. An artist is often on the fringes of society, while members of the government support the status quo because it places them in prominent positions. Naturally, if the state's leaders benefit from the way things work, they won't be keen on supporting external reformers. Partly, art that disagrees has much more to say than art that complies with the status quo.

Partly though, that undermining attitude springs from the fact that art and state authority are fundamentally opposed, even in fairly liberal societies. A state system, by its very nature, likes conformity – it prefers all its subjects to be just that: subjects. If everybody does as they're told, a state's job is made much easier. So state systems tend to encourage rigidity and fixed ways of working. Art, on the other hand, likes individuality – it prefers flair and originality. Art aims to liberate people, freeing their minds and encouraging new ideas and new thoughts. It inspires a level of personal freedom that not all state systems are comfortable with. Notoriously 'difficult' playwright Howard Barker described this in 1986 when he wrote in The Guardian that 'Art is a problem. The man or woman who exposes himself to art exposes himself to another problem.' - and state systems try to avoid and/or suppress problems when they can.

Few states provide a better example of this than the old USSR, which cracked down on any form of dissent. Artists came under especially heavy fire, many facing long prison stretches for criticising the government. Those that collaborated had to conform to Stalin's brand of social realism, those that didn't could expect severe treatment.

It's only a few months since the theatre world mourned the passing of one of its most active political campaigners, Augusto Boal. He became famous for developing a type of theatre called the Theatre of the Oppressed, which aimed to involve the ordinary people far more than anything that had gone before. Boal disliked the term 'spectator', and didn't want anyone to passively watch his theatre – instead, he wanted the audience to get up and be involved, taking the part of the actors and making decisions for themselves about the course of the show. These so-called 'spectactors' were allowed great freedom of thought and expression.

Another politically-active theatre practitioner who aimed to challenge authoritarian systems was the Marxist Bertolt Brecht. Like Boal, he formulated a new style of theatre to fire up the minds of his audience and to liberate his art from the standards imposed by the past. His 'epic theatre' stripped away all the conventions of traditional acting and encouraged an intellectual rather than emotional connection between audience and performer. Meanwhile the stories of his plays criticised and satirised the state of politics in his native Germany (especially the rise of Nazism) and promoted much more socialist ideals. Interestingly, both men were politically left-wing and did their most famous work in exile – more evidence of states favouring the status quo over reformers.

Art also performs an important public service in providing a chance for us, the people, to laugh at our leaders (a service performed by playwrights from ancient Greece through to the modern day), even (especially) in legitimate, non-authoritarian states. Recently, someone told me it was scary that people laughed so much at George W. Bush, considering that he was the leader of the free world and so on. But actually, it would be scarier if we weren't allowed to laugh at him. Under Elizabeth I satirical poetry was made illegal, and many playwrights sailed very close to the wind with their writing – some even facing execution. When we're no longer allowed to laugh at our leaders, they have too much power – and leaders who ban mockery can easily extend that ban to criticism and all forms of opposition; Barker's Guardian article goes on to say that 'Nothing can be satirised in the authoritarian state'. As such, satire like Bremner, Bird & Fortune and Spitting Image function as barometers of public opinion and a means of holding politicians to account, venting the anger of the satirist (and the public) in non-violent ways.

The USSR was right to worry about oppositional writers; one oft-imprisoned Czech writer, Vaclav Havel, became a leading light in the 'Velvet Revolution', which eventually brought about an independent Czechoslovakia with Havel as its first democratically-elected President. Art isn't merely a voice for freedom, but a force of liberation.