Shock Art: Your Tax Dollars at Work

When photographer Andres Serrano submerged a plastic crucifix in a glass of urine and took a picture of it, he did more than register his feelings about the state of contemporary Christianity. He added one more bone of contention to a controversy surrounding next year’s funding for the National Endowment for the Arts [NEA]—funds that in Serrano’s case went toward putting Piss Christ on public exhibit.

“What is at issue here is not the First Amendment,” Rep. Paul Henry (R-Mich.) told CT. “What is at issue is the appropriate spending of public dollars and whether public funding for these types of projects is appropriate.” Also at issue is whether standards should be established for artists and museums to follow when they receive public funds.

Who Decides What Is Offensive?

Surely no one wants the government to fund the production and public display of gratuitously offensive art, such as pornography. Yet determining what is and what is not patently offensive (and hence what is and is not art) is not so clear-cut. Things get more complicated when the government gets involved in making the judgment calls.

“The democratic process allows for all sorts of things to happen, especially in the creative community,” says Ed Boeve, chairman of the art department at Calvin College and president of CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts). “As soon as we set up people in government to monitor art and creative people, we begin to behave like totalitarian governments.”

Should there be no standards at all, then, for artists who receive public funds? Should art commissioned for public parks and squares be left to the whim of the artist? This has been the policy in the past, and it has sometimes led to controversy when the finished work is patently offensive to the community’s sensibilities.

“When truth isn’t the issue and beauty isn’t agreed upon, as in our society, it’s tough to say what’s acceptable in the public arena as public art,” says Phillip Griffith, cofounder of Christians in the Arts Networking. “There’s a lack of standards. In public art, we need to be raising a standard, and Christians need to participate in the committees [that select the art].”

Last month, the House of Representatives voted to trim the 1990 NEA budget by $45,000—the amount of money spent on two exhibitions, one of Serrano’s work and another showing the work of the late Robert Mapplethorpe, some of whose photographs are explicitly homoerotic. When a retrospective of Mapplethorpe’s work was scheduled to show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the museum—which received NEA funds—decided to cancel the show. The decision to cancel came on the heels of a June 8 letter sent from 108 House members to the acting NEA chairman, Hugh Southern. “If the NEA has enough money to fund this type of project,” the letter stated, “then perhaps the NEA has too much money to handle responsibly.”

According to Congressman Henry, however, the answer does not lie in cutting NEA funds. “I think we ought to hold this in perspective,” he says. “Complaints have been registered in less than one out of every thousand grants the NEA allocates. Many of these funds go to educational institutions, including Christian institutions.”

“Both of the instances which aroused the wrath of many—including myself,” Henry continues, “were subgrants over which NEA did not have direct control, although it obviously had ultimate responsibility.” In nipping NEA’s budget, Henry says, “Congress has spoken very clearly that it doesn’t view salacious presentations as appropriate at any level for expenditure of public money. I think it’s also very clear that the NEA will be more careful in policing and monitoring the subgranting process.”

Next Move From The Church?

Ed Knippers, editor of CIVA’s newsletter, thinks such pressure on the NEA to avoid funding controversial art is likely to have a negative effect on support for Christian artists. “The [NEA] money has been coming to Christians also,” Knippers says, “but now they’re not going to touch us with a ten-foot pole. If we’re going to have any clear and true statement in the arts for Christ, it’s going to offend somebody, and we’ll be left out in the cold.”

So how can the church help? “Establish funding,” Knippers says. “What the NEA tries to do for artists in general, the Christian community could do for Christian artists. Set up a touring exhibition for Christian artists who make a powerful statement within the light of a Christian world view, and make it of such a high quality that some of the major museums would be glad to have it.”

Grassroots support for the committed Christian artist may be the best stance for the church to take in the controversy. That will include recognizing the arts as a legitimate realm of spiritual—and evangelical—expression in our culture.

“Art is a vital means by which we express our Christian convictions,” says Boevé. “I have very little patience for people who march and hand out pamphlets, yet who have not supported the arts themselves. If Christians are offended by Serrano’s art, I wonder how much of their budget they have spent to support Christian artists.”

For Griffith, the proper course for the Christian community is not to champion standards and rules for artists, but to encourage Christian artists to put forth their best work. “When you start saying, ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that,’ you end up where the church is now—no art,” he says. “Truth is not always positive. Art can shock, but should people be making art merely to be shocking? For Christians, that’s not acceptable.”

“The church may need to make some changes—to reach out to the arts more than it has. For the church to begin funding on the local level, the pastor should have a good relationship with the artist,” says Griffith. “Know him as a person, as a man or woman of Christ. Without a relationship, there isn’t the trust that allows the artist to push the work to its limits. For the church to support the arts, they have to fund the artist as a person.”

By Dan Coran, a writer living in Willowbrook, Illinois.

The Magical Kingdom’s Box Office

The summer movies of 1989 have come and gone, with more hype and box office than ever. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the second and last sequel in the Spielberg-Lucas series, broke all opening records, only to be surpassed a week later by Ghostbusters II. Then the long-awaited Batman outdid them all by grossing a remarkable $43 million in three days—just about what it cost to make. A lot of people like movies.

So what else does this babble of movies—most oriented toward kids—say about the changing state of moviedom?

Less sex and violence

One of the more obvious conclusions is that, taken as a whole, these movies tended to be somewhat less crassly exploitative: no Rambo, Pale Rider, or Porky’s. While present, the pandering of sex and violence seems to have declined, with the sole exception of the giggling sadism of Lethal Weapon II.

The storm of complaint three years ago over the leering violence of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom apparently chastened a lot of film people, including the Spielberg-Lucas team. This year’s Indiana Jones is notably lighter and warmer, particularly in Sean Connery as Jones’s father. Story writer and producer George Lucas still ascribes magical powers to Christian relics (the ark of the covenant, the Holy Grail). Fortunately, the violence and gore are less lurid, this time not putting the torture of children at its center.

That cannot be said for the lame and unfunny Ghostbusters II, whose plot centers on averting the diabolical possession of a baby by the spirit of a medieval sorcerer. A larger offense lies in the incalculable greed that must have moved the participants to undertake such tasteless repetition. May we be spared any further efforts to make cute Bill Murray’s oafish sex mania.

Worse is Lethal Weapon II—which is about as bad as it gets. Here greed gets the better of everyone.

No answers in Batman

Surely the most entertaining and intriguing movie of the season is Batman, starring Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton. It is a stunning film, a triumph of design atmospherics, costuming, direction, editing, and Jack Nicholson’s acting. In the end, though, it only bewilders, for the film’s dark atmospherics are so persuasive that the evil the culprit savors seems ultimately to win out. Indeed, the Joker dominates story and screen—more ingenious, determined, and lively than poor, indecisive Batman. The audience not only leaves knowing and enjoying more about the Joker, they are perhaps less dismissive of his post-punk nihilism. Given the two adversaries, why not? Batman offers neither answer nor hope.

Audiences looking for hope won’t find much in Dead Poets Society, a befuddled hymn to romantic individualism. Robin Williams mostly restrained himself, and the story is potentially fetching and serious. The prep school English teacher’s credo, “Seize the day,” is a good place to start, but then the story falls into mawkish melodrama that pits older villains against youthful innocents. Never were the bad so rotten nor the young so pure.

One early-summer film worth seeing again is Field of Dreams, starring Keven Costner and James Earl Jones. It is a winsome, modern-day fantasy about baseball, hope, and reconciliation. Seen as metaphor, Field of Dreams prods the thinking about the nature of faith, caring, and the strange way in which this world works.

And that, finally, underneath it all, is what most of these movies portray—a world made meaningful by the powers of the Grail, a good cop, a teacher, or by cornfield dreams. That’s not so different from what audiences have always wanted and Hollywood has always given: escape, triumph, and hope—a magical kingdom where the whole world is put right.

By Roy M. Anker, currently at the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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