Pinter on Art, Truth and Politics

I arrived in Sweden today, making it to Gavle in time to watch Harold Pinter deliver his pre-recorded Nobel lecture, titled "Art, Truth and Politics" on SVT. Pinter's speech was brilliant - a measured argument asserting that art, especially literature, exists to present the truth - which is largely absent from politics. I'm eager to read a transcript of the speech, which was powerfully delivered. I expect to address several of its points in my dissertation, in which I am discussing the relation between aesthetic affects and political effects in postmodern literature. The first portion of Pinter's speech explained how, as a writer, he works to reveal the truth through language. The second portion of Pinter's speech focused on how politicians use language in the service of power, which requires that language be used to keep people in a state of ignorance.

Pinter chose to use his speech to educate his audience about American foreign-policy abuses since World War II, particularly the widely overlooked fact that in this period the "US government supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world," including "Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippiines, Guatemala, El Salvador and, of course, Chile."

It's admirable that Channel 4 broadcast the speech, which was highly critical of Tony Blair's support for US foreign policy in Iraq and elsewhere, in the UK. Perhaps PBS would air such an address in the US, though I'm sure it would generate much controversy and lead to the typical calls for abolishing state support for public broadcasting. I certainly cannot imagine American networks airing such an address. Despite the lip service paid to free speech in the USA, the greedy execs who program our commercial media networks are far too cowardly to broadcast an address by a literary artist, particularly one daring to suggest that the US "has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good." It's fine for a Noam Chomsky to document statements in books published on small, independent, preses, but nobody in the mainstream media wants to take responsibility for documenting the numerous abuses the US government has committed in recent history.

You can watch Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture for the 2005 Literature Prize online at Nobelprize.org.