ART AND ABOMINATION

George Orwell's least understood essay concerns Salvador Dali, the notorious artist-cum-provocateur (or provacateur-cum-artist) of the previous century. Orwell was so passionately devoted to freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of thought that people can be forgiven if they assume he was also against censorship: but anyone who has read "Benefit of Clergy," his scathing attack on Dali's autobiography which appeared in 1944, must come away with a somewhat different conclusion. After giving a precis of Dali's disgusting personal habits and artistic tastes as outlined (and glamorized) in the book, which include such things as necrophilia, coprophagia, and various forms of sadism, Owell writes the following:

It will be seen that what the defenders of Dali are claiming is a kind of benefit of clergy. The artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word ‘Art’, and everything is O.K.: kicking little girls in the head is O.K.; even a film like L'Age d'Or is O.K. It is also O.K. that Dali should batten on France for years and then scuttle off like rat as soon as France is in danger. So long as you can paint well enough to pass the test, all shall be forgiven you.

One can see how false this is if one extends it to cover ordinary crime. In an age like our own, when the artist is an altogether exceptional person, he must be allowed a certain amount of irresponsibility, just as a pregnant woman is. Still, no one would say that a pregnant woman should be allowed to commit murder, nor would anyone make such a claim for the artist, however gifted. If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another "King Lear." And, after all, the worst crimes are not always the punishable ones. By encouraging necrophilic reveries one probably does quite as much harm as by, say, picking pockets at the races. One ought to be able to hold in one's head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other. The first thing that we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp. In the same way it should be possible to say, ‘This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman.’ Unless one can say that, at least in imagination, one is shirking the implications of the fact that an artist is also a citizen and a human being.

Orwell stops short of saying the work of Dali must be banned, but if this is not the strongest form of encouragement towards a boycott in every sense of the word -- artistic, commercial, aesthetic, moral -- such a thing does not exist. Orwell is intelligent enough to understand the consequences of banning 'art'; but he is too intelligent to let the word 'art' become a shield and buckler for every degenerate, vile, obscene, disgusting impulse held by mankind. He demands accountability both for the so-called artist and for the audience who pays for it. He is taking a stand for art, but also for decency, and it must be said that he falls farther on the side of decency than art. When he refers to the public hangman, he is no doubt putting himself in the hangman's shoes.

The line between art and obscenity was much on my mind today, due to an accident common to the internet era. While going through an inconcievably tedious list of criminal cases due for trial, I was listening to various documentaries on European directors. One led me to Pier Passolini, the famous (and notorious) Italian poet and film director who is perhaps best remembered for Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, a film not many people can watch without vomiting. There seem to be two schools of thought on the movie: the first is that it is a work of great genius and has tremendous artistic merit as an allegory about consumerism, fascism and the pathology -- or anarchy -- of power; the second, in the words of one critic, is that it is "nearly unwatchable, extremely disturbing, and often literally nauseous".

I have no intention of giving a recitation of all the disgusting and depraved things this film offers. Just doing the small amount of research necessary to write this blog quite put me off my lunch -- and I have attended autopsies. Suffice to say that one of the story acts is called "The Circle of Shit," and believe me, this is not metaphorical. My point is that there are many reputable people in the world of cinema and art who regard "Salò" as a work of authentic genius, possessing real literary merit, rather than an obscenity which ought to be burned by the public hangman. Some say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but this begs the question: are all beholders sane? Are all aesthetic viewpoints equally valid? Is there no objective truth in art, no minimal standard of decency which must be adhered to? Does merely calling oneself an artist, or even sincerely believing that one is contributing something of actual artistic merit to the community at large no matter how vile it may appear on the surface, grant one the "benefit of clergy" Orwell was referring to?

Orwell certainly understood the "slippery slope" of civics: the restriction of one freedom inevitably leads to the restrictions of others. At the same time, he grasped that there are moral absolutes which transcend the artist's claim of immunity, and was unafraid to point out this fact. As it happens, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. We believe in freedom of speech, but we cannot yell "fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no fire. Nor can we share military secrets in time of war. Nor can we incite people to riot, or encourage the violent overthrow of our government, or even slander or libel a fellow human being. Such restrictions on speech exist for the greater good of humanity, but they also exist to draw a deep line in the sand, and tell the forces of moral anarchy, "This far and no father." They exist as a boundary line between the ordinary, more or less "decent" person, and those who seek to exploit the law to further their own twisted aims. You may recall a previous blog of mine in which I detailed how Harvey Weinstein made a definite attempt to normalize his own perversions in the movie "The Burning." Subsequent events have only reinforced my belief that many others are doing precisely the same thing through various artistic mediums. Instead of trying to conform to societal norms, they are doing their damndest to change what is normal: instead of imposing discipline on their own bestial natures, they are trying mightily to convince us there is nothing wrong with them.

In my own artistic works, if I may be permitted to call them artistic, you will undoubtedly encounter some very disturbing things, but I fancy that anyone who reads my fiction would quickly grasp that there is an underlying morality, however deeply it is buried within the story. Even if this is not perceptible to you (in which case I have probably failed in my duty as a writer), it is probably possible to divine what my motives were when I set pen to paper. And it is the question of motive rather than execution that this whole tricky problem uneasily rests. For there are three basic motives to the self-described artist:

1. To entertain.
2. To provoke.
3. To destroy.


When I write a short story, or a novella, or a novel, or any other damned thing, my first motive is always to entertain, by which I mean not necessarily offering mere entertainment, but also enlightenment and education, if the story lends itself to that sort of thing and if I am as a writer am capable of delivering it. I may very well fail in my effort, but entertainment is at any rate is my main objective. If I lower myself to be merely provocative, it is usually as a stylistic trick, to lure the audience back toward my central goal of entertainment -- of holding their interest, and perhaps providing food for thought. I cannot think of anything I've ever written which was purely provocative in the Howard Stern sense of the word, i.e. outrageous for the sake of garnering attention, without the possession of any other motive. The brutal fact is that it is usually one without talent -- but as in the case of Dali, sometimes with considerable talent but no moral compass -- who uses provocation, or shock, as a form of advertising pure and simple. Provocation can have deeper merit if it is employed to spark debate, but the line between provocateur and carnival barker is very fine indeed, and great men have stumbled over it without realizing they had done so, which is sufficient reason in my mind for treating this approach with great caution.

There is however a lower form of artistry than this, one in which quotes around "artistry" must be used as a form of segregation, lest the rest of us be tainted with his stench: the "artist" whose art is a Trojan Horse, created for the express purpose of normalizing his perversions and prejudices. Weinstein tried to do this with "The Burning," albeit in a rather subtle way, but in recent years the subtley of this approach has shed its own skin and become much more blatant. The existence of the internet has allowed a veritable parade of perverts and freaks to seek out others like themselves, form "communities," and begin the process of normalizing themselves in the public eye, and there is no better method for achieving this than through art -- the most readily consumable form of art being television and film.

At this point I should pause to remind the reader that I am politically a centrist with some libertarian leanings. I love freedom and I hate bullying, cant, and cruelty. I try very hard to tolerate those with different opinions or lifestyles even when those opinions or lifestyles leave me something worse than cold, since I believe any baggage I have in those directions is mine to carry. But I refuse to equate tolerance and non-aggression with moral blindness. I refuse to accept moral relativism. I refuse to be lumped in with the degenerate freaks who call themselves artists simply because it's a convenient refuge for their perversions. Art is not synonymous with irresponsibility. It is not a "get out of jail free" card. The artist has no benefit of clergy: he is free to do as he chooses but not free from the consequences of his choices, which includes boycott, and in the most extreme circumstances, and following the necessary legal procedures to determine same, censorship, as the "art" of extreme pornographic filmmakers like Rob Zaccari and Paul Little was censored. I will not hesitate to stand up and shout at poseurs and frauds who masquerade as artists while pushing nefarious ideologies or personal agendas on the sly. And I will hold myself accountable to these standards, and expect others to hold me to them as well. I should rather that, than to be tarred with the same filthy brush.

In the present age, when a systematic effort is being made to destroy age-old notions of morality, it is reasonable to cast a suspicious eye on those who seek to provoke and disgust only to "scuttle like rats" behind the First Amendment, when it is so obvious where their ultimate motive lies. By their motives and not by their works you shall know them.