The BBC plays with artistic and political fire

Well, here's a dangerous game...opining about the intersection between art and politics.

Clearly, there has always been an intersection between art and religion. First, it was because all the great painters took as their subject Biblical stories, complete with dying prophets and running blood.

Ghirlandaio's St. Stephen, about 1490-93 (Wiki Commons)

Later, it was because painters took those ancient myths and turned them on their heads, often using what can best be described as graphic rudeness to get the point across.

No one demonstrated against the dying prophets paintings, partly because it was a simpler and basically monolithic society back then. Lots of people demonstrated against the paintings critical of that ancient mindset; often, the demonstrators won and the "objectionable" art was removed. The status quo, which favors myth over reality in religion at least, remained relatively intact.

And now comes the death of Maggie Thatcher. Queen Elizabeth might have made her a lady, but that's the only way she could have become one. No real lady on earth would have destroyed the society that nurtured its people--and did a better job of it even in the industrial and post-industrial ages than a lot of other nation's societies did. I cannot bring myself to refer to the woman as Lady Thatcher. She should, I imagine, count herself lucky that I don't call her the same things I call George W. Bush. But they are not very ladylike things.

In any case, now the question has been raised by possible action at the BBC about whether art is politics and politics art. Not visual art; in this case, the flap is about a song from the original film of The Wizard of Oz, "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead."

Margaret Hamilton as Wicked Witch of the West; it was her demise that sparked the song "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead" in the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. (Wiki Commons)

Apparently, it has been pushed onto the charts by those protesting public expenditure on a lavish funeral for a--to put it in a ladylike manner--controversial political figure. The BBC's own rubric demands that if a song reaches a certain level, it will be played. To attempt to decide not to play it is, in fact, a political statement, whereas the song itself is not. It is a song.

One must wonder, in light of this, to what other songs the BBC in its infantile wisdom decided to deny airtime because of political statements it assumed the songs reflected. Would certain Beatles tunes, for instance, have been more wildly popular than they were had not the BBC, possibly, shunned them? After all, the Beatles' later stuff was nothing if not politically charged.And that's before the BBC added its own spin.

I can't decide whether I hope the BBC refuses to play the song, or not. If they do play it, it means next to nothing, except that someone at the BBC with some sense decided to simply follow the BBC's own rules.

If they don't play it and it has made its place on the charts...well, I think it means it is time to assess whether the BBC is trustworthy, or whether it has set itself up as the arbiter of whether performance art--as least songs--might be used as a protest against societal ills in the UK, or not.