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I wrote about why the left should focus on voter suppression rather than on finding inspirational candidates.
In my best album ever countdown I wrote about The Gospel Tradition: The Roots and the Branches.
A haiku about everyone else being wrong.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At Quartz I wrote about Kayla Moore and why saying someone is “a Jew” sounds anti-Semitic.
At the Forward I wrote about Star Wars and a universe without Jews.
At Splice Today I wrote about
—why the anti-Balthus petition isn’t censorship.
—an old Batman and the Metal Men comic in which sad robots are discriminated against and die.
At the Reader I wrote about
—Chicago pop punk band Daymaker.
—evil heavy grind core band Cloud Rat.
“How is that different from criticizing a book or a film—or from saying, “This film is so bad it shouldn’t have been released”? If you say Suicide Squad was a piece of crap and that it’s so lousy it doesn’t even deserve a video release, are you engaged in censorship? How is that distinct from what Merrill is doing?”
I think there’s a pretty big difference between expressing an opinion about a work of art (or “art”) and mobilizing a movement to try to have a piece of art removed from display. (Clearly Merrill’s preferred outcome, for all she also suggests adding some sort of contextualizing statement.) I’ve been to the Met, seen that painting there, read the information currently posted about Balthus for that painting and others, and you know what? Even what context the Met does provide gives viewers more than enough context to recognize that there was something hinky about his view of young girls, without making any moral adjudication. Do we really need a further statement that “”some viewers find this piece offensive or disturbing, given Balthus’ artistic infatuation with young girls,” to quote from the petition? Well, no shit, Sherlock. Some viewers surely find a whole lot of other things on display in the Met and many other art galleries disturbing.
IDK. She says she wants additional context, which seems reasonable. Whether you need a further statement seems up for debate…but expressing an opinion about it isn’t censorship.
Nor is organizing a petition. Petitions are free speech. Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote a piece about Star Wars saying every print of it should be destroyed. Is he a censor?
I didn’t say it was censorship. That requires governmental suppression. I DID say that there’s a big difference between expressing an individual opinion that something is crap or shouldn’t be seen and actively mounting a movement to try to bring about its suppression. Both are free speech, yes, but the latter is an example of free speech actively designed to suppress someone else’s speech.
Choosing to hang Balthus rather than something else effectively silences the speech of all other painters who could have been hung there. For that matter, insisting that we ignore the petition (as many have) is effectively silencing 11,000 people—more effectively than they’ve silenced Balthus.
Arguments have losers; some people get platforms and some don’t. If you see that as a moral outrage, you’re going to be outraged all the time.
Hanging Balthus doesn’t silence anybody, or not in any meaningful, targeted way. There are thousands of paintings hung, and not hung, all the time, in thousands of galleries and museums, and they get rotated in and out. (As I am sure you are well aware.)
And if there’s not really any difference between mounting a petition trying to get a work of art withdrawn from public sight and individually critiquing such a petition, why should the latter merit criticism any more than the former? I think it’s a bit amusing that you’re not applying the moral outrage bit against people who mount petitions because they are shocked, disturbed, and offended by a work of art. Or even by a work of pop culture crap, for that matter. (I mean, isn’t being outraged pretty much the explicit basis of the petition in the first place?) What if someone was mounting a petition to have a gallery display of George Quintance’s art either taken down or at least “contextualized” with a statement like “some people are disturbed and offended by this painting because of its valorization of non-heretonormative sexuality”? What about a display of Wonder Woman art that someone wanted to come with a warning about the moral perversions of bondage and lesbianism? Would you see that as not really any different from someone simply expressing a personal opinion about Quaintance’s or Peter’s art, say in the comments thread on a relatively-little-read blog (no offence intended, by the way–but I think it is fair to say that we are not currently in one of the more frequently-trafficked corners of the web)? Would you see that as a reasonable thing for someone to request? I would not be at all surprised if a petition to that effect got at least 11,000 signatures–or perhaps many multiple factors of that number. Would it be okay to “silence” those voices simply because they are articulating a socionormative view? Because, historically, they have been the argument “winners”?
where did I say it was wrong to argue with the petition? My point is it’s not about free speech or censorship or silencing. I think people objecting to the petition on those grounds are making a misleading argument—and I think the petition has a good case on the merits. An argument against Wonder Woman would have less of a case, imo, because I think Marston and Peter are better art than Balthus, who mostly sucks. And also, lesbianism is fine, where child sexual abuse is not; people are allowed to make arguments on the merits of actual content.
“Everything is the same and we’re not allowed to make any moral or aesthetic distinctions when evaluating art” appears to be your position. It’s not mine.And “in the past people have made bad decisions about art, therefore we can’t make any decisions now,” seems, again, to be elaborately dunderheaded to me.
Is the Balthus painting actually good? Or is it an apology for treating kids as sexual objects? It’s amazing to me that people get to defend it without actually engaging with the central question. (I think the Balthus painting is not particularly good, and that it is an apology for treating kids as sexual objects, in case you were wondering.)
I’m not defending the Balthus painting, which personally I found rather creepy, but I’m also not an art expert. I’m also not really attacking the petition, the specifics of which I disagree with, but I’d never criticize the right of someone to object to anything, or even to mobilize opposition to it. I have signed petitions myself, though not ones designed to try to suppress artistic expression. What DID specifically motivate my response here was your claim that there’s not really any difference between an individual expression of opinion and an organized campaign to bring pressure to bear on anyone to remove or suppress a work of art. I think there IS in fact a pretty big difference between those things and that therefore, as an argument, it doesn’t do much to support opposition to opposition to the petition. The rest of it is kind of beside the point, though it would not be, perhaps, if I were indeed more interested in the petition than in what struck me as a false equivalency.
As for lesbianism being fine while child abuse is not … well, I agree with you on that score, but again, that’s not really the point. I doubt you’d deny that there are a great many people who would disagree with us (hello, 48 percent of voters in Alabama, for instance)about that and who might well object to the depiction of lesbianism or any number of other things that offend (in the eyes of the offendees) against socionormative values. Remember the brouhaha about “Piss Christ” or about whoever it was who produced an image of the Virgin Mary out of dung (or any number of other examples of outrage about the arts from the right)? I wasn’t on the side of those who wanted those works suppressed, either, though I have no interest in either of those works of art (or “art”–ymmv), and I’m not going to change my view on that sort of thing when the outrage comes from someone more on my side of the spectrum. People who think so have just as much right to mount organized resistance to the display of such works as those opposed to child abuse have to oppose the display of works by Balthus, or Norman Rockwell, or Paul Peel, or any of the thousands of other artists who have painted, drawn, or even photographed naked or partially naked children, but I doubt we’d be having this discussion if that were the case, because (and forgive me if I am incorrect here) I doubt you’d have been sufficiently worried about the misleading nature of anti-censorship clarion calls from those on the left who objected to such actions to have written an opinion piece about it in which you argued that, really, there’s no difference between personally not liking something and mobilizing opposition to it.
I will assume you’re not making a straw man argument when you re-express my position as “Everything is the same and we’re not allowed to make any moral or aesthetic distinctions when evaluating art” (especially because how we do or don’t evaluate art isn’t even the basis of what I critiqued in your piece) but instead that perhaps I have been insufficiently clear. (I also won’t take the “dunderheaded” remark personally, though it does seem a tad ad hominem I what I thought had hitherto been a polite albeit vigorous difference of opinion. And in that spirit, I sincerely hope that nothing I have said came across as if it were intended to be insulting or personally demeaning to you; we disagree about this and no doubt about many other things, but I respect your opinion and the facility and clarity with which you generally express it.) Obviously, everything isn’t the same, and there’s plenty of art that I find odious for one reason or other (maybe not the art you find odious or think sucks–in fact, I know for certain that we would disagree profoundly on many fronts in this regard), and heck, yes, we ARE allowed to make any moral or ethical distinctions we like–though, to be honest, I tend to find that people who are big on drawing moral distinctions tend to do so with far more absolutism and certainty than is generally warranted. Arguing that a work of art should be suppressed because it is immoral seems to me to be a position deeply lacking in context, in fact, and about the least valid argument you could make in arguing that it should be allowed (or encouraged) to sink into oblivion. Mind you, I don’t believe there is much that can be asserted as an absolute moral value, and maybe you’re picking up on that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize people have moral values (based in whatever ideological system floats their boat) or respect them. It does mean that I am disinclined to accept arguments based on moral objections to any work of art, even ones far more profoundly transgressive than anything I’ve ever seen by Balthus. (I’d love to know what Merrill thinks of Sally Mann, for instance, or Sr?an Spasojevi?’s A Serbian Film, if Balthus shocks her. Good thing they’re n ot on display in the Met, I guess.)
And–sorry to bloviate on–I also think that the either/or argument–is the Balthus painting good OR is it an apology for treating kids as sexual objects–is rather reductive. Are those really the only two options? Can someone not think that a) the painting is NOT good (I have no opinion on that, per se, but I doubt I’d hang it on my wall) and that b) it is, say, a work that recognizes the reality of preadolescent sexuality (and it is a reality) from any number of other points of view than prurient exploitation? I think so. (And no, I wasn’t wondering, but thanks for the clarification nevertheless.)
(Aaaand, just because I can never shut up, I think you may not have fully caught the fact that I have mentioned, way back in my first post, I think, that there IS contextualizing material about Balthus included with the exhibit, which makes clear that he had a [possibly problematic] fascination with preadolescent girls, but which evidently lacks a sufficient degree of moral disapprobation for Merrill. I find it hard to imagine that anyone could visit that gallery, see that painting, read what is there about Balthus and still think that people need to be told “some viewers find this piece offensive or disturbing.”)