Filth, Treason, Blasphemy?

There's a great little temporary exhibit at McCormick Tribune's Freedom Museum called "Filth, Treason, Blasphemy? Museums as First Amendment Battlegrounds." Basically, it's about censorship -- about artists who provoke, museums which display provocative art, and citizens who protest the public display of provocative art.

Case study: In 1999, the Brooklyn Museum of Art opened an exhibit called "Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection." Sounds non-threatening enough, no? Well, the exhibit itself might have created little sensation had it not been for one particular work of art by black artist Cris Ofili. The piece was called The Holy Virgin Mary, but that wasn't the controversial part; nor was the depiction of the mother of Jesus as a large black woman. The true 'crime' was that in addition to paper, oils, glitter, resin, and push-pins, the artist had intentionally flung a most unusual substance onto the linen canvas: elephant dung.

You can probably instantly see why this might be offensive to some people. Excrement thrown onto the representation of such a sacred, revered, and pure figure would be offensive in ANY religion, wouldn't it? Well, not actually. In India, where cows are sacred, bathing in water mixed with dung is considered a purifying act. And in some African cultures, dung has ritual significance: for instance, among the Samburu in Kenya, elephant dung is burned in order to bring luck to newlyweds. In defense of his art, Cris Ofili claims he is simply alluding to his own African heritage (though he was born in Manchester, England), and includes a lump or two of dung in all of his work.

So was Cris Ofili intending to be provocative? Probably. "My project is not a P.C. project," he admits. "It allows you to laugh about issues that are potentially serious." Was Cris Ofili intending to be blasphemous? Probably not.

Nevertheless, 'blasphemous' was how many public visitors to the Brooklyn exhibit interpreted the painting. Most notably, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani himself denounced the museum for daring to exhibit such a "sick demonstration of clear psychological problems." His angry reaction became government censorship when he threatened to withdraw millions of dollars in funding and kick the museum out of its city-owned building unless it canceled the exhibit.

The kicker, though, is the following quote by William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, who shared Giuliani's righteous indignation: "When you throw dung on our Virgin Mother, it is hate speech. It is the same thing as drawing a swastika on a synagogue."

Well, no. It's not the same thing at all.

When you draw the swastika in this example, you are not merely defacing the synagogue. You are reviving in its parishioners a horrific collective memory of relatives being systematically targeted for brutal eradication, and you are insidiously suggesting that it can happen again, anytime, right here where a Jew should feel safest.

When you throw dung on a painting of the Virgin Mary, you're pretty much just throwing dung on a painting of the Virgin Mary. True, your are defacing an icon considered sacrosanct by millions of Christians. But you are most emphatically NOT calling up past horrors or threatening renewed genocide. Dung is dung. It has never been associated with the near-extermination of an entire faith community.

So this was a clear case where artistic censorship was just plain wrong. Right?

I thought so. And I still do, with some reservations. My hesitation comes from what I noticed while exploring a "Cast Your Vote" interactive outside of the "Filth, Treason, Blasphemy?" exhibit. The touch screen of this interactive presents you with seven censorship controversies over seven works of art that have been exhibited in museums in recent years. For each work of art, the interactive asks, "Should this be censored?" Once you cast your vote, results appear in horizontal bar graphs, displaying the percentage of people who agreed with your 'Yes' or 'No' answer.

Overwhelmingly, visitors responded with "No, this shouldn't be censored" to all of the featured works of art--we're talking upwards of 75% on each 'what if.' Now, that's probably a good thing; these liberal (most likely) or libertarian Chicagoers acknowledge and value all artists' 1st Amendment Right to freedom of speech. But on two occasions, I found myself casting a vote for "Yes, this should be censored." And each time when the poll results displayed, I experienced something that felt disconcertingly like peer pressure.

I don't even remember what the paintings were about. But in each case I had firmly believed that "yes, this pointlessly and genuinely offensive work of art should be censored".....until the bar graph results appeared and I was told that "592 visitors disagree with you (76%)." Those words made me feel wrong, deviant...unpopular.

Was I wrong to think censorship was called for in this situation? Did that make me a Giuliani, or worse yet, a William Donohue? Did that mean I was one step away from becoming a right-wing moral crusader who burns Harry Potter books?

A creative, spirited, and liberal ex-girlfriend of mine named Friday would probably have answered yes--at least to the first two questions. I remember an unpleasantly heated conversation with Friday in which she confronted me about even considering the possibility that censorship might be justified in some situations. To her, censorship was right up there with murder as an unambiguous, unpardonable evil. I'm not so sure.

Let's look at an extreme example in which censorship could have saved an untold number of lives: the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Anyone who has seen "Hotel Rwanda" with Don Cheadle knows the story; in just a hundred days, nearly 1 million Tutsi minorities--men, women, and children alike--were brutally murdered with machetes and guns by their Hutu countrymen. Only a handful survived, thanks to the efforts of brave men like hotel-owner Paul Rusesabagina and UN commander Romeo Dallaire, but even more could have been spared had but one simple step been taken by the peacekeeping forces: jamming the broadcast transmissions from the hate radio station, Radio Mille Collines. As shown to chilling effect in the film, the Hutu used Radio Mille Collines to coordinate their genocide--to inform, instruct, and incite the killers.

What is not shown in "Hotel Rwanda" is the unwillingness of the U.S. government to take any steps whatsoever to jam the radio broadcast, or even to simply destroy the station's antenna. And what was their justification for their inaction? "The American commitment to free speech."
(Samantha Powers, A Problem From Hell, page. 372).

So there are definite, clear-cut instances where censorship is not only acceptable, but advisable. Indeed, I know many Americans agree with me. If you take a look at the 2006 State of the First Amendment Survey (pdf), for instance, you'll find that quite a few people (42%) do not agree that "people should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to racial groups." In fact, the more liberal you are, the more strongly you will probably believe that racist terms like the 6-letter 'n' word should never be uttered by a white person's lips, and that offenders should be dealt with firmly--if not punished. If you believe this, then realize that you believe in censorship.

What's my point, then? That us liberals are hypocrites? Well, yes. But so are conservatives. No one on earth holds flawlessly consistent beliefs. (As Aldous Huxley cleverly stated, "The only completely consistent people are dead.") My real point is this: we liberals must resist any knee-jerk reaction against censorship simply because "that's what those crazy conservatives do." When there is a public outcry against a work of art, as there was against Cris Ofili's Virgin, we should take pause and consider the point of view of the offended, without dismissing them off-hand. "What has made them so distressed?" "Which nerves is the painting 'getting on', which buttons has it pushed?" "Why do they care so much?"

A beneficial exercise might be to try and proceed backwards from the emotions that we see in the offended group's outcry, and imagine, "What would it take for me to arrive at such a reaction?" "What would need to be on display for me to feel those emotions?" Then, connect the two points of view and evaluate: "Are the two emotional triggers really comparable?" "What information do I have that the protesting party might be lacking, or vice versa?" "Are they using any metaphors that simplify or polarize the issue unnecessarily?" "When you throw dung on the Virgin Mother, is it really the same thing as drawing a swastika on a synagogue?"

When we pull ourselves through such empathic cognitions, we arrive at a more nuanced appreciation of the dilemma, and a more open stance towards the solution. Should we censor the swastika? Yes. Should we censor elephant dung? No. Do we now understand why someone might be strongly offended by the elephant dung? Certainly.

Where you go from there, from that new understanding, is up to you.