ALAN BROOKS: USING ALLEGORY TO EXPLORE RACISM

Story and Photos by Giles Clasen

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R. ALAN BROOKS has always been creative and tried to find a way to lace that creativity into his life. A few years ago, he decided to change direction and make his artistic endeavors into a career. He stopped selling health insurance and started writing comics.

In 2017, Brooks published his first graphic novel, the “Burning Metronome,” and just released his second book, “Anguish Garden,” in November of 2020. Both books use allegory to explore systemic oppression.

Brooks also is an associate professor of writing at Regis University and writes a comic for The Colorado Sun news site. He also presented at the TEDxMileHigh Rise event in August 2020.

The following was edited for clarity and length.

How has art impacted social movements today?

Oppression works best when the people who are oppressed don’t get a chance to speak up about it, so people can deny it.

 Art has always played a role in inspiring a revolution. There’s a reason that dictators and despots work so desperately to censor it. They recognize the power in it.

The common person may ask, “Is art silly? Does it have a purpose?” But people in power, like Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, believed art had power. He wouldn’t have been doing what he did to the entertainment industry, otherwise.

It’s been interesting to watch this year. I don’t know why George Floyd’s murder mattered more than, say, Philando Castile’s, or other unarmed Black men who’ve been murdered. It seems like it’s a confluence of events that suddenly made people care about it in a different way. There was a litany of these kinds of videos for as long as people had videos on their phones. Or all the way back to the Rodney King beating in the 90s.

In this particular case, you had George Floyd. You had Breonna Taylor. You had the brother walking through Central Park where the woman threatened to call the police, saying she was being attacked by Christian Cooper, a Black man in New York.

People have had to sit home during the pandemic. Maybe without the distractions of life, they had time to actually look at the ugliness of what’s being done.

That doesn’t answer [the] question about how art fits into it. But it goes to why it’s hard for me to identify it. This movement has been present virtually my entire life. It’s cool that it’s showing up on other people’s radar, really. But it’s hard to identify why.

There has been plenty of art about police brutality, including my book, “The Burning Metronome.” [Police brutality] shows up in “Lovecraft Country,” the HBO show, in the first episode.

It’s continuous.

I guess because I’m so immersed in it and I see the art about it all the time, it’s hard for me to say, “Oh, there’s something this year that makes it different.”

Even in [1999], there was Amadou Diallo. He pulled out his wallet to show his ID, and police shot at him, I think it was like, 41 times. That was in New York. All these rappers put out a special hip hop project talking about Diallo’s murder at the hands of the police.

 Seriously, all my life this has been a thing and there’s been art about it.

I believe 100 percent that art helps to advance a cause. I think art can help people see through the perspective of a different group. Art does help people see from [the oppressed person’s] perspective.

My difficulty is in saying what’s different about right now. I feel like maybe, finally, the people who were not affected by police violence had to sit down and pay attention. And that’s never happened in my lifetime.

So, I think the fact that the art is there and that it exists is beneficial for the people who did not have to have this issue right up in their face the whole time. They had a chance, and finally, they had to listen.

I don’t feel like there’s a new artistic movement about it so much as there’s a new awareness about the issues and the art that is pushing the issue to the forefront.

Alan Brooks answered questions during his virtual release party for “Anguish Gardens.” The event was hosted by Redline Contemporary Art Center. MLK by Detour.

Can art make a difference in today’s world?

In the late 1890s, Tolstoy wrote his book, “The Kingdom of God Is Within You,” which was about being nonviolent. About 30 years later, Gandhi said that book was one of the top three influences of his life.

Tolstoy created art that inspired Gandhi, who led a movement that changed the world. Then, Gandhi inspired Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What if Tolstoy had never written his book? Would the Civil Rights Movement in America be different? Would it have happened at all? It’s hard to say, but it’s clear how one book had an impact.

The point I made earlier about dictators working hard to censor art is one of the greatest indications of the power of art to influence. Why would people in power waste the energy? 

I think about Stalin and Hitler. They both worked hard to censor artists, they would burn books and things. Those people had no doubt about the power of art to influence social change.

What role can allegory play in helping individuals see a story differently?

When it comes to change, I think people feel like they’re being blamed. Fingers pointed at them, like, “You need to do X.” That’s challenging to anyone’s ego. When you can take that same principle and place it into a different context, then, suddenly, people aren’t as defensive.

I think people can understand right and wrong in a different way when it’s put into allegory. In the Old Testament, Nathan the prophet told David about a shepherd and his sheep and all that, and David was like, “Who is this unrighteous person?” The prophet was like, “It’s you!”

It’s not so clearly an indictment of what [people] are doing. After they’ve absorbed the message, they can think about how it applies to their own life. Sometimes that has good effects.

All of these isms — racism, sexism, etc., — come from either a failure or a refusal to see the humanity of the other party. For people who fail to see the humanity of someone else, art is really powerful at communicating that humanity.

As soon as you start to connect to humanity, [you can see] this is another human who is negatively impacted by something I’m doing or something I believe in. Art is really good at connecting humanity that goes beyond a list of facts or demographics.

What must artists do to keep connecting us to one another’s humanity?

I’ve been teaching a seminar called Overcoming Creative Fear. There are so many people I know who are good people and legitimately talented in a variety of areas, be it writing, drawing, or singing, or whatever. But they’re so terrified of finishing something, at the possibility of failing or succeeding, or of someone being mean to them on the internet.

The state of the world right now adds to that anxiety for a lot of people. To any creative person reading this, if there’s any time for your voice to be heard, that time is now.

I think about all the hateful people who don’t have any problems speaking up. Nazis aren’t having a problem speaking up right now. If they’re not afraid to say crazy stuff, then I really need people who have a sense of compassion and righteousness to take this time and speak up, too; whether it’s directly or through their art. This is the time we need to have it happen.