Government and the Arts: Voices from the New Deal Era
In December 1938 Hallie Flanagan, director of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), faced hostile questioning from Congressman Joseph Starnes of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The congressman and his colleagues sought to uncover pernicious Communist influences on the government-funded arts projects. When Flanagan read a passage that referred to workers' theaters being imbued "with a certain Marlowesque madness," the congressman thought that he had his opening: "You are quoting from this Marlowe. Is he a Communist?" A puzzled Flanagan replied that she "was quoting from Christopher Marlowe." The impatient congressman insisted that Flanagan "tell us who Marlowe is, so we can get the proper reference." "Put in the record," the FTP director replied dryly, "that he was the greatest dramatist in the period of Shakespeare, immediately preceding Shakespeare."' This unintentionally comic exchange between arts administrator and congressman is one small part of a vast body of oral testimony on the cultural politics of New Deal funding of the arts. Contemporary voices are captured in the proceedings of the Dies committee, and historians have retrospectively located participants in the New Deal arts projects and recorded their stories. These past and present voices are joined in an ongoing conversation. In many interviews, subjects and historians replay the political conflicts of the late 1930s. In counterpoint to the suspicious congressman whom Flanagan faced, most former participants celebrate the New Deal projects. A few voices echo congressmen's concerns about political subversion. Still others ponder how to reconcile artistic freedom with the imperatives of bureaucratic control and public accountability. These voices from the New Deal thus raise complex and enduring issues about the meaning of a national culture and the role of government in shaping it. TodayJesse Helms and a cast of supporting players are rehearsing the same questions, with sex replacing communism as the subject of outrage. In the face of these controversies, voices from the 1930s acquire new resonances and meanings -ways of adding historical context to a debate that has been framed without much reference to the past. This essay offers an introduction to those voices. First we place them within their