Voices of a Few Carrying Weight in Arts Debate : Controversy: Protests by a vocal minority have had a ‘chilling effect’ on exhibitors and public officials who are afraid to rock the boat now that the content of art is under scrutiny.

When John and Ernie Feeney complain, the Costa Mesa City Council sits up and listens.

And that, say arts activists, is just what they predicted would happen as a result of the acrimonious debate over the National Endowment for the Arts and its support of a handful of works some have classified as obscene or sacrilegious.

“It really does seem like there’s one person making these decisions, and deciding what the rest of the public can or cannot see,” says Joe Felz of the Long Beach/Orange County Committee of the national Coalition for Freedom of Expression. “That’s been our point all along.”

The Feeneys are the Costa Mesa residents who first made headlines last summer when, virtually single-handedly, they successfully lobbied the city to require recipients of cultural arts grants to promise that money would not be used for “obscene matters” or for “the conduct of any religious or political activity.”

The couple has been back in the news lately, charging that the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse had violated that new law in staging Christopher Durang’s religious satire “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.” On Monday, however, the city attorney ruled that the production has not violated the city’s arts-grant restrictions.

The Feeneys aren’t just an anomaly, isolated in politically conservative Orange County. Moreover, other examples where incensed individuals have triggered widespread debate over the arts include not only works and institutions that receive public funding, but also strictly commercial ventures as well.

Consider the 1989 campaign by a Michigan woman, Terry Rakolta, against the raunchy Fox network TV show “Married . . . With Children.” Her one-woman campaign targeting advertisers on the show not only prompted one company to pull a commercial from the series (and several others to consider it) but also made national headlines. Rakolta made her case on numerous TV news and talk shows.

More recently, Florida lawyer Jack Thompson launched a highly successful one-man crusade against the rap group 2 Live Crew, which led eventually not only to a ruling by a U.S. District judge that the group’s album “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” is obscene, but also to arrests of band members after a performance and arrests of record retailers who sold the album.

Call it the “chilling effect” theory: Arts organizations and public officials, afraid of rocking the boat at a time when the content of art is under increasing scrutiny, will be more likely to heed any objections, no matter how isolated or narrowly based.

A further effect, some arts activists predict, is that presenting groups and institutions will fall back on “safer” works to avoid controversy in the first place.

Recent events in Orange County and elsewhere, say observers, are bearing out the theory.

Take the case of John and Ernie Feeney. Costa Mesa residents for 25 years, they grabbed attention in June upon complaining to the City Council about a South Coast Repertory flyer urging support of the embattled NEA.

“I got a copy of the flyer, and they give a full-fledged, unconditional endorsement to the NEA,” John Feeney said at the time. “In doing so, they gave an endorsement to things like submerging an image of Jesus Christ in vats of urine,” a reference to the now-famous Andres Serrano photograph “Piss Christ,” which helped set off the NEA controversy.

The council first responded to the Feeneys by delaying distribution of $175,000 in cultural arts grants to 13 groups to investigate whether SCR had used any city funds in printing or distributing the flyer. Later, the council adopted language attaching restrictions to the arts grants.

While considerably less restrictive than language proposed by the Feeneys--essentially mirroring existing state law--the adopted clauses were attacked by local arts activists, and the American Civil Liberties Union reportedly is preparing to take legal action against the city.

The Feeneys came back this month to test the new restrictions. Their target this time was a production of “Sister Mary” at Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, which has received $20,000 in city funds this year, in addition to getting free rent and other operational help (they also are up for an additional $9,400 in city arts grants).

Ernie Feeney attacked the play, which takes a sharply satiric dig at Catholic education, as “anti-religious bigotry”--and thus, by her estimation, a violation of the city’s proviso against religious activity.

Rebecca Jurado, counsel for the Orange County chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, has argued that the production of “Sister Mary” can in no way be interpreted as a “religious activity” as defined by the state Constitution.

Although City Atty. Thomas Kathe’s ruling Monday sided with the ACLU and against the Feeneys’ wishes, the couple succeeded at least as far as getting the council once again to take up their cause.

And if the Feeneys have lost a battle, they may have won the war if, as councilwoman Sandra L. Genis warns, the “Sister Mary” flap results in reduced grants to the playhouse. The city will distribute an additional $75,000 in arts grants in the weeks ahead, with $9,400 earmarked for the playhouse in an arts committee recommendation. That amount is not set in stone: Genis said, “I personally am going to be looking at each grant very carefully.”

Genis said she has read the script for “Sister Mary” and found it an unfair distortion of the Catholic church’s teachings. (Genis is not Catholic.) “I still have difficulty that you can’t do (pro-) religious stuff but you can do anti-religious stuff,” she said.

The flip side of such crusades can be seen in several incidents in which local organizations edited themselves rather than risk offending the public.

In April, primarily over objections from board chairwoman Beverly Gunther, a photograph of a nude John Lennon embracing his fully clothed wife, Yoko Ono, was removed from an exhibit at Fullerton’s Muckenthaler Cultural Center. Gunther said the photo showed Lennon as “weak,” and thus did not fit the theme of the exhibit, “Heroes, Heroines, Idols and Icons.” The photo was reinstated, but curator Norman Lloyd quit over the incident because he felt his authority had been undermined, regardless of the outcome.

Free-lance stage director Marla Gam-Hudson had planned to cast an interracial version of “Romeo and Juliet,” and had even put out audition notices over the summer calling for a black Romeo. But her plans were nixed at the last moment by the La Habra Community Theatre board at an emergency meeting last month. Board members cited fears that an interracial twist on Shakespeare’s tragedy would not go over well with their subscribers.

Also last month, plans for a poster commemorating the opening of the new terminal at John Wayne Airport went off track when Anaheim printer Bob Cashman--who had offered to print 2,000 copies for free--objected to the painting of a nude male torso by artist Jim Morphesis.

By the time the airport arts commission could act, it was too late to print the poster in time for the terminal’s opening festivities. In La Habra, meanwhile, Gam-Hudson is in rehearsals for “Romeo and Juliet”--with two white actors alternating the lead role.

And at the Muckenthaler, Robert Zingg has taken over Norman Lloyd’s job--only without any curating duties. Zingg only handles the logistic and administrative end of exhibits, for which works will be chosen by guest curators or by jury.

The public should be free to express its views, Felz and other arts activists say. But they also maintain that those views should be considered in context. “They (individual members of the public) are really promoting a single viewpoint,” Felz says. “That’s not a thought that reflects what a democracy is about.”

The success of national figures in raising issues of artistic content has encouraged the Feeneys and others to try the same on a local level, and has made some arts presenters wary to rock the boat, Felz says.

“I think it is a real small minority of people that feel empowered now to dictate what the rest of the community can see or do,” Felz said.

Councilwoman Genis rejects the notion that Costa Mesa is giving unfair weight to the Feeneys’ point of view.

“I’ve gotten complaints from other citizens, too, who have been upset, but who perhaps haven’t been as vocal,” Genis said. And she added: “We certainly do seem to be paying attention to the arts people, or we wouldn’t be paying them a quarter of a million dollars (in arts grants). . . . I think the arts people view themselves as sacred cows sometimes.”

Naida Osline of the Coalition for Freedom of Expression says that, in a sense, the recent controversies in Orange County have helped galvanize the local arts community.

“The Feeneys actually helped our cause in a way,” Osline said. “I know that they’ve mobilized our group.”

And with some exceptions among small groups without professional leadership, Charles Desmerais of the Laguna Art Museum believes predictions of self-censorship among arts institutions have not come to pass.

“I think the Laguna Art Museum, correctly or incorrectly, had an image of being a conservative institution, and yet the great majority of our trustees have responded to this controversy in an extremely positive way,” Desmerais said, pointing in particular to the action by one trustee to buy the Morphesis painting commissioned for the airport poster and donate it to the museum.

“As I look around at other institutions, I see the same thing,” Desmerais added. “People are seeing this as an opportunity to stand up for what’s right, and an obligation to stand up for what’s right.”