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Rules or Tools? The Exercise of Judgment as it Pertains to Censorship
An Essay by Susan Holland
(Warning: Some of the issues discussed in this essay may speak to subjects offensive to some people.)
"Even in its own day the (Michelangelo’s) David’s nudity was controversial. When placed in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria in 1504, the statue was stoned during the night, probably out of a sense of moral outrage on the part of decent citizens, and was soon made respectable by the now familiar addition of a fig leaf."1
It seems sensible to look at the two extreme views of censorship in order to find a sane spot in the middle.
On the conservative side, there is the strictly controlled set-up where everything is screened for consumers beforehand, all possibly offensive matter extracted, and the finished product then proferred free of concern about any negative effects. We have all experienced the sometimes grotesque efforts that people must go through in order to keep language "politically correct"; for example, instead of simply saying that the lady in charge is ignorant, we say that "the current chairperson is apparently factually challenged."
On the other extreme, there is the absence of controls altogether, where the consumer is thrust into a chaotic bazaar of material--everything from smut and/or pointless fluff to rich depth, intellectual wealth, and on to such obscure material as to require expert interpretation. A good example of such surfeit is to be seen in the film "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover," a film I unwittingly found myself viewing, suffered great discomfort watching, and learned enough from to warrant a semester’s credits all in a few hours’ time. The film is about excess. I am glad I stayed. The film is an elegant piece of work-- but one film like that is enough for one lifetime, for me at least. Don’t go with a weak stomach.
Since most online readers are naturally more familiar with the gamut of written material than with visual arts, I will use the field of literature to illustrate my viewpoint.
Material on newsstands and in the Public Library, through booksellers and through the "underground press" offer us the wide selection described above. From Hustler magazine and even fleshier publications of that ilk to Guideposts and Mother Goose, we have choices of what to read. In Amsterdam the selection is famously wider still!
It is my opinion that we should be allowed access to all of the above, from the base to the sublime. Please note that I strongly believe that those things that would disturb young children should not be introduced without parental guidance. I think it is essential from the outset for parents and children to enter into discussion about ANYTHING as it comes up in a child’s natural curiosity . The ease with which parents and chldren talk together begins with openness from the very first communications, and with astute attentiveness and expertise on the parents’ part to the nuances of a child’s natural curiousity.
My reasoning goes like this: If we are presented with already screened material, no discretion is necessary! The "safe" segment is selected for us by SOMEONE who purports to have better judgment than our own. Surely this manipulation is suitable for babes who have barely learned to read, just as my neighbor holds the hand of her wobbly toddler who must later learn to walk safely alone. But we do not need to hold the four-year old’s hand to keep her upright. She has by then learned her limits by trial and error, and is wise enough to gallop around anywhere with only a bruise or two from occasional errors of judgment. She is well equipped to size up the WHOLE WORLD and step in the safer places. My fourth-grade grandson can read anything he lays eyes on, but will choose that which is written on his level about subject matter that is interesting to him.
Who might this SOMEONE be who wants to shield us from certain books? It will be an entity that supposes itself to be more Godly, smarter, wiser, more wholesome, perhaps, than the general public.
If we actually had a Truly Righteous Entity on the face of the earth in charge of dealing out the "right" books for me, I would certainly welcome the choices made especially for my good. But we do not. I personally believe in a Truly Righteous Entity, however, who designed us with the mental and moral capacity for free will choices and who intended for us to use it! In any case, we empirically know we are designed with this capacity, whether or not we credit a Creator.
(Albrecht) Durer produced at least two naked self portraits...Almost painfully honest in its self-scruitiny, this intimate image has few counterparts until the twentieth century." (see footnote 1 on previous page)
Shown on page 21 of The Nude by Monica Bohn-Duchen, is a pen and wash work on paper, circa 1503, of a frontal male nude figure in the impeccably detailed style seen in Durer’s ubiquitous Praying Hands held particularly close to the heart of religious people the world over. Would the same people with Praying Hands hung on their walls welcome Durer’s self portrait? Very likely some would not only eschew the nude, but would also discard the Praying Hands drawing as well, being offended that the artist they esteemed as "pure" would boldly draw such nakedness. These would judge the artist by their own temporal and geographic standard of "modesty" rather than judging the art on its artistic merits. This non-sequitor is like judging the excellence of a musical passage by how it measures up to "Hit Songs" of a certain era. Fine Art transcends trends and customs. It stands on its own merit over time.
The habitual exercise of free will hones our own powers of reason. We arrive at our own personal, first-hand concepts of decency, and to become adept at making wholesome choices by the same process we undertook to learn to walk. Some of us will ambitiously hike mountains, and some will stay on the paved roads.
Given the wide array of choices, we may and often do, in certain high- hormone periods of our lives (as in young adulthood, and at "mid-life crisis" time,) choose to try out the smutty and/or fantasy offerings of those who would profit by our baser drives, and who have become expert at making such fare tantalizing. Much like listening to music at an unearthly volume, glutting oneself with sensational erotic material dulls the sensitivities and diminishes rather than enhancing pleasure.
Where do we get snared into heavy involvement with such trickery? Behind the curtain in the "adult" zone. Who puts up the curtain? THE CENSORS! Once behind the curtain, furtive adventurers delve deeply into the forbidden areas with an exaggerated feeling of excitement especially because it is "naughty." They glut themselves because they may not have this "opportunity" soon again.
This is ideal for those selling smut. They have capitalized on the element of temptation that is attached to that which is "forbidden." They have made a prisoner of the person so involved because now there is a possibility of manipulation--blackmail, if you will--if the person "gets caught."
All of this is delectable to the risk-taker in us. It is a false excitement, a sense of danger, and in fact is much more dangerous than the material itself could possibly be. How can a picture of genitalia actually hurt us? No, it is the circumstances around the viewing of a prurient picture, the subterfuge in peeking at such a picture, the secret thrill of seeing something that would shock one’s parent or pastor, or the exponential arousal that comes of seeing this taboo item with a group of buddies behind the curtain, and comparing one person’s naughty feelings with that of another.
Guilt provokes this palpable excitement--not the anatomical picture alone. Take away the guilt and it’s only a picture of genitals. We see animal genitals all the time and nothing is thought of it. Children see genitals and ask what is that? We tell them--that’s that.
Usually men find the sight of genitalia more stimulating than women do. This is not a moral issue--it is just the way we seem to be designed. It is the taboo spin put on viewing genitalia that causes stimulating pictures of anatomy to female anatomy to become a forbidden commodity. The early Judeo- Christian account considered the body "good"! Even after the "fall of man," the erotic beauty of the human body is lauded in certain passages of the Judeo-Christian Biblical record.
So it is with all of the arts, I believe. We learn how to choose for ourselves by checking out all the possibilities. In a bookstore, we may open a book in the Philosophy Section and find it benign and boring. Another may prove interesting and provocative. In the Erotica section, we may find something simply beautiful and honoring of sexual bliss, or something next to it that debases and makes repulsive all that we believe to be honorable. In theatre, we see sublimely moving depictions of the grossest of human tragedies as well as crass humor that debases the noblest of human events. We choose to stay or leave the building. The play stands or folds. Excellence rises to the top. Ironically, if the play is picketed by those that call it "dirty," it attracts attention and it enjoys a hyped up notoriety and public attendance it might never have had otherwise. It could be said that it is the censors who enable the smut mongers to prevail!
Do you pass by shops in your walk downtown that have neon windows advertising things you don't enjoy, and will you enter a simple no-nonsense shop that carries the things you most value? We do learn from experience to be selective. What is touted by FOR-YOUR-OWN- GOOD-CENSORS may not be at all what is best for you. It very easily can become only what is best for THEM!
We must use our selectivity, or lose it! I say, let's tune up our senses, and our own moralities. Our own senses of wholesomeness and excellence should be put to use to exercise the powers of discernment we were given and choose with wisdom from the whole gamut! Then the excellence will rise to the top, and the grit and smut will sink to the bottom. We then become our own careful screeners who know just what to choose from the world of books, arts, and offerings of all other sorts. We know to choose chocolate rather than raspberry, because we know it suits us better. We know not to touch hot stoves and how to hold our breath under water. And we are not hobbled with unreasonable fear of the unfamiliar and innovative, because we are equipped with the ability to discern.
We have chosen to put a limit on the gamut of art in ARTFaces | ARTPlaces because our mission is to make this an educational site. We want our standards to be like those of a museum or respected gallery, and so we have ruled out works deemed pornographic and other works that fall beyond the mainstream in decency. We would like children to be able to browse our site without running into something that will traumatize them.
Also, we are steering away from "slick" or manifestly "commercial" art which seems to incessantly clone advertising. We are avoiding art that is degrading to race, class, gender and religious affiliation. We want to present art that edifies, educates, presents a new way of looking at things, breaks new ground, and does so with excellence and earnestness.
We have made a very wide swath within these guidelines. We have prepared the Fringe, a "wing" for art that pushes against the "mainstream" edge of our swath, putting erotic and possibly disturbing works there, and blocking the site from view of people who use parental screening devices.
Especially for young children, we have set up ARTKids, a "protected area" where they will see the art of schoolchildren. We hope to encourage young children to see that their expressions are important and genuine works, worthy of exhibition and of value to the world of viewers. It is my opinion that the art of children has much to teach adult artists and appreciators of art.
I hope we have chosen the best chunk of the middle. It has been, and will continue to be, one of the toughest parts of being "curators" of a Web "museum," to jury art work that pushes up against our parameters.
It is in the exercise of Free Will that we honor the marvelous creatures that we are. It is in the encouragement of freedom of expression that we honor the uniqueness of our fellow humans. I hope we can present material of artistic merit, some of which may be a whetstone to our viewers' powers of discernment.
Susan Holland
1p21, The Nude by Monica Bohn-Duchen, copyright Scala Publications Ltd and Reunion des Museses Nationaux, 1992
Additional quote: "To be sure, the choice of erotic subject matter in Fine Art is no accident! Images of the naked body ...not only reflect attitudes about the body and the role of the sexes in the real world, but they serve to reinforce and perpetuate those attitudes in ways that are not always immediately obvious. Art, in other words, is disconcertingly powerful, and inescapably linked with real-life sexual politics. While an awareness of these complex issues need not prevent us from enjoying art as art, it should teach us that the aesthetic experience is both less "pure" and more interesting than we may have believed.
The opinions expressed are those of the author, and not necessarily representative of all members of AFAP. The policies of AFAP are arrived at by a majority vote of its Board of Directors as outlined in its Articles of Incorporation and its By-Laws. Images appearing in the AFAP pages are included by the majority vote of a revolving jury of peers. What one jury accepts might have been rejected by another. In this way, AFAP seeks to reflect the "grass roots view" of what constitutes Fine Art.