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The Sexual Politics of Censorship
- Wesleyan University Press
- Chapter
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• • • The Sexual Politics of Censorship We're not talking about artistic nudes. -press secretary to Representative Dana Rohrabacher M artha Wilson, director of Franklin Furnace, a major downtown venue for experimental art, came to work on May 21, 1990, to find large white stickers fixed to the front door: "VACATE-DO NOT ENTER. THE DEPARTMENT OF BUILDINGS HAS DETERMINED THAT CONDITIONS IN THIS PREMISES ARE IMMINENTLY PERILOUS TO LIFE." After fifteen years as an archive and performance showcase, the Furnace had been charged with not having an illuminated exit sign or emergency lighting, and with keeping the front door locked during a show. The action, however, had been prompted by another kind of emergency. It started the day Karen Finley's installation opened, one week after syndicated columnists Evans and Novak ridiculed the performance artist as "a nude chocolate-smeared young woman." Wilson says: "Karen's show triggered it. I don't think there's any doubt about it. People for the American Way told us we could expect something from the religious right because this has been going on all over the country." According to Franklin Furnace, a man who'd attended Finley's opening got into an argument with staff members later that evening, when he wanted to leave and couldn't figure out how to buzz himself out.* "He's not a performance goer," says Wilson. "He was there for *On the day this article appeared in the Voice, a man phoned me to say that he was the one who'd called the fire department-not because of Karen Finley's installation, but because of Diane Torr's performance, Crossing the River Styx, staged in the basement. Torr had been working with a live band, and the man said he wanted to leave because he could not take the high-decibel music. The upstairs door was locked, however. Though the man refused to identify himself, this version of events was later confirmed by Torr. But for the Furnace staff to have assumed what they assumed was completely logical in the repressive atmosphere of summer 1990. The Sexual Politics of Censorship 259 another purpose." The man decided to report the Furnace. As spokeswoman Barbara Pollack put it, "We're operating in an atmosphere where people feel if they don't like art, they can call in the authorities." Franklin Furnace is open again, but the basement performance space remains closed. Of course, it was the fire department, not the vice squad, that shut them down. But when people send the law after art, there's always some hidden agenda. That's true from here to Sincinnati. I grew up in Fundamentalist Land, that theme park of guilt and transgression. I knew little of art, but lots about the God who could smite. Lately, I've wondered whether the National Endowment for the Arts didn't fund the experience that helped to open some door-no, some fire exit-in me. I was stuck in the glue of depression out in the heart of Illinois when I happened to see the Bread and Puppet Theater on cable television. In this play of shrouded, masked characters, all moving at a foghorn's pace, a dead man rises. A river is a very tall character. The narrator whispers. I still can't quite articulate what moved me, but the piece said: "Possibility." Eighteen years later, I can still remember nearly every line and image. So, as the zealots force their scarlet letters on the art world, I know they're desperate to hold the fire exits shut. They see boundaries breaking . They see libidos play prime time. Porn walks in and out of the video store. Abortions are still legal; women who want sex aren't necessarily "bad." And gay people keep popping out of their closets. "Secular " can't even describe such humanism. The Saved are always a minority among the Damned. Practicing zealots don't feel powerful, but beleaguered. That's why they're obsessed with policing the boundaries of the permissible. For a while in the eighties, it looked as if the right might sell their moral majority idea and transform the culture into some Heritage Park version of the Handmaid's Tale. But the Saved lost their Ronnie; their grip on prime time, if not Congress; even their moral high ground. How will they erase those sex-crazed Jimmies (Bakker/Swaggart) from our minds? Regroup around some unseen enemy. That's how. And wouldn't ya...