Politics & Power Quote by Dario Fo

A neat trick in Fo's line is how it refuses the comforting middle: art is never "just art". By insisting that every artistic expression is either influenced by politics or contributes to it, he collapses the escape hatch many audiences use to keep culture pure and power dirty. The phrasing is totalizing, almost prosecutorial. "Either...or" turns aesthetics into a forced choice, implying that neutrality is not an option but a story we tell ourselves when the stakes feel inconvenient.

Fo's intent is less to draft artists into party politics than to expose how politics already drafts them. Power shapes the conditions of making and receiving art: who gets funded, who gets censored, whose language counts as "educated", whose pain becomes "tasteful" tragedy versus "too political". When Fo says art is influenced by politics, he's pointing at the invisible scaffolding. When he says it adds to politics, he's pointing at the afterlife: jokes, images, and narratives circulate as social permission slips, normalizing certain hierarchies and making others thinkable.

The subtext is combative because Fo's career was combative. As a satirical playwright tied to Italy's postwar left and famous for farce that mocked church, state, and bourgeois respectability, he knew that laughter can be a weapon and a shield. His theatre didn't merely comment on power; it staged power as ridiculous, thereby puncturing its aura. The quote reads like a reminder to fellow artists: if your work isn't challenging the political weather, it's probably helping it.