What we learn from art
It is my belief that art in all its forms can tell very different stories to different people, often very different stories to the story it told to the arts own creator. Each of us is moulded by different experiences in different environments resulting in very unique people and so its only natural that each person when looking or listening or touching a piece of art should interpret what they see differently. To me, each interpretation is valid even if it clashes with the interpretation of the art creator, the only measure of the success of a piece of art is how well it induces feelings and emotions from the people who experience it.

Take Robbie Williams song “Angels”, hardly a piece considered a classic but for my argument it serves as well as anything. For many people hearing this song for the first time they describe how the song reminds them of their love for a partner as it sings of an angel in their life and how much they long to be with them. In fact the song is a beautiful song about Robbies mother and the love he has for his mother and his home. I don’t think these people who feel emotion from the song for a partner are wrong, if the song brings out an emotion then its interpretation is as good as any other.

In this article I want to talk briefly about a particular piece of art by the artist known as Banksy in the UK. An artist with a colouful story, he’s probably best known for his challenging art pieces that don’t shy away from looking at the dirty underside of western and British society. The piece I’m going to talk about shows a young boy sewing Union Jack flags, presumably getting the UK ready for the upcoming Jubilee that followed the creation of this piece of art. What I like about this piece of art is that it can tell a much deeper story, a story of child exploitation to sustain what the Union Jack represents, British values and a British way of life.

https://i1.wp.com/resources1.news.com.au/images/2012/07/23/1226360/314929-banksy.jpg

This blog post isn’t intended to be an attack on British values but is a look at how people can be exploited, especially children, to maintain an “agreeable” societal view. By exploitation I’m not talking about overt exploitation but rather the subtle daily exploitation of children that happens across the country and around the world to sustain the modern western principled ideology.

Exploitation at a societal level depends firstly on reducing the value of a person to less than that of a complete person. Historically we’ve seen this with many groups. Disabled people struggling to find work because employers shouldn’t be paying a full price for only part of a full person. People from ethnic groups kept out of management and executive positions as people talk about banana boats and monkies, dehumanising ethnic groups to sub-human classes. Women lack qualities like strength and intelligence making them less than a male, it would be unthinkable for such a person to hold a position of influence. Gay people lack moral purity and manly qualities such as strength, making them incomplete and fair targets for exploitation. Thankfully over time society has been forced to face up to these insidious and dehumanisating points of views and to adjust views to give these and other people full and valued human status. Exploitation is wrong in all its forms and it’s good that people are being forced to see and treat different groups with respect and dignity.

There is however one group which still fails to be granted full human status, one group which society happily paints as being far less than a complete person underserving of respect or dignity. This group is children, anyone under the age of 18, a huge segment of society that has no voice or influence in the society that they’re subjecated to.

A child has no vote and that means no voice or stake in how society is run. A child is there to follow and live by the rules of society but never to have a say in what those rules will be. A child is given a narrow set of rules that they must live by, rules that dictate what is acceptable by British and western society and what will not be tolerated.

I read a story recently about a young girl who wrote press articles about serious issues in her community. Rather than being praised for her work she was met with angry comments from people who felt serious issues are not the business of children as they called for her to go back to “playing with dolls” and stop thinking of grown up issues. How patronising and dehumanising. A parent recently told me how her daughters school recently introduced a rule requiring that girls must wear leggings when playing sport, even in summer regardless of how hot the weather is, a rule that doesn’t apply to boys at the school. The children don’t like it, the parents don’t like it but when students voiced their disagreement they were ignored and told they simply must accept the will of the schools governors. Perhaps the most evident time where childrens rights are ignored is when it comes to love, sex and relationships, a basic human right for the rest of society but something no child has any right to expect or even consider. There is a wealth of scientific literature that shows how important physical contact is for children, how children are very capable of feelings of love, attraction and sexual pleasure and yet they are denied it. A child who does embark on such journeys is severely treated by society with re-education programs to ensure they understand that what feels good is bad and that people they love are unworthy of such love. This isn’t based on the interests of the child, that is very evident from how children are treated by the system but is entirely about protecting the values of the society that makes the rules. Thousands of children across the country are routinely exploited by a system built to sustain a set of values that no child has had any voice in. The State and courts ultimately enforce the values that ensure the exploitation isn’t challenged. Schools, childrens charities, funded State think tanks and other groups ensure the exploitation can’t be challenged by parents and other people uneasy at the way their children are used for an ideology they don’t fully agree to.

For example, one of the UK’s largest childrens charities recently published an article about the importance of ensuring children are kept as children, confined to its definition of what is acceptable in terms of dress and behaviour. There’s not a single mention of children expressing what they want to wear or how they want to live, just a link to a Daily Mail article and how it rightly dictates standards for children. I’m sure the young girl above who wrote news reports on serious issues in her community would fall far outside of this charities view of what is acceptable and expected from a child. Most amusingly this need to control what should be tolerated is described as protecting childrens rights, clearly not their right to an opinion however. Looking at this charities list of 10 trustees only 1 comes from a background of child welfare with the rest predominantly coming from marketing, media and finance backgrounds which goes a long way towards explaining where its priorities truly sit. I’m sure most of the people working for this charity and other childrens charities are very well intentioned but how few actually stop to question what these organisations really stand for and whether they are robbing children of their dignity and rights as fully fledged and important members of society?

I believe that society will in time be forced to stop its continued exploitation of children and grant them the same rights, dignity and respect that the rest of society demands. Children will be given a voice, will be given a stake in how they live as important young members of society.

And so for me this is why this particular Banksy picture is important, it reminds me of the exploitation of children that goes on daily to protect a narrow ideology. It reminds me of the importance of not getting swept up by this ideology of the State and the organisations that support it but instead to see children as equals deserving of full respect and dignity.