Abstract

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When a people is oppressed, they shout for freedom. Many regimes around the world, such as the U.S., India, or, historically, the Soviet Union, increasingly seek to or have sought to police that expression. In regimes like these, artistic expression becomes both a threat and a tool: a threat to those in power when it dares to critique, and a tool for those under power when open protest is not possible. As censorship tightens, artists often adopt strategies that appear outwardly compliant while embedding subtle acts of resistance within their work.  Most existing literature on resistance under authoritarian or dominant regimes tends to fall into binary categories, open dissent or passive compliance, leaving little space for the morally complex, strategically ambiguous acts that lie between. While studies in organizational theory and political communication have acknowledged subtle forms of protest, they often dismiss them as ineffectual or merely symbolic. Cultural and performance scholars, meanwhile, have examined individual cases of coded resistance, such as Soviet composers or subversive satire, but rarely unify them into a broader theoretical framework. This paper addresses that gap by introducing, what we term as, the concept of defiant compliance: a mode of artistic expression that outwardly conforms to authority while embedding subversion through ambiguity, performance, and aesthetic cues. By drawing together examples across regimes and mediums, from Shostakovich’s musical symphonies to a performance of ‘Can You Hear The People Sing’ from Les Miserables in front of Trump, we offer a new language for understanding how resistance operates not despite constraint, but through it. 

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