The Government Should Fund Art That May Be Offensive Culture Wars, 2004
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The Government Should Fund Art That May Be Offensive Culture Wars, 2004 In the following viewpoint, John K. Wilson argues that the government should continue to fund the arts, even when certain exhibits contain material that some people consider offensive or controversial. Conservatives often maintain that public funding should be withheld from museums and from artists who exhibit offensive art. But such withdrawal of funds would only amount to censorship of ideas, Wilson asserts. Conservative censors should not be allowed to judge what can and cannot be shown in museums. Wilson is the author of The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education and How the Left Can Win Arguments and Influence People, from which this viewpoint is excerpted. As you read, consider the following questions: Controversy over public funding for the arts has risen occasionally since 1965, when the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was created as the nation's largest annual funder of the arts. Some of the controversy is political, since some Americans want to limit taxes and government funding of programs, and sometimes controversy occurs because a work created with tax funds is considered offensive. Research these issues in Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center and write an editorial in support or against a 50% cut in funding of the NEA. 1. Why is censorship evil, in Wilson's opinion? 2. According to the author, what would happen to libraries if public money could not subsidize "offensive" literature? 3. In Wilson's opinion, in what way can censorship harm children? [During his term], New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani threatened to eliminate all city support for the Brooklyn Museum of Art, revoking millions of dollars unless it canceled a British exhibit called "Sensation." [This exhibit featured an image of the Virgin Mary painted with elephant dung, which some viewers considered offensive.] This was only the latest in a long line of cases in which conservative politicians punished museums, artists, and the public in order to demand that their values control public subsidies of the arts. One of the strongest arguments for censorship is the libertarian line: no art should receive public support. It's a lovely theoretical argument, but the fact is that the public supports the arts. The question then becomes, should every institution that accepts any amount of public money be forced to capitulate to the artistic judgments of Rudy Giuliani or Jesse Helms? Nobody elected these guys to be the commanders of the thought police. As for the general issue of government funding, it seems reasonable that if we are willing to publicly fund weapons, schools, parks, highways, libraries, cops, bridges, and trillions of dollars worth of other activities, spending a minuscule part of our taxes on art strikes me as a good thing. The alternative would be for museums to sharply raise their entrance fees, effectively keeping out the poor. Why Censorship Is Evil If you pass a law banning public libraries from buying any books with "dirty words" in them (or punish them with budget cuts if they do), that's censorship, even if it only involves removing this "public subsidy" of dirty literature. Censorship is evil not only because it tries to punish artists or writers and the curators or librarians who pay them. Censorship is evil because it seeks to remove certain ideas and works of art from the public view. The other main argument for censorship is the "offensiveness" line: As Giuliani puts it, "If you are a government-subsidized enterprise, then you can't do things that desecrate the most personal and deeply held views of people in society." In other words, every public institution must be devoted to the uncontroversial, the bland, the intellectual equivalent of baby food. We already have this approach to public tastes in many common areas: it's called Muzak, and it sucks. Maybe worthless crap is the best we can do in elevators, but museums are different. Nobody forces you to enter a controversial exhibit at a museum. If it offends you, leave. If you think it might offend you and the thought of being offended is so horrifying, then stay away from museums. Turn on the sit-coms, and let your brain melt on the floor if it makes you happy. But don't force everybody else to share your desire not to be offended. Not all art that offends people is good. Some of it's downright awful. But not every book in the public library is a masterpiece, either, and that's not a reason to start a bonfire. The world of art shouldn't be a mausoleum containing only the great art of the past that is deemed acceptable to all (although even Michelangelo's David with his exposed penis would probably offend a lot of those congressional art critics). Art (and public support for the arts) must include the potential for controversy, if for no other reason than the fact that it's impossible to make everyone agree. The Importance of Diversity Progressives often get caught in the trap of defending Piss Christ1 or bullwhips up butts.2 They need to turn the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) debate away from particular works of art and into an argument about the importance of diversity. Imagine if public libraries were prohibited from buying controversial books (as some would wish). After all, that's public money subsidizing "offensive" literature. If an exhibit showing the Virgin Mary with elephant dung can be banned, then certainly a book showing the art in the exhibit could also be banned from the public library. And then, why not all books that insult the Virgin Mary? And since books that discuss sex and contain dirty words offend many people, toss them on the fire, too. After all, why should public money be used to support books and art that might offend someone? But would you really want to see James Joyce's Ulysses or even lesser works of literature banned from our public libraries, or public funding withdrawn because some politician disagrees with a librarian's choice of books? That's what is at stake in the art debate. Museums and art galleries display an enormous range of art, and public funding is supposed to help these institutions thrive, not to impose Rudy Giuliani's or Jesse Helms's idea of art on the rest of us. Who wants to see paintings of tobacco fields on black velvet? Of course, no one wants a proliferation of bad art. But if a museum exhibited bad art, nobody would go to see it, and since museums can't rely on public money alone, a museum of bad art would quickly be in trouble. The censors, however, don't want to let the people or the art experts make their judgments; the censors want to tell the rest of us what we can or can't see in our public museums. Conservatives who don't like to be challenged are welcome to open "The Boring Museum for Bland Art That Offends No One" (a title that actually describes quite a few publicly subsidized museums). Far from being obsessed with the cutting edge, agencies such as the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities adhere to a conservative line that usually discourages innovation. What Really Hurts Kids One of the favorite rhetorical tricks of the right is to argue for protection of "the children." Progressives shouldn't evade this argument but counter it head on: it's censorship, not freedom of speech, that hurts our kids and corrupts their minds. The idea that a museum exhibit including dung on the Virgin Mary will turn children into serial killers seems a bit of a stretch. Children see violent acts regularly on TV, cable, and movies; they play video games full of bloody attacks; and they may even see news programs and media coverage about real-life violence, so the negative effects of going to an art museum seem a bit exaggerated in comparison. This doesn't mean we should ban Road Runner cartoons, but it does suggest that the hysteria about "offensive" art and its imagined harm to children must be kept in the proper perspective. Worst of all, the censors like Giuliani can't see how censorship damages children's minds. When opportunistic politicians try to censor freedom of speech, children learn a powerful lesson: you shouldn't argue with opposing ideas but instead try to eliminate enemy values from public consideration. The lesson taught by Giuliani to our kids is that threats and political intimidation are the proper techniques for winning artistic debates, an idea that is far more dangerous to American values than the worst painting or sculpture imaginable. Footnotes 1. 1. A photo by artist Andres Serrano of a crucifix immersed in urine 2. 2. A reference to Robert Mapplethorpe's Self-Portrait, a photo of the artist bent over inserting a whip into his rectum. Further Readings Books Maurianne Adams et al., eds. Readings for Diversity and Social Justice: An Anthology on Racism, Sexism, Anti-Semitism, Heterosexism, Classism, and Ableism. New York: Routledge, 2000. Amy E. Ansell, ed. Unravelling the Right: The New Conservatism in American Thought and Politics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. James A. Banks. An Introduction to Multicultural Education. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. William J. Bennett. The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family. New York: Doubleday, 2001. Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons. Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guildford Press, 2000. Robert H. Bork. Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline.