Enough with the propaganda: I want art. 

I’m not here to complain about the quality media being produced by artists or directors that happen to vote a different way than I do. What I take issue with is media that pretends to be some form of art — literature, film, painting, music — while pushing an agenda, signaling to its audience that they are unworthy of anything higher.

Art and propaganda surround us on all sides, with lines that grow more blurred with the release of every new movie, album, or mural. Conservative commentators are quick to lambast Hollywood as a factory of leftist propaganda, yet slow to examine the actions of their own side. 

What we need is a renewed understanding of what good art is, and an effort to create beautiful media not driven by an agenda. It’s not a simple or easy undertaking, but it’s worthwhile. 

I’m an artist, an aspiring writer, and illustrator whose desk boasts a formidable supply of charcoal, ink, and sketchbooks. 

I want to create, to write, to illustrate. It’s an insatiable urge. And here’s something absolutely pivotal: I don’t need to create conservative, or even Christian, propaganda to sow truth in our barren cultural landscape.

I must do something immeasurably more simple — and difficult. I must create art. 

One and a half years ago, I walked into the Sistine Chapel for the first time. It was a packed room, yet hushed. We stumbled into each other, our eyes fixed on the ceiling. It was real, this miracle of fresco and brick and 16th-century dust. Left to my own devices, I could have spent my entire stay in Rome there, enveloped in the chapel’s dizzying glory.

Art like Michelangelo’s inspires wonder. 

I’m sure, out of all the upturned, wide-eyed faces in the chapel, some were Buddhist or agnostic or Muslim. In that moment, it didn’t matter. Those frescoes were Catholic artwork, but also magnificently human, calling to a transcendence born of common incarnate experience. 

We would all have said it in different words, but in that moment we were proud to be human: messy, fallen, and free. Somewhere, under all that frescoed plaster, Michelangelo had written the naked truth of human dignity. 

Art is gritty because real life is gritty. I recall the intensity of the film “A Hidden Life.” Despite the soaring elegance of its soundtrack and cinematography, nothing about the film is sanitized. 

“A Hidden Life” raises hard questions of morality. Its characters are quiet and painfully ordinary, making sacrifices that go unseen and uncelebrated. They struggle to live their beliefs in a time when even religious authorities take the easy way out. Their ends are unglamorous, but hauntingly redemptive. 

Compare that ardent, bloodied Christianity to cheesey Hallmark-esque Christian movies. Which is more real to us? Which is capable of bringing goodness into the dark of our lives? 

There’s a temptation to respond to preachy woke art with the conservative or Christian equivalent: a neatly-packaged, anti-woke message illustrated by helpful examples. But this betrays a fundamental mistrust of the recipient.

Art has no need to talk down to its audience. It transforms its recipients not by confidently sermonizing but by meeting them where they are. It is quiet. It raises questions. It takes the recipient’s hand.  

I’ve been listening to “The Lament of Eustace Scrubb” by the Oh Hellos, a folk song that approaches sin differently. It begins in a slow, mournful profession of fault, transforming into a riotously joyful jig. The song brings the listener on a riveting journey of redemption that is at once deeply personal and universal. 

Its approach is anything but preachy. You get the sense that the musicians are wrestling with the same eternal struggles you are. It’s a song I’ve walked through with friends, discovering in ourselves the depths of depravity and the light of hope. 

It will be quite the effort to reestablish art where propaganda has been sown. It’s often impossible to completely separate the two or distinguish between them — there’s no sharp divide. But we can take the first step and adopt a discerning mindset. 

Good art comes from a multitude of sources: real genius knows no bounds of time, class, or political party. We must keep our faith in the universality of truth, rather than limiting ourselves to media produced by people with our exact political and religious leanings. 

We have a responsibility to create, not out of a driving urge to destroy the “other side,” but as a glad celebration of goodness. Art like this welcomes everyone, for it calls upon our universal ability to appreciate what is true. It speaks transcendence, enduring across the ravages of time.

Civilization has not ended, yet. We still have the time – and the ability – to create beautiful things that matter, that endure, and that move past the political or social agendas of the day to capture the full human experience. 

Caroline Kurt is a sophomore studying English.