The recent thread about some JW's reaction to the movie Avatar made me flash back to some of my own misgivings when I was a JW about the WTS's relationship to the arts.
JWs are always ready to denounce any work of the human imagination that hints at ideas outside their narrow dogma. Movies whose titles have Hindu etymology and which feature alien blue pagans are only the most recent. The JW condemnation of the arts covers movies, TV, literature (they hate the Harry Potter books), video games, music (not just 'death metal' but also some classical music), paintings, and even the plastic arts. Anything that examines or represents what they consider pagan, 'false' Christian, or worldly notions or beliefs.
As a JW, I sometimes wondered what would become of the humanities and the arts in the New System TM , once the 'world' was no longer there to produce works of true artistic fire. Would the artistic Muse die at Armageddon? After all, even that ancient metaphor refers to the activities of 'false' gods. Would all art take on the cartoonish emptiness of Watchtower and Awake illustrations? Would everything have a sort of slick sterility characteristic of most state-sanctioned Soviet art (which allowed only party-line expression)?
Would we even be able to see any art of the past, or would the great works of human history become prohibited? Could no one read Shakespeare anymore because his plays are full of bawdy humor and raucous behavior? What would Shakespeare be allowed write in the New System, since one would presume him to be resurrected? Watchtower doggerel of the type that makes the round of JW email these days?
These possibilities made me very sad as a JW-to think that humanity would lose its connection to great art, much of which is born out of the desire to find insight into the paradox and pain of existence, or to transcend it. If there were no more tears and no more pain, would there be no more art? Perhaps that loss could be tolerated if perfection were really available, but my fear was that the loss of art would be real, while the gain of perfection would be as about as genuine as the JW's present 'spiritual paradise'.