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Let the Arts Be Unfettered by Politics of the Moment

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The U.S. Senate’s vote on July 26 to bar federal support of “obscene or indecent” artwork is the most serious and radical assault on freedom of expression to occur in this country since the days of Joe McCarthy and “blacklists.” Worse, the measure sponsored by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) is part of an accelerating pattern of censorship.

This action is the culmination of a plague that has moved from the mosques of Tehran to the very temple of democracy. It stems from a sensibility that wants to deny and destroy anything that it finds offensive or disagreeable.

Helms’ insidious proposal would bar the National Endowment for the Arts from making grants to organizations that support artwork found offensive by some people. That makes the senator a spiritual blood brother of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The ayatollah’s death threats against Salman Rushdie differ only in degree from Helms’ desire to deny federal funds to Robert Mapplethorpe or Andres Serrano, both are the acts of self-appointed censors.

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We can understand that sometimes some people may find a particular work of art offensive. Yet there is a great difference between criticizing a work as reprehensible and censoring it.

Whatever the serious themes explored and profound statements intended by the artists, there may not exist a mass audience for homoerotic and sadomasochistic images or crucifixes dipped in urine (Serrano’s work titled “Piss Christ”). Nevertheless, artists must have the opportunity to experiment and create.

Without an atmosphere of tolerance, the artistic imagination is forced underground. Those societies that have absolutely no tolerance for expressions outside the narrow bounds of a particular ideology pay for their lack of dialogue. The result in such intolerant societies: disappearances, gulags and massacres in public squares.

The Senate’s action is particularly shocking on two counts. It gives the Senate’s imprimatur to censorship, thus encouraging those who wish to ban or censor art in any form. Also, only two senators, Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) and John H. Chaffee (R-R.I.), had the courage to speak against Helms’ amendment.

The disregard for freedom of expression has even infected those who should know better. In the last few months alone the following attacks against artistic freedom have occurred:

--In an episode of CBS-TV’s “Designing Women,” one of the program’s star characters crashes her car repeatedly into a newsstand because it sells pornographic magazines; the show’s writers portray her as a heroine.

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--Civil-rights activists demand that a UCLA-funded film with an anti-Mexican theme including bestiality be censored for being racist and sexist.

--Joseph Papp’s Public Theater in New York cancels a scheduled production by the El-Hakawati Palestinian Theater Company. Under pressure, Papp agrees to present it next year, but only in conjunction with an Israeli play.

The point is that whether in literature, the visual arts or any other art form, freedom of expression is essential. We, too, are always offended by racism and often offended by pornography. However, to diminish freedom for some is to diminish it for all. No nation that denies to its artists freedom of expression can ever hope to nurture great art, which is to say, great ideas compellingly (often provocatively) expressed. Failure to adhere to this standard--however offensive its products may sometimes be--guarantees the banality and ultimate demise of the nation and the culture that sustains it.

Indeed, it is the nature of great art to risk intellectual and emotional provocation. Such risks are understood and valued by informed opinion, such as that institutionalized in the NEA’s peer-review process. For more than 20 years, this procedure has served our nation and its artists with distinction.

And, yes, taxpayers’ money does fund the art. But we must keep in mind that, as a mature nation, we have reached a general consensus to nurture and cultivate the arts. Rather than dictate the nature of the artwork, we should allow our artists total freedom to create.

We also recognize that no system is beyond improvement. However, to tamper with the essential autonomy of the National Endowment for the Arts as the Senate has done is to undermine the cornerstone of American democracy--the First Amendment of our Constitution.

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The measure approved by the Senate now moves to a Senate-House conference committee where a final bill will be framed. We urge the conferees to ponder these words from the charter of PEN, the international writers organization:

“In all circumstances . . . works of art and libraries, the patrimony of humanity at large, should be left untouched by national or political passion. The PEN stands for the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations, and members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in the country and community to which they belong.”

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