A few weeks ago, as I was scrolling through my social media feed, someone commented on Chris Smith’s Devo, a documentary on the Akron, Ohio band. The post pointed out that watching the band’s early performances during the 1970s really solidified them within the lineage of punk. Taken together with their ideological positions and aesthetic, Devo embody punk. Inspired by the Dadaist and other twentieth century movements, they began in the wake of the Kent State shooting, during the Vietnam protests and other social movements, commenting on the politics and culture of the period. I want to write some more about this, at some point, but today I want to focus on a specific clip from the documentary that doesn’t even include the band.

Near the end of the documentary, Mark Mothersbaugh talks about his post-Devo work, scoring television shows and movies. Of this work, he says, “Since we’ve always been about subversion, I put all sorts of subliminal messages in it.” He holds up one of his samplers, and he says into it, “We smell sausage.” The equipment records the phrase, and then with a few twists of the knobs, lowering the pitch, slowing down the speed, and reversing, it spits back, “”Jesus loves you.” He put that in Rugrats, commercials, and Devo songs, subverting the audience’s expectations and thoughts. Devo subverts, and that subversion serves as a revolutionary act.

Immediately after this clip, we see Max Ernst, a pioneer of the Dada movement, talking about art. He states, “I was born with a very strong feeling of freedom. That means also with a very strong feeling of revolt. Revolt and revolution is not the same thing. But when you are born into a period where so many events invite you to get revolted, it is absolutely natural that the work you produce is a revolutionary work.” Born in 1891, Ernst experienced these moments of upheaval, specifically both world wars, and the work he produced responded to those moments, just as Devo’s responded to the height of the Vietnam War, the Civil Right Movement, Reagan’s politics, and more. Art provides freedom of expression, but at its core it is a reaction, a revolt from within one’s being at the society one inhabits, and during moments of chaos, it becomes revolutionary, subverting society and spurring us on to action towards a better society.

Artists, in many ways, serve as prophets, recognizing trends and movements that seek to harm individuals and society before the general populace, and they work to warn us of what lies ahead. They spark us to open our eyes to dangers such as fascism and authoritarianism, but art becomes a tool that fascists and authoritarians use to promulgate their own ideology. As Jason Stanley points out in How Fascism Works, “In fascist ideology, the products of intellectual life that it supports — culture, civilization, and art — are solely production of members of the chosen group” to reinforce the group’s ideology and position. Instead of serving as an accomplice to fascism, art should subvert it, exposing fascism its true being.

Anna Seghers did this in her own work, writing about the ways that Nazism impacted herself and others during the war. She even dedicates her 1942 novel The Seventh Cross, which she wrote while in exile in Mexico, “to Germany’s antifascists, living and dead.” Two years earlier, in 1940, Charlie Chaplin used art to lampoon Hitler and the Nazi regime and to call out its atrocities, telling the United States to wake up in order to protect democracy in The Great Dictator. Sinclair Lewis did it in 1935, before Nazi Germany invaded Poland, in It Can’t Happen Here. Woody Guthrie did it with songs like “Tear The Fascists Down” and “Miss Pavlichenko.” Each of these artists, and more, revolted against the tide of fascism and worked to bring up its end during World War II.

What happens, though, when art accomplishes its goal, warning the world of danger and then defeating that danger? Natalia Ginzburg addresses this in her memoir Family Lexicon where she writes about experiencing fascism under Moussilini and the post-war years. For some, fascism, while an enemy, did not provide a target because they felt stifled, muzzled from speaking out because if they did they would face death. Ginzburg points out that following the war many felt they should “write poetry about any and all subjects since for so many years the world had been silenced and paralyzed, reality being something stuck behind glass — vitreous, crystalline, mute, and immobile.” Since many felt silenced, and since the words they sought to describe the world did not fit, thet felt they could become writers, retrieving the words that others had stolen from them and chronicling the events they endured.

Ginzburg continues, “Novelists and poets had had been starved of words during the fascist years. So may had been forbidden to use words, and the few who’d been able to use them were forced to choose them very carefully from the slim pickings that remained. During fascism, poets found themselves expressing only an arid, shut-off, cryptic dream world.” Many had to subvert their intentions, selecting their medium, words, and themes judiciciously so as not to attract attention. One need only think about enslaved workers singing in the cotton and sugar cane fields as an example. Many, though, didn’t cherry-pick their words. They spoke out, full throatily calling out the atrocities they saw occurring around them. They prophesied.

Arts provides us a lens through which to see the world. It provides us a mirror upon which we can see our own reflection. It provides us tools to fight back against the wrongs of this world. Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddamn” and Childish Gambino’s “This is America” both subvert the stereotypical Black entertainer trope, shuffling along for a white audience, and call out white supremacy and police brutality. Punk, by its very nature, does the same. The genre arose in the 1970s and exploded during Reagan’s administration, calling out the hypocrisy, imperialism, and other wrongs that individuals saw taking place in the echelons of political power. Devo did the same with songs like “Beautiful World,” which I will write about in the future, and even their most popular song “Whip It,” a challenge to consumerism and the mythological American ideal.

During this moment when fascism seeks to limit what words we can use and what art we can produce and enjoy, we need our artists. When the White House issues statements about the Smithsonian and its inclusivity in its programs and offerings, we need art. When the president himself says, “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been,” we need art. When the administration calls in the National Guard to “protect D.C.” from a non-existent “crime” threat, we need art. Art is resistance. It is revolt and revolution, leading us to revolt against what harms is and others and leading us to a revolutionary reimagining of the possibilies of our very being and the world.