On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century

With Mapplethorpe in Cincinnati

• • • With Mapplethorpe in Cincinnati The night "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment" opened in Cincinnati last April (1990), more than 4,000 people crowded into the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), filing through a space built to accommodate 450. They weren't there to schmooze. They concentrated on the pictures as if they expected them to be snatched away at any moment. As if that were inevitable. They waited for up to an hour to get in, then for another hour to view the infamous X, Y, and Z Portfolios. "I know you all want to see at least one nasty one," joked curator Jack Sawyer at one point as he tried to keep the line moving. "The photos will be there 'til May 26. You'll have another opportunity ." Almost instantly the line grew longer, as if people didn't believe him. This, after all, was Cincinnati. Where you can't find an X-rated anything . Where Hustler publisher Larry Flynt got a sentence of seven to twenty-five years for pandering obscenity. Where-weeks before Mapplethorpe's photographs arrived-the county sheriff declared several of them "criminally obscene." The whole town knew that meant police action. It was only a question of what action: Arresting museum director Dennis Barrie? Shutting down the exhibit? Confiscating the pictures? Throwing a sheet over the X, Y, and Z Portfolios' display case? I heard all these possibilities discussed in April. And I realized, as the trial began September 24, that most Cincinnatians thought something else was inevitable as well-that the museum and its director would be convicted. Dennis Barrie, however, entered the courtroom that first day of trial declaring his "faith in the system." Local reporters rolled their eyes. Museum supporters smiled politely. Over the next two weeks, I heard Cincinnatians giving their hometown such unflattering labels as "a With Mapplethorpe in Cincinnati 271 feudal society" and"Albania." They were already tallying up Barrie's grounds for appeal. Such fatalism was born out of a long local history of moral crusades. Part of that history, county Sheriff Simon Leis, stood outside the courthouse on day one of the trial, staring grimly down at protestors from Gay and Lesbian March Activists (GLMA), ACT UP, and Voice Against Censorship. A square-jawed ex-Marine, Leis was ready for them. Facing the 150 demonstrators with their anti-Helms, anti-Leis placards were barricades, paddy wagons, 30 sheriff's deputies in yellow latex gloves, the mounted police, and a SWAT team. "I believe that there are certain moral standards not protected by law but which have been established through the ages, that all of us are required to adhere to. Homosexuality is one of the immoral acts," Leis once declared. While county prosecutor in the seventies, Leis routed every adult bookstore, massage parlor, and X-rated movie theater out of his jurisdiction, though he was unsuccessful in shutting down Hair, Oh, Calcutta! and Last Tango in Paris. In 1977, he won the conviction against Flynt, and, though that decision was reversed on appeal, it is still impossible to buy Hustler in Cincinatti. Elected judge in 1982, Leis left the bench after several years to run for the lower-paying job of sheriff . "He couldn't stand being a judge, because he had to obey the law," quipped one lifelong Cincinnatian. Hamilton County's obscenity laws are no different from anyone else's. It's just that Leis has been so aggressive for so long at finding "probable cause" for arrest. The scenario usually goes like this (and it's what everyone predicted for the Contemporary Arts Center): the accused hires a lawyer, stands trial, gets convicted, and ends up in appeals court, where the conviction is eventually overturned. But few can afford to go through this process. The result is self-censorship. Residents know they can cross the river to Kentucky to buy what Hamilton County store owners are too intimidated to sell. Meanwhile, the vice squad-what with real vice in short supplyhas become a cultural arbiter, investigating the possible lewd play (Equus), tracking down the errant 2 Live Crew album, attending a photo exhibit of male nudes at the one alternative art space. Last May, four sheriff's officers apprehended a model at a nightclub fashion show for wearing a "see-through" lace bra. Three days after the courthouse 272 . WAR ON ART demonstration, they arrested a gay couple for holding hands-as...