Social Issues through Art

I think most of the artists of today's world want to express something about their personal opinion on any social event they might like or not. Those artists can encourage that social «event» or be against it. Besides mass media, social networks and entertainment like music, movies or painting are the kind of doors through which a lot of information goes to the public.

Artists have definitively a great opportunity to use their crafts to address social issues.

We learned in class that the invention of Rock n' Roll and the immersion of that new kind of music broke the barrier between black and white and started to change the debates on racial equality.

If I have to think about an artist that is trying to express social issues recently, I cannot prevent myself to talk about one of our Belgian artists. His name is Stromae. He is well known over in Europe and start becoming popular over here in America, mostly along the East and West cost. He is a Pop singer and most of his songs talks about personal issues he had in his childhood or social issues we have nowadays. One of his last songs is called Carmen. It talks about Twitter and how people are not only addicted by social networks but have a huge thirst for “social popularity”. The goals is to get as many likes and followers. This is such a true fact today. How do most people want or think about getting popular? Though social networks? The more likes you get, the more attention and popularity you have. The video for that song is amazing because we can see the little Twitter blue bird coming to a person. The bird follows that person his entire life and become bigger and bigger (meaner and meaner) with all the likes that person gets through the social networks. We always want more and more. Get as much popularity as we can, right behind our screen. Look at teenagers now. Who doesn’t have a phone with social networks apps on it? I look at my little brothers. They don't go hang out with friends everyday until sunset anymore, they don't go in the street and play simple games. They are on their phone, on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat,... talking with their «Friends». Friends? I don't think so.

Anyways, I know other artists express social issues like that too. Of course it is effective! Because their message gets forwarded daily to millions of people. They could change minds...