By Ilana Ofgang
“A great artist… must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.”
- Goethe
“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.”
- James Baldwin
“Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.”
- Leonardo da Vinci
Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking about three of the themes of our Law and Literature class: 1) the importance of public trials and truth 2) the rational/reasonable man 3) the artist’s commentary on the legal system. About a year ago, I watched a film called The Lives of Others, which was set in 1980’s East Berlin. In this film, a playwright and his girlfriend (an actress) are under the secret surveillance of the Stasi. For me, after having taken Law and Literature, the film provides insight into the failings of the reasonable man. It also shows the dichotomy between the passive and the passionate in its portrayal of the spy and the artists. The spy in this film would be a great model for the ‘reasonable’ man –he is totally, passive, logical, cold, and rational. He approaches both his task and his entire life without emotion. In contrast, the artists on whom he is spying are emotionally complex, passionate, sexual, creative and troubled in a very human way. In one of the scenes the Stasi spy hears Beethoven being played on the piano while he is listening in on the lives of the artists. Tears inexplicably stream down the spies’ cheeks while he listens to the music coming through secret microphones hidden within the playwright’s apartment. He is experiencing Beethoven not through his own personal experience, but for a moment he is listening through the lens of an emotionally complex human being –effectively perceiving this moment as if he is in the shoes of the very people he is spying on. I feel like this scene is a beautiful depiction of the way in which art not only comments on issues of morality and moral justice (in this instance through film) but can also have a transformative effect on the listener (here, the spy) subconsciously. In this film, the lives of those being watched and of the watchers are changed forever through the course of this secret surveillance. Slowly we see the cold hearted spy come to understand the spectrum of emotions that he, by his conformity to the system, is being deprived of. This moves him later in the film to act morally rather then rationally or reasonably. There are subtle comparisons made between the artist couple and the spy, and those comparisons are very relevant to our Law and Literature discussions of the moral versus the legal, the emotional versus the rational, and the idiosyncratic versus the reasonable.
Coincidentally, espionage was the subject of an instance in which the themes of Law and Literature came up in current events this week –the tragic difference here is that this is not literary fiction or a movie but reality. In our first class, we listened to a reading of A Month in Kislev and we learned of the importance of public trials and the necessity of community involvement to achieve morally just results. The public-ness of a trial lets the truth be told, and allows not only the clients but society to take part in the judgment. Through our discussion of the trial scene in Billy Budd, we saw the negative effects of a trial that was held in private, without any community involvement or jury. This contrast speaks to a suspicion we naturally have of things taking place behind closed doors. If one has nothing to conceal, then why hide? This theme of public trials took on frightening significance for me yesterday when I read about the journalist in Iran who was just sentenced to 8 years in prison on a charge of espionage. Her trial was conducted in private, no evidence has been presented to the media or the public, and the conviction occurred after only one day of secret deliberations. The news people who were covering this story kept emphasizing the private-ness of the trial and their emphasis reminded me of our discussions in class. There is something embedded deep in the fiber of our emotional beings that tells us that the meting out of justice should be a matter of public concern and never conducted in secret. This 30 year old woman was buying a bottle of wine when she was arrested; the next thing she knows is that she will be facing 8 years in prison with no evidence presented as to why. Her story plays out like the nightmarish trials of the novels we have been reading. It is Kafka-esque –the similarities with Joseph K. in The Trial easily come to mind because of the lack of public information about both the evidence and the charges against this journalist. This is one of many tragic reminders that art is an ever relevant comment on life, and occasionally we should heed the warnings of the artists – who somehow often see the true reality of life so much more clearly then those supposedly rational, reasonable men.
