Struggles with Art

My work of culture is the Netflix original show called The Get Down. It’s about music in the 70’s and how Puerto Ricans and African Americans were starting to introduce a new type of music, as well as defending against the stereotype that they were always up to no good and everything they produced would mean nothing. This is similar to things these days with young minorities struggling to overcome the stereotypes that are set against them in today’s culture. The Get Down Describes the struggles with New York and kids in the 70’s in the art industries and some of the same struggles still exist in the art industries today with kids.

Today kids still can’t always express themselves on sheets of paper, so instead they took to the streets. In The Get Down kids would often paint graffiti on trains, in train tunnels, and other places. That is the same as today, although limited and punished more severely, often kids would leave their tags or a way of identifying themselves by what they spell or draw out on the sides of buildings and train tunnels. Another way of expressing yourself is through writing and music and lots of kids these days are too embarrassed to write or get bashed on if they do. In The Get Down the main character is embarrassed when he writes because the kids often bashed on him for writing instead of playing sports and not being the strongest one in the class. That is often the case in other schools and institutes here in America now and although there are now clubs to support writing they are not always known about or even present at schools or local institutions. However, writing is a way of expressing themselves and some kids who have it available to them often join anyway and some even take it upon themselves to go even a step further and mix writing with music and rap and other things like spoken word these days. Just like The Get Down some people even have rap battle freestyles against other people or rival crews and have the audience dance and judge who won. One other way of expressing yourself of course is through music and dance and in The Get Down kids and other individuals would struggle to get jobs where they could become dancers and singers. Even now that still holds true to some extent where based on ethnicity and background some people can’t get jobs at certain record labels or other prestigious dance companies. The Get Down capitalized on the difficulties back in the 70’s and it’s astonishing to see that some of those difficulties are still present today.

Although it’s better than it was before there are still problems that rise when kids try and express themselves through art. The Get Down shows how it was like in the 70’s and being as a child who dances i see these struggles present everyday of my life.