You remember the Tate, don’t you? Sir Quinten of the BBFC decided that DESTRICTED should get an R-rating so it could play in the Tate. The can of Artist’s Shit a few posts down is from the Tate Collection. Behold the latest Artistic Merit from the Tate. According the art critic/host of the video, the runners are “having the time of their lives!” I think he need to get out more…
When engaged in a debate there is a risk that you will arrive at a point when you realize that your opponent is not only incurious and ill-informed, but also willing to say almost anything, no matter how irrelevant and inflammatory, to score rhetorical points. When that point is reached, you realize that any light that might be shed by the debate will be blotted out by the heat; that there’s no point of any further engagement. I didn’t reach that point when Alison Croggon said this:
”…the defining essence of pornography is that it endorses, condones or encourages abusive sexual practice…”
Nor when she said this:
“I do find much pornography - especially the stuff you get on the internet - absolutely horrifying: yes, I’ve looked, young Russian women getting fucked by dogs with the emptiest eyes I’ve ever seen, what is that story? That’s not freedom, that’s slavery and imprisonment and rape. That’s not about life, that’s about killing something.”
Or even this: (more…)
I’m afraid things are not going well between me and Alison Croggon.She is a critic, and as such she is deeply wedded to the parsing of “artistic merit.” Debate about the merits of one work or another is, after all, the meat and potatoes of a critics life.
I have offered my own excoriating criticism of various erotic (I use the term loosely) films, and I have no problem with the critical assessment of work. Not all artwork is equal, nor or all artists; and certainly not at all times. Changes in fashion and taste may, over time, lift some artists from obscurity or derision. Others who had been ascendant may drift into oblivion. Everyone knows the name Mozart. Salieri is a footnote.
Where Alison and I disagree vehemently is on whether or not “artistic merit” has any place in place in the law, any place deciding whether or not a work may be banned, or whether or not an artist may be imprisoned.
Alison Croggon is an Australian writer and critic. She is also the driving force behind the 2020 Open Letter in Support of Bill Henson, a letter signed on to by a couple dozen luminaries of the Australian arts and culture scene. The night before last I decided I would e-mail her, and she’s been kind enough to assent to my posting the resulting correspondence:
From: tony@comstockfilms.com
Subject: CensorshipDate: May 29, 2008 2:57:51 PM EDT
To: alisoncroggon@xxxx.net.auWhere were you and your friends when police were sent to prevent the screening of my film last year in Melbourne? Or the year before that in Sydney?
Rather stark, but it does get to the point. It also got a response… (more…)
