There are some
facts of the matter that are worth stating, however. For one thing, regarding legislative action recommended by the
original commission, the report said they found it, "inappropriate to
adjust the level of adult communication to that considered suitable for
children," which the Supreme Court supported. What that meant was that everything should
not be reduced to what is acceptable only for children--adults get to be treated
like adults. Anything else would mean
that what we as individual adults get to view or read must necessarily be
suitable for the youngest of children or must not offend the sensibilities of
the world's most sensitive prudes. The
Commission also recommended that care be taken not to expose such material to
children or to unsuspecting adults, such as not sending unsolicited material,
which meant simply giving them some sort of warning as to the nature of the
material before they viewed it. In
other words, free adults in a free country actually had a right to make a
choice about such things…a kind of take-it-leave-it sort of choice, as opposed
to Congress deciding what you could or could not view. That, of course, led to such labeling as
movie ratings.
I'm going to digress here a
moment: being not only a fine artist who happens to do erotic art, I am also,
politically, a civil libertarian (with a small letter "l"). I recall once watching C-SPAN, a hearing on
the labeling of movies, rap music and computer games, as I recall, featuring
such notables as Senators Biden and Lieberman.
At one point Biden made the comment, "We allow Larry Flint to do
his thing, but…." whatever else he had to say. Well, I'm sorry, Senator, you do not allow anything. The truth of the matter is we do not allow
you to do otherwise. That much is clearly
stated in the First Amendment in the words, "Congress shall make no
law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." No one seemed to pick up on his absolute
misconception of who the hell he thinks he is and what he thinks he and the
rest of Congress "allows."
It's just not that way, not constitutionally. But who notices things like that? It went down in the record as some sort of statement of fact…but
he couldn't be more wrong. It's this
kind of unrepentant proclamations by elected officials that are changing the
very heart and soul of the Constitution and generating a universal
ignorance among the population, the people in whose name the Constitution
was written, that our Bill of Rights is some kind of gift of government, a
privilege they gave and can take away, when, in fact, the Bill of Rights is an
expressed and explicit restriction on government itself. When we lose sight of that truth, the truth
will become the lie Biden intended it to be, and we will, with passive consent,
allow it to happen.
Strangely, it seems to me,
that since the seventies, or the sixties, back when Midnight Cowboy was
X rated, the R ratings nowadays are more and more about "graphic
violence," not nudity or particularly explicit erotica. But if you stop to think about it, it would
be virtually impossible to portray the history of mankind and the human
condition without a great deal of both sex and violence…although violence, for
some strange reason, seems to be more acceptable for viewing than a naked
breast, particularly where parental consent is involved. I wonder what that means sometimes. The " tripple X" movies, rarely, if ever, portray
violence, at least not compared to Saturday morning cartoons.
One glorious exception to the
whole contemporary R-rated-movie thing is a wonderful movie entitled Nell
in which Jodi Foster does several extended (not "brief") nude
scenes. The story, acting and general
production values make it an exceptional movie in itself, but Jodi Foster nude
makes it exquisite, at least in my opinion.
(When I read the nudity warning I was hoping it would be Jodi
Foster. There was another actress named
Natasha Richardson, and actresses named Natasha tend to do nude scenes…or worse
yet, maybe it might be Liam Neeson's rear end, which actually did make an
appearance too.) I couldn't help but
pick up on the words of the character played by Liam Neeson in that movie,
watching Nell dance naked in the moonlight: "Just because I think she's
beautiful doesn't mean I want to have sex with her." Exactly.
In a word it is called "aesthetics." It is a pure and simple sense of beauty in what should be, in the
eyes of any rational human being, beautiful.
I say the same for portrayals of sex itself. Why should it not be a beautiful scene? It is about aesthetics, in my mind, certainly not anything ugly
or evil. It is, in fact, the exercise
of one of those self-evident rights endowed by our Creator--the pursuit of
happiness.
Beginning in
the seventies, there were basically two groups who opposed nudity and
erotica. One group was the
family-values crowd, or what today we might call the "faith based"
censors; the other group was the extreme feminists who saw it all as
exploitation of women. The feminists
were probably the toughest if not the meanest of the lot, and even the most
dangerous (in a First Amendment sort of way), leading the way in both boycotts
(mostly targeting Playboy and Penthouse sold at convenience
stores as prime examples of all that is rotten about men in general) and
enacting or attempting to enact legislation against free expression in the
arts.
The established test, not for
what is obscene, but what should be preemptively forbidden as speech, in the
minds of most legal experts (and I really don't agree with any form of prior
restraint on any speech at all), is the old Supreme Court Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes' statement from 1919-- the concept of a "clear and present
danger." (That did not actually
refer to yelling "Fire!" in a theatre. It did refer to the mailing of anti-draft pamphlets, during a
time of war, by the Socialist Party, which, ironically, today, would probably
be protected speech.) Anyway, given
that criteria, I have to ask myself this question: Will my erotic art present a clear and present danger? Will my artwork lead to the subordination
and degradation of women and ultimately rape on the streets, making evildoers
of otherwise righteous men? (The whole
concept of female nudity is based in a prevailing patriarchal belief system
that the female body, especially exposed, but not necessarily exposed, will
tempt otherwise righteous men, thus making the female body an instrument of
Satan. Strangely enough, the extreme of
feminism falls for the same concept…in their fashion.) So, will my artwork do all that? I don't think so. In fact, I'm quite confident about that one. What do you think?
The criteria for what is
obscene and what is allowed as free expression is calculated by whether or not
it is "socially redeemable" ("redeemable" from what, it
doesn't say), and is based on a test of whether or not it has scientific,
literary, artistic or political significance…otherwise known as the
"SLAP" test. I am certain in
my own mind that my work has artistic value, which is further defined in yet
another Supreme Court test as having "artistic elaboration." That part ought to be obvious, although I
would argue that every line in it is of artistic significance and every line in
it is artistic elaboration. It's a vague
test, you have to admit, but I don't lose any sleep over it.
Now add to that the ruling of
"community standards." That
would seem to indicate that some communities (although a "community"
is not in any way defined within the ruling itself) may decide that a painting
of naked and well-fed ladies by Rubens is, in their opinion, obscene. So be it.
I figure that if I present my erotic art online, with full warning that
it is erotic, and some of it explicitly so, and if such artwork is in violation
of your community's standards, but you still click on the link to it, it is
you, not I, who has brought it into your tightass community…so shame on
you. You should have known better.
Although I read the President's
Commission on Obscenity and Pornography shortly after its publication about
thirty years ago and followed the discussion with personal interest at that
time, some of the quotes used above I've borrowed from an article on the
subject by David M. Edwards. The quotes
used are well documented in footnotes to that article posted online, which is
possibly a mirrored and/or abridged version of the original: http://home.earthlink.net/~durangodave/html/writing/Censorship.htm
Continued