Costa Mesa Edict Puts Periled in Great Company

Quick--what do the following works have in common?

Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”

Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.”

Bernstein and Sondheim’s “West Side Story.”

Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady.”

Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

Rodin’s “The Kiss.”

Answer: Besides being a classic in its field, each of these cultural landmarks could bring down the wrath of the Costa Mesa City Council. If any city-supported arts group tried to present any of these works, the local pols just might try to penalize them.

Sound far-fetched? Not if the city continues down the rocky road onto which it turned earlier this week when it moved toward limiting the types of arts activities that will qualify for city grants.

This is the same City Council that a few weeks ago held up all city grants while it tried to determine whether South Coast Repertory had used some city money to pay for a flyer voicing support of the henpecked National Endowment for the Arts. This time, though, the council really stepped over the line that separates the culturally shortsighted from the out-and-out legislatively reckless.

Satisfied that SCR paid for its leaflet without besmirching Costa Mesa dollars, the council nonetheless decided to require all groups receiving city arts grants to furnish detailed reports showing exactly how the money is spent.

Which is no problem. It may be a little on the paranoid side--are they worried that members of the Costa Mesa Art League are secretly spending city money on weapons and gouache for left-wing insurgents in Nicaragua? But a governmental body certainly has the right to know where its money goes.

But Costa Mesa didn’t stop there. Egged on by one citizen who objects to everything the NEA stands for, the council accepted the individual’s suggestion to place restrictions on arts-grant recipients, and then asked the city attorney to write the restrictions into law.

The conditions sound suspiciously familiar to those Sen. Jesse Helms’ tried (in vain) to impose on NEA recipients: Arts groups would be required to promise “to neither visually nor verbally, deliberately denigrate anyone’s race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical handicap, marital status, sex or age.”

So what’s wrong with that? After all, who likes to be denigrated? But the restriction is ridiculously broad. Still, my qualm is not with the citizen who proposed it. Everyone has the right to participate in the workings of his government, to voice his complaints and to offer his suggestions.

It’s the boneheadedness of the council that is disturbing here. It’s bad enough that these officials can’t see the extent to which this would hamstring arts groups. And with no more effort or thought than is required for a quick knee-jerk, they cave in to one squeaky wheel and instructed the city attorney to make this language legally binding.

Under those conditions, South Coast Repertory would be in for trouble if it tried to stage “The Merchant of Venice.” Jews and bankers alike easily could complain that they are denigrated by Shakespeare’s portrait of Shylock.

Opera Pacific would be open to complaints about nearly every opera or musical it has presented, from the the raging misogyny in “Don Giovanni,” to the insults of Hungarians and Cockneys in “My Fair Lady” to the racial epithets against Puerto Ricans in “West Side Story.”

Should an art gallery try to exhibit Rodin’s “The Kiss,” or a reasonable facsimile thereof, it most certainly would offend some religious fundamentalist who would see the very embodiment of sin in this sculpture of a naked man and woman locked in passionate embrace. (Rodin never indicated whether the couple are even married!)

And heaven help the theater or poetry group that tries to stage a reading of “Huckleberry Finn” in which Twain skewers, among a variety of subjects, the hypocrisy he saw in Christian do-gooders who care more about the letter than the spirit of laws about brotherhood, tolerance and righteousness.

Perhaps these worries are premature. Perhaps the city attorney will throw the suggested limitations back to the council stamped “Return to Sender.” Certainly any lawyer worth his juris doctorate will see the folly in trying to legalize this wholesale emasculation of the First Amendment.

But cities have enacted dumber laws than this, and until the council comes to its senses, arts groups should make it known that such cavalier attitude toward the arts is simply unacceptable.

An obvious first step would be to refuse arts grants from the city. While the council probably could not care less and would be more than willing to divert the money to some other vital civic need--like another shiny new strip mall--it would make an important statement to the community that arts organizations will have no part of such small-mindedness.

Beyond that, arts groups that operate in Costa Mesa should encourage their boards--which largely are composed of influential members of the community, business and society--to pressure the City Council to pay attention to the needs of the entire city, not just one angry voice. (It’s nice to hear, by the way, officials at the Orange County Performing Arts Center ending the deafening silence with which they have greeted Costa Mesa’s recent slaps to the local arts community. (Related story, F1.) This is exactly the kind of issue for which the Center folks should be exercising that Cultural Leadership Role they are always crowing about.)

Third, arts organizations should institute a plan to jab the city in the only place it seems to have any nerve endings--the wallet. If the council is going to pass summary judgment on what can or cannot be presented within its borders, arts groups should encourage their patrons to spend their money in cities that show a better sense of appreciation for the arts.

They should urge arts lovers to dine in Newport Beach before heading to the theater in Costa Mesa. Or to buy that new wardrobe at MainPlace in Santa Ana instead of at South Coast Plaza. See how that sits with the city’s godfathers.

I also wonder how this might be going over with the British Consulate, which is participating in the Festival of Britain Orange County-1990, a combination retail sale and arts event based in Costa Mesa. Will England’s famed D’Oyly Carte theater company, which is coming to the Center in the fall, want to have anything to do with a city that could turn thumbs down on Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Mikado” as insulting to Japanese people?

Wake up, council members--the world, even Costa Mesa’s minuscule corner of it, includes a variety of people. Believe it or not, some of them actually like art that makes them think and feel; art that challenges, not lulls; art that questions, not simply agrees with the status quo.

A diverse, vibrant arts scene should be a source of civic pride, not shame. Or is Costa Mesa getting too small for its would-be world-class breeches?