SINGAPORE: What could a Trump presidency mean for the arts?
At the recently-concluded Singapore Writers Festival (SWF), prominent American writers weighed in with responses that ranged from optimism to a sense of confusion after Donald Trump triumphed over Hillary Clinton in the race to the White House.
“The one upside is that we are going to see a flourishing of art, literature, TV and movies in the next four years,” said American novelist Hanya Yanagihara, during her talk on Friday evening at The Arts House, who added that “dictatorships have given us some of the greatest pieces of contemporary art that have endured as documents of their time.”
In contrast, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Vijay Seshadri admitted to being confused about the immediate role of the arts during a pivotal moment in the history of the US.
Citing issues such as climate change during his own talk on Sunday night, he said: “Certainly, art can raise consciousness… (but) I think we have gone beyond the point of considering this generally, that in fact there are specific disasters that are going to occur if we don’t do something, and global warming is on top of the list for me. The guy heading (Trump’s) transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency is a climate change denier. We’re in these tipping points and I’m very confused as to what can art do at this point.”
The two writers weren’t the only ones at the festival who grappled with the outcome of last week’s US presidential election.
The second and final weekend of the festival also featured the likes of Indonesian author Eka Kurniawan and popular Detective Conan manga artist Gosho Aoyama, and even an impromptu tribute to the late legendary singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.
But for other journalists, authors, and even a YouTube star, there was no escaping the President-elect.
At her full-house SWF lecture on Sunday morning at the National Gallery Singapore auditorium, acclaimed author Lionel Shriver said that she had found out about Trump’s victory immediately upon landing at Changi Airport. “I just stared (at the news) and said ‘What?’ at the top of my lungs and everyone looked over. I don’t think you’re supposed to do that at the airport.”
Author Lionel Shriver talks about her latest novel (and how she found out about Trump’s victory at Changi Airport). (Photo: Singapore Writers Festival)
Making it even more significant for the author of the novel-turned-movie We Need To Talk About Kevin was that her latest dystopian novel, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, takes place in a near-future where America is a “pariah nation”, the economy has collapsed, and there’s a wall between the US and Mexico – built by the latter to keep Americans out.
“One of the things that makes this weird for me is that… it’s about the United States falling apart – and it’s gotten ahead of me. So this has become historical fiction,” she said.
Meanwhile, YouTube star The Nerdwriter, whose real name is Evan Puschak, described Trump as “a kind of trauma to the American national consciousness” during his jam-packed Saturday night session titled Unravelling The US Presidential Election.
Joking that he had to tweak his pre-planned presentation after being “fully, fully confident” of a Clinton win, Puschak pointed out how a Trump victory “(also) encourages us to see things that were previously invisible and inaudible. It’s a phenomena that has to be explained.”
Puschak went on to discuss how the two major American parties had neglected the white working class and how Trump had unsettled the media.
“He’s so good at talking you into pure confusion, to make you not remember what you were trying to pin him down on one thing – and that’s tough on journalists. There’s no Donald Trump course in journalism,” he said.
For journalist and author Nisid Hajari, the divisive online environment meant it was time for online companies to rethink their role. “The idea that the Internet would allow good things to come out and people would access it is not necessarily turning out to be true. If you’re Facebook, Yahoo, Google, do you have a responsibility to police what’s on your site? I think you do,” he told Channel NewsAsia.
“I think the media plays a big role right now,” he added. “There are a lot of ugliness that has been dredged up by this campaign. The degree of hate crimes and bigotry had been rising over the last eight years and that now it’s being legitimised is somewhat frightening. And the only way to push back is to expose it.”
Festival director Yeow Kai Chai said he was not surprised at how hot the topic of the US presidential elections was.
“It happened smack in the middle of the festival, so a lot of American authors who arrived had just found out about the results and it obviously affected them. And the audiences also want to know how Americans could have voted for Donald Trump,” he said, adding that they had to move the scheduled talk by The Nerdwriter to a bigger venue because of the interest.
Yeow also said that he is currently looking at making the festival even more topical, pointing out that this year’s lineup also included talks on Europe’s migrant crisis and terrorism. One of the festival’s anticipated guests, German investigative journalist Frederik Obermaier, was also scheduled to talk about the Panama Papers before cancelling his trip for health reasons.
