CULTURE WATCH : Regulating Art

Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, whose recent attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts were followed by the resignation of its director, has now loosed his tongue on the Public Broadcasting Service, which he accuses of pornography and blasphemy. What Andres Serrano’s photograph “Piss Christ” was for the NEA, a documentary on black gays entitled “Tongues Untied” is becoming for PBS.

The program, like the photo, can be defended, but let us concede, for the sake of argument, that both are morally and aesthetically repugnant. What then?

Georges Clemenceau once said, “War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.” But at the level not of law but of prudence, there are good reasons for “letting the military do its job.” We know in advance that, warfare being what it is, atrocities will occur, but we do not allow those atrocities to subvert the broader prudence of reasonable autonomy for the Army.

So it should be as well for artists and journalists. Thanks to the 1st Amendment, the state does not, of course, control either group, but state-subsidized art (via the NEA) or state-subsidized information (via PBS) is subject to a measure of state control. The real question is not whether to control but how tightly. Atrocities of art and information will occur, but they do not subvert the basic wisdom of letting the artists or journalists do their job. “Piss Christ” and “Tongues Untied,” take them at their worst, are no more an argument against the NEA and PBS than the My Lai massacre is an argument against the Army.