I was watching Rick Sanchez on CNN today because I wanted to catch Nancy Pelosi’s press conference. I’ve always had a lot of forgiveness in my heart for Sanchez because filling three hours of TV every day is not a job I could do without saying stupid things. Let’s be honest, very few people could. But today he did something that really put a bee in my bonnet.
No, I don’t wear bonnets, but I really wish I did.
Anyway, One of his segments featured Danish-Norwegian artist Nina Maria Kleivan who is receiving notoriety for a series of photographs called “Potency”. The pictures depict her infant daughter dressed as tiny dictators like Hitler and Saddam Hussein. Very simple concept, and I honestly believe that the higher thought there isn’t a stretch.
Without even hearing the artist’s perspective it’s very clear to me that the images call into question the nature of evil. Each one of those dictators were innocent infants once, where did their horrific notions come from? Just as the artist puts the helpless child into the clothes of a dictator, society forces otherwise good individuals into the roles of evil bigoted dictator. Or maybe they are born with it, another obvious question presented by the works.
These are excellent thinking pieces that I feel like should be easily interpreted by our community at large and used to start conversations about what makes these evil men (they are all men, I believe). Instead, people are outraged.
I find it funny that every one is freaking out about the Hitler image specifically, because, what? All those other men weren’t just as bad? Sorry, I digress. They’re flipping out. Holocaust survivors are “disgusted”, and Rick Sanchez thinks it’s “just weird”.
I understand that there are concepts, especially within the artistic realm, that not everyone is going to like or understand. I understand that this is an age old problem. Society does not like mirrors. But, I really think this is something we should be able to handle. The baby is not being harmed in any way. It won’t even remember this.
Children are born and raised by neo nazis every day in America, taught to hate brown people and Jewish people and Catholics and communists, and people of mixed ethnicity, and well, everyone but them. All the while, the artist who questions the nature of evil and it’s source is the one we call crazy.
We have SO much work to do.
-Emma Vernon
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