Diversity is important when making any complex decision. An artform like making movies is complex in that we really work with three mediums: visual, audio, and time. Paintings only use visual, music uses audio and time. It’s that diversity of three different variables that makes movies so effective in my opinion. You can also add in taste and smell as theatres (and our own podcast Feature & a short) have started to bring what you see in the movies into your mouth and nose to taste what you’re seeing on screen.
Fourwind Films’ Holiday Mixer V
photo by Daria Huxley
In general I have a similar view in life as my approach to art. The more ways we can view a story, a problem, the more effective it can be. Diversity shows us more possibilities in what we understand.
There’s the simple parable about the Blind Women and an Elephant that is found in early Buddhist texts and likely a folk story: A group of blind women who never had encountered a new object they came across. Out of curiosity, they inspected it by touch. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "This being is like a thick snake." For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. Another, whose hand was upon its leg, said it’s a tree trunk. The blind woman who placed her hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a moving wall." One woman who felt its tusk, stated the elephant is hard and smooth like a spear. Finally, the last person felt the elephant’s tail and said, “It’s a rope.”
I think of this all of the time. There are 8 billion people in the world. We may only encounter maybe a maximum of 3 million people in our lifetime by sight, that’s not even getting to know them. No matter how much we study, there are over 100 million books in the world (maybe more)! There are over 1 million movies made.
Just imagine, all of these artworks are so many experiences rolled up into a summary. That is art. We bring collected beauty, or emotion, or experiences and condense it to let others experience what we know. It’s a way of sharing knowledge. Because as a human race, that is something we’re wired to crave. Just like the bees work together as a hive and a colony, we are bound to work together as human beings. Art is the rapid way in which we can do that. Most importantly, art can make us have shared experiences and gain trust, and most of all, empathy for one another.
Humans are designed/hard-wired to live in tribes, to find those that help us live. We can distinguish those like us by sight, sound (language, accent), taste & smell (cuisine), and touch (imagine the possibilities). That keeps us from unifying into a larger tribe and working together to make the world a better place for everyone in our human colony on this earth.
Artist podcast by our good friends at Los Ruano Gallery
Through art, we can teach ourselves to accept and appreciate each other more. As we are already connected globally and interracially. That’s just a fact. But some of our old hardwiring is preventing us from all working together to use all of our resources the best we’re able. Again, that’s where art comes in to help communicate in a quick and efficient way. The way that we can help us live together is to show to others those they’re not familiar with, those who they haven’t had the experience of relating to.
In order to do this we need diversity to make new art that communicates in our global world. By working by including diversity in making movies, or other art, you are creating art that is fresh, that is advancing society, that is making something new. It’s this blend that the art world calls “post-modernism” where blending of styles and ideas has really come alive.
I think post-modernism was an idea just combining styles, like Rap/Rock music. Andy Warhol’s pop art mixing with fine art. Fusion of Latin music and jazz. Hong Kong featuring French music in their films. The Russian montage filtering throughout the world. All of this is post-modernism in style and cross pollinating cultures. This brings appreciation and that empathy I was talking about.
It brings cultural diversity just as sex brings genetic diversity. The same reason why we look down on incest is the same reason why we don’t want to be making art with people with our same background all the time. Diversity is what advances and gives us new creations. We will improve as a society and as a people by implementing diversity in our creation. That I stand behind and am always thinking about in my work.
Outtake from Sardines out of a Can, written by Shonali Bhowmik, starring Shonali Bhowmik & Adam Wade