Never Giving Up: The Kennedy Center Honors And American Identity |
President Donald Trump said the Kennedy Center honorees represented “the fabric of America.” Hailing from distinct regional cultures and laboring in wildly different genres, the awards suggested an older form of diversity may actually be America’s strength.
From George Strait’s cowboy coterie to KISS’ vampiric rock and roll, America’s 20th century performing arts offer insight into what we’ve lost since the aughts, and what we ought to regain this millennium. There are common threads that make the honorees uniquely American: perseverance, inventiveness, and an individualist streak.
Though the Kennedy Center board has its own nomination process, this year, Trump said he “was about 98% involved. No, they all went through me.”
I set out for the storied performing arts enter in an attempt to determine art’s future in American national identity and public life. The evening began on the red carpet. Crowded out by film crews, I took my position in the then-empty box awaiting the White House media team. There, I asked KISS’ frontman Paul Stanley what the performing arts meant for patriotism and national identity.
“A very, very complex question. I think the arts at their finest celebrate the individual and your freedom to express yourself. That’s what art is supposed to be, it’s self expression. And in its purest form, people relate to it,” Stanley said. “Not intellectually, but emotionally. If we’re free to create art then we’re living in a free society.........