and he that toucheth the flesh of the unclean becomes unclean.

[intertribal]

Re: The recent controversy over the Smithsonian Institute's installation "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture." 

I actually really, really like the "video in question:" "Fire In My Belly," created by David Wojnarowicz in 1987.  Brutal and sad and frightening for sure (it almost reminds me of Begotten, but better).  But powerful, I think, and evocative.  You can hardly accuse it of having nothing to say or being "merely competent."  And look, people: I have mummy-phobia, and I have it pretty bad.  I don't find it pleasant either.  But judging by the way people were talking about it, and the way it was described in news articles, you would have thought it was a 4-minute video of ants crawling on a crucifix (or as the Washington Post puts it "Ant-covered Jesus video").  That segment is 11 seconds.  11 seconds!  And not even a memorable part.  That's like calling Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing a "book about abandoning dogs."

But, the video was removed after people like the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (hahaha), House Minority Leader John Boehner, and Republican Whip Eric Cantor complained about it.  Catholic League guy is just grossed out: "The material is vile... This is hate speech... It is designed to insult (Christians)."  Eric Cantor is pitching to the Putting the Christ Back in Xmas demographic: "an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season."  Just want to remind: 11 seconds.  Also, not everything is about you.  Boehner threatened the Smithsonian with... something, when the Republicans take control of the House in January, if they didn't fix the problem.  But another Republican, Jack Kingston, wants to launch a Congressional investigation, because he is very angry about tax dollars - no, no, public space - being used to fund this "really perverted sick stuff" (he also thinks "Male nudity, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her own breast" are sick and perverted and kinky and questionable; presumably female nudity can still qualify as art): "They claim that this is not paid for by tax dollars, yet this is a public building with a publicly paid staff, public heat and air-conditioning, if you will, public security. So there’s no question the taxpayers are subsidizing this."

Contrast this with this snippet from the Publishers Weekly review of a book about Wojnarowicz, David Wojnarowicz: A Definitive History of Five or Six Years on the Lower East Side: "informed by his outrage against America's treatment of outsiders, in particular those suffering with AIDS." 

So on the one hand, video informed by outrage against America's treatment of outsiders.  American politician condemns video as, essentially, not representative enough of the public experience to justify public dollars being spent on it.  Yes, you ARE an outsider, says Jack Kingston.  You are not one of the public.  Your pain and your experience are not ours.  Sit down and shut up. 

Which is fucking bullshit, in case I needed to add that.

See also, a great article by John Coulthart (he makes the same point I do - "Among other things Wojnarowicz’s film depicts the artist having his lips sewn together. By shutting out Wojnarowicz from their exhibition the gallery and the Smithsonian Institute re-affirm the point he was making in the 1980s about the voices of the afflicted being silenced" - and adds a ton more, including a bonus riff on The Passion of the Christ, re: who is "allowed" to depict violation of Christ's body): "Ecce homo redux."

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Actually, the ant part seems to recur, but anyway. Not sure I like the video, though obviously I don't condemn it.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it recurs a few times - I was going to try and count the total # of seconds it appeared on screen, but just decided to take the amt. of time everyone else was quoting.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

sounds about right

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

why do you like it?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Warning: I'm bad at answering these types of questions, so I may contradict myself or something. I think first off I like it aesthetically - it's "my kind of thing," (and I feel like I don't have the vocab to describe what my kind of thing is... the dark, the drumming) so I'm sort of sympathetic to it from the outset. I liked the juxtaposition of the film score with the images being shown - or rather, it started to "get to" me emotionally, about halfway through. It made me sad. Not sure if that really gets to why...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, the music is probably what most turned me off about it. I'm not sure I know how to handle art that isn't beautiful in some aspect, if it doesn't have a message I can grasp very well/deeply/whatever. I imagine if it got to you emotionally, it meant something to you, somehow.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Huh, interesting - because I loved the music, and listened to it over and over (probably also the reason I love Italian horror). But yeah, I guess it did mean something to me - from a very general perspective, societal condemnation and social/biological contagion are two things that I've been thinking about a lot, and are becoming stronger trends in what I write about. Yeah, now that I think about it, the story I'm writing right now is exactly about those things. There's probably a reason I'm interested in them that goes beyond the conceptual, but I don't know what, off-hand.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I think societal condemnation and social/biological contagion are pretty related, either directly or metaphorically. Our most basic instincts for beauty come from health and procreation; for ugliness, disease and waste. But societies pick and choose from that their own idea of the beautiful, etc., and then, in reverse, use ideas of cleanliness, or life, or fruitfulness, or whatever to stamp anything they approve of.

I'm not sure that's the kind of thing you mean, but that's what came to mind. I guess to me the whole thing just screams victim mentality and plea for attention, and it seems made ugly to get attention, to put the condemnation 'in your face' or whatever, and it has zero appeal to me. It's too...vengeful, too angry, too 'trapped in a cage'-like. As it's not 'beautiful', it seems to rely more on conceptual significance, and I don't like the significance I'm getting. I just feel repulsed by the entire mindset of the creator.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, for sure. And of course that does make basic biological sense - support what's going to let the species survive, and such. It's when these lines get drawn while ignoring ethics or decency - or, more relevant for me, when the lines get drawn without any biological basis (i.e., there's nothing actually wrong with the people being condemned except from a social engineering standpoint, or that the people who are doing the condemning don't see that they themselves are not very "healthy" and they're not actually supporting a "healthy" system) - that I like to parse stories/ideas out.

I wouldn't disagree with your descriptors, because I think it is vengeful and angry and trapped in a cage, and it probably was made ugly - or at least harsh, since I don't know if I'd go so far as to say ugly - to get attention. I guess that just doesn't bother me as much as it bothers you (which is very much, I understand).

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I think this encapsulates why I'm bored with anthro (sorry). It's like 'Yeah, we get it, ideas of beauty/cleanliness/etc. are socially constructed and support the social order. Great, can we discuss something else now?'

I just don't think it's a healthy state of mind. It's self-destructive, destructive of others, and intellectually uninteresting.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

...unless you want to study the psychology of the artist, I guess.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I mean it doesn't bother me, I just feel like I would upon seeing, I don't know, roadkill, or an animal eating its own young, or something--it's not attractive, and I don't really think it's good, but it's not going to upset me. Intellectually, I'm either confused or uninterested. The mind of the artist, on the other hand, seems to be a very sad, repressive, repulsive place.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I'd probably relate more to a work of art that reveled in outsider-ness, that poked fun, that displayed an overflowing confidence that mocked rather than a weakness that lashed out.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That makes total sense for you, based off all the conversations we've had about weakness/victims. I don't think I'd relate to that just because I don't relate to upbeat things (or rather to satire). Not for any conceptual reason, I just don't tend to like it.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I don't really like upbeat things either, but if I have to stay on that theme...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

But I dunno, I'm working off my memory now, as I can't look at the video again. But it's like, I didn't really get much meaning from the video at all, except for what you said it meant, it was just a bunch of incoherent screaming images and oppressive music.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Fight back, man!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

My first though--before checking out any of the links--was that I damn well wish legislators were spending time taking care of people who are going to soon have no unemployment checks, which means no money, which means no food--that, to me, is WAY MORE IMPORTANT than fussing about an art exhibit.

So then I went and took a look, and first I looked at the video, and I wasn't sure what it was trying to say. It had lots of scary images (the blood, dripping, the mummies). It seemed to be about suffering? In the context of the soundtrack, the implication is that somehow we condemn suffering as unclean (and this is a bad thing)? The ants on the crucifix--I'm not sure why that's so particularly upsetting to people--it's nothing compared to the famous "Piss Christ". Of course, saying that something's not as bad as something else isn't going to make people who are offended feel less offended. But really, even from a religious point of view, it's possible to interpret it this way: Jesus was disrespected, humiliated, ignored. We will here show this by showing a crucifix with ants crawling around on it. In other words, just because you show an image doesn't mean you approve of it!

But I was wondering, still what the exhibit was all about, so I went to the Smithsonian page and saw that it was about sexuality and sexual difference. Then everything became clear: the congressfolk were *primed* to find something offensive, because their homophobic alarm bells had been sounded.

[talea-st-amour.livejournal.com]

I had exactly the same thoughts. The politicians aren't taking care of the country's BUSINESS, but seem to have plenty of time and energy to complain about this kind of thing. It wouldn't even make it into the general news EXCEPT they are whining about it and making it into an issue.

After I did that I went to look at the video, and I didn't quite get it except it was something about sexuality and unclean and unpleasant images. It didn't appeal to me, but I'm not into very dark things. The ants on the crucifix was strange, but not disturbing to me.

I returned and read the original post again and appreciated the comments intertribal made which helped me make sense of it.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I think that's very true that if they weren't complaining about it, it wouldn't have made it into the news. Nobody cares about Smithsonian exhibits otherwise. Ironically while there's a lot of negative attention from people parroting news anchors, more people have seen the video now than ever have before!

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

What's funny, though, is that these same people complaining about this may well complain about politicians wasting their time on foreign aid, or on whatever else (whereas this is an assault on the nation's moral fabric). Everyone thinks the government is wasting time/effort/money when it's not focusing on the priorities they themselves value.

I had a bit of context before looking at the video - knowing that it was essentially placed where it was because it was about AIDS, and society's treatment of AIDS victims (the artist died of AIDS). So it's not that we condemn suffering as unclean, but that we condemn sufferers as unclean. The words spoken on the soundtrack are from a biblical verse. That's what makes all of this ridiculous - the politicians are right here condemning it as unclean, after all. It totally justifies the anger felt by the artist.

I think the congresspeople were ready to be offended as soon as they saw "desire" and any hint of sex in the exhibit - that it was about gay people just made it extremely easy.

[eeuuugh.livejournal.com]

I'm so happy David Wojnarowicz is getting some attention! I love his photography, his band 3 Teens Kill 4 was great, and his essays in Close To The Knives are some excellent writing about AIDS and gay street life, along with Essex Hemphill and Samuel Delany. Ultimately I think this will lead to a lot more people discovering his work, and that makes me happy.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

It's definitely exposed me to his work, for which I am glad. I agree that that is one good thing to come out of all this. Benefit of living in the information age, I guess.

[eeuuugh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the difference between censorship in the eighties and censorship now is that people who are curious to see what's banned will just google his name and find much more than what's in the smithsonian's exhibit.