The debate on ethics/aesthetics is probably the oldest in the history of art. Among the ways of thinking cultivated in Ancient Greece, the cradle of Western knowledge, the idea of beauty was not autonomous, but was, above all, linked to issues of justice, kindness and virtue. For example, when asked about how beauty should be assessed, the Delphic Oracle answered: “The most beautiful is the most just”.
Over the centuries, aesthetic conceptions have been modified until arriving at the current idea of subjective beauty, apparently free from morality, where everyone has to risk an interpretation of the beauty they “see” (conceive). As Eco said¹: “We shall have to bow down to the orgy of tolerance, of total syncretism, of absolute and unstoppable polytheism of beauty”.
Although formally different, that Greek beauty is (dangerously) close to that of the present day – even in the midst of the commotion characteristic of the latter. In November last year, at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea in Olinda-PE, an exposition entitled Macunaíma Colorau, created by the artist Lourival Cuquinha and by the producer Clarice Hoffman, pointedly brought to the surface the ethical implications connected to aesthetics.
We cannot exempt ourselves from questioning in this sense.
“Macunaíma Colorau” is above all a portrayal of the indigenous and quilombo peoples in Pernambuco – located in the interior of the state – shown in all their political, aesthetic and cultural complexities by means of photographs and video performances. What is surprising, however, is the number of stereotypes embedded in the ideas of these people (from traditionally black and Indian cultures) who, despite not having immediate access to (classic) European works of plastic arts, have been flooded by these aesthetics.
In the video Você é Macunaíma Colorau? the questions revolve around what it would be like to be White, Indian and Black. Caught unawares, the statements shock us and leave us speechless, not due to the novelty of the news, but due to seeing it so blatantly, as if it were all so simple. For (most of us) the cosmopolitan inhabitants of the city, none of the answers were different to what they are used to. They have simply been pushed under the surface in the face of political correctness.
In the face of questions such as: Are you black? Are you white? What´s it like to be an Indian? Beyond the merely aesthetic characteristics (phenotypic), associations of habit and character also enter the equation of what it´s like to be White, which in turn is taken as a standard of beauty. Being White is: “having unblemished skin”, a finely-chiseled nose”, a good soul”, “not having to work”.
Declarations like the ones that can be heard on the video sometimes sound backward, however, these same impressions are taken in as axioms, not in words, but as beautiful pictures. This is why the success of the movie trilogy The Lord of the Rings, directed by Peter Jackson between 2001 and 2003, was no surprise. A series of films based on the literary work of the same name, created by the Englishman John Ronald Reuel Tolkien², which is nothing less than an aesthetic-moral piece of work.
Although the plot is built around the Hobbits, a special race with plenty of virtues and few vices, the human race is always the parameter. The success or failure of the plot is almost always linked to the demonstrations of Man´s character.
Man corresponds to the Unit, the aesthetic-moral reference. Everything is measured from this: the best and the worst. He is the micro-universe. He represents Good and Evil. Beauty and Ugliness. Light and Dark. Order. Let us take Aragorn as an example. The heir to the throne of Gondor, from the same lineage as Isildur, and who for this very reason fears he has the same corrupt blood in his veins that betrayed the hopes of all the races of Middle-earth. At the same time he is a fearless warrior. He is dichotomy: on one side weakness, afraid of betraying himself, and on the other, strength, bravery. He is a handsome man, but due to his misgivings he doesn´t bear himself like an heir to the throne, having the appearance of a scruffy guardian.
All the other races seem to have been purposely created by the author based on these human traits in the most pure and/or intensified state:
Hobbits are discreet, happy people, who love peace, tranquility and the ploughed land. They prefer the countryside and wear colorful clothes. Their feet have soles as tough as leather, covered in thick hair. Their hair is generally brown and curly. Their faces are pleasant rather than handsome: wide, shiny eyes, red cheeks – “mouths ready to laugh and to eat and drink”. These little creatures like playing around all day long and have five meals a day. They are hospitable, love parties and presents – which they offer freely and accept with pleasure. They have sharp ears and alert eyes, a tendency to put on weight around the stomach; but nevertheless agile when they need to be. They are no taller than 3 feet 9.
The Elves: tall, erect, hair that is either shiny golden or black as the night. Young, handsome faces. They are fearful. Their eyes are sharp and shiny and their voices musical. They are the epitome of wisdom, immortality and power. Venerable beings.
The Dwarves are a little bigger than the Hobbits. They are stocky and their faces are wizened. They are ugly, almost always in a bad mood, ambitious and proud. They are warriors and hard-working. They adapt easily to adverse situations. They are miners and craftsmen. They live in the depths of the mines or in the mountains.
There is an implication between appearance and morality in The Lord of the Rings. The humanoid races are represented in accordance with their profiles and characters. The aesthetics of the film are based on the idea of beauty added to virtue. Ugliness is the representation of lack, as we see in Plato.
The film´s aesthetics are totally devoted to the ideas of virtue and beauty. What is beautiful is also illuminated and virtuous; what is ugly is somber, disgusting and vile. There is no hybridism, with the exception of the Ents, the wise guardians of the forests, who although ugly, are not evil. And Man, who is complexity, dichotomy: Good and evil reside within him, but he is always fighting to make what is good and virtuous prevail. The work contains no ideas of ugly being acceptable or the beautiful representation of Kant´s ugly.
The Orcs are disgusting, monstrous and evil and live in the darkness. However, they were once Elves, the brilliant beings. In the same way that the repugnant creature Gollum was once a Hobbit. There is a clear indication of the need to distinguish this dichotomy: Between what is good and what is evil. During the plot it is possible to perceive that there is always punishment, almost always death, for those who fail to stay virtuous. This is the case of the warrior Boromir, who tried to steal the ring for himself; of King Theoden de Rohan, who initially denies help to the city of Gondor, and of Frodo himself, the main character and most virtuous of all. When, influenced by the ring, he decides not to destroy it, he loses one of his fingers.
The plot of the film, just like its aesthetics, is divided into light and shadow. The home of the Hobbits is a sunny place with lots of trees, whilst Mordor, where Sauro lives, is a dark, smoky inhospitable land. This also applies to the places inhabited by kindness and evil respectively. This same conception can be seen in The Last Judgment by Hans Memling³, 1472.
The story is based on ethical bases in which representatives of all the races should, virtuously, unite to achieve a greater good, which is the salvation of Middle-earth through the destruction of the Ring of Power. In this sense, the plot is intriguing, because, at the beginning of the film when the Elf Galadriel is narrating the epilogue, she says evil is present due to the ambitions of three elves, seven dwarfs and nine men. But it is a Hobbit, the most virtuous race, who has to bear the cross of taking the ring to the dark lands of Mordor to be destroyed. All races considered to be within an order find stability. The Elves oppose the Dwarves in beauty, height and wisdom; and the Hobbits, Men, above all in their ability to keep their souls pure.
The most urgent issue to consider is that good and evil are not so far apart and are not always easily identifiable in our day-to-day lives. The idea of beauty added to virtue could lead to serious preconceptions The White man described by some of the people interviewed in Você é Macunaíma Colorau?” seems to have the same characteristics as Man in The Lord of the Rings, in that all the other “races” seem to gain virtue and beauty the more they go along with this ideal.
It´s difficult to say for sure how the White man began to be valued in this way. The most plausible version is that this idea sprung from Christianity: At first with the Jesuits catechism and later with Protestant evangelization – it´s not for nothing that the conception that the White man (European) is prosperous because he has been blessed by God is still widely believed. We mustn´t forget the significant influence of television – in this case the stereotypes are here to stay. This is how that Greek ethical-aesthetic value comes to be present in the indigenous and quilombo communities, even though they do not have immediate access to classic works of art. The damage can be seen when the aesthetic-ethical model is approved in reverse. The formal model (phenotype) arbitrarily gains, by association, content of virtue, kindness and justice (character). Nobody is immune to this side-effect. Who has never asked themselves: “who would have thought he was a criminal, so handsome, so well-dressed”?
With modernism, the ethical/aesthetic issue loses force and almost fades away with the conceptionof l’art pour l’art. Contemporary times approve of this, at the same time it tries to return to the political-social speeches, suffering from a hangover (unheard of?). Inebriated, we reject deeper debate and live off our findings: as if the simple “pointing out perverse realities” were enough in face of all the transforming reflections we have stolen for ourselves.
In light of the highly complex situation faced by the indigenous and quilombo communities, the ways in which they are exposed to the “White man´s” society sounds condescending. Direct descendants of Indians and Negroes they seem exotic and symbolic to us, but the fact is we haven´t studied their realities – and neither have they studied ours. So we carry on with this game of appearances. We pretend to understand what it would be like to be Black, Indian or White, highlighting differences that are no longer relevant: clothes, gastronomy, religion? Nowadays there are evangelical quilombo dwellers and Indians who wear designer sandals. I don´t doubt McDonalds will do well there…
Our society is probably still in shock regarding the failure of the biggest Western ideological model based on morality: Christianity. Thus, we could together (not necessarily forging common denominators), start to put right a lot of wrongs, beginning with one in particular: recognizing the failure of morality in the failure of ideological models. Morality is being gradually removed from the equation and the value of our society rests in non-value. What we have is a kind of practical morality (immorality?), individualist, exempt of responsibility.
Naively, we have been led to believe that if morality (Christian) were to be removed from our midst, we would be safe. The problem: we refuse to continue with the idea of Christian morality, but we don´t worry about building another in its place. Because, at the end of the day morality4 is all we have. It is impossible to establish an ethic without it.
It should be pointed out that the film, released in 2001, despite the dangerous aesthetic-moral setting, is also an ode to friendship, idealism and humility. In the context of the film, each race was well aware of its own values, and out of respect for the same, a society (The Society of the Ring) can be successful. As long as Indians, Blacks and Whites fail to grasp what their values are and to discover, even if it has to be the hard way, a (political) way of sharing them, reality will remain perverse.
Who is interested in speeches on resistance? What quilombo dwellers and indigenous people stay in their villages and quilombos? Owning their land is a right and not an end. Shouldn´t everybody enjoy the possibility of living in “the city?” Would they be less Indian or Black for that? What exactly is the value that needs to be preserved?
Look, “a person may only be free if everyone else is too”.5 We can´t do without an ethical discussion, and an aesthetic one less still – the latter hits us with scandalous yet naive morality. We prefer to believe that morality died with the ideological models.
1 Eco, Umberto. História da Beleza; trad. Eliana Aguiar. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2004. Page. 428
² Tolkien was born in South Africa and moved to England – the land of his parents – when he was three years old. He was extremely keen on linguistics. He studied English language at Exeter university. He fought in the First World war, about the time he began to formulate his first ideas for his main works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, the latter being his favorite, and which although published posthumously is considered to be his most important work, although not the most well-known.
³ Hans Memling (or Memlinc) was born between 1430 and 1435, in Seligenstadt, Germany. It is believed he studied art in Cologne, from where he travelled to Flanders, probably to work in Rogier van der Weyden´s atelier. In 1465 he moved to Bruges and became a celebrity in the city and its surroundings areas. Memling´s compositions and types are repeated, with little evidence of formal development. His virgins became slimmer and more celestial and timid. His later works show a strong Italian influence, with rural and courtesan scenes. His art reveals the influence of the Flemish artists of the time: Jan van Eyck, Dirck Bouts, Hugo van der Goes and, above all, Rogier van der Weyden.
4 It should be pointed out here that when I talk about morality (inescapable) I am referring to the set of rules and procedures to which we adapt in our day-to-day lives (aware of this or not). In order to establish an ethical debate we need to be aware of the morality through which we make our everyday decisions. We can only talk about ethical principles when we establish our own (moral) values.
5 Habermas, Jürgen. A Ética da Discussão e a Questão da Verdade, São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2004. Page 13.
