Lucid Dreaming BY BETH E. WILSON
THE NAKED TRUTH Remember the “culture wars” from way back when? Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when the Moral Majority and the American Family Association drew blood against their common foe of secular humanism, battling to preserve the commonwealth from the decadent photographs of Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe and the subversive performance art of the NEA 4? That whole “crusade for decency” culminated in the Republicans taking control of the House in the midterm elections of 1994. Here we stand, on the eve of the mid-term elections in 2006, and many are predicting a turn of this conservative tide, some even predicting a Democratic majority in the Senate when the dust settles after election day. And yet I still feel the distant resonance of those long-ago culture wars. Just a few weeks ago, editors at the Raleigh News & Observer, one of the largest papers in North Carolina, saw fit to publish a rather bold disclaimer on its front page: ADVISORY TO READERS Today’s Life, etc. section includes a photo of a famous fresco by Michelangelo that includes nudity. The story in question, a Cox News Service piece, dealt with a recent study on the varieties of Christian theology practiced in the US, and was illustrated (quite unexceptionally) with a color reproduction of the Creation of Adam panel from the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. (Adam’s the one with the highly dangerous, teeny-weeny wiener.) So what in God’s name drove an editor at a large metropolitan newspaper to decide that his readership might find Michelangelo’s acknowledged masterpiece to be so objectionable that it needed an advisory? Marx once remarked (citing Hegel), that all great world historical events appear, so to speak, twice—the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. In fact the seeds for this farcical advisory were planted in the hotly contested cultural ground of the first culture wars. You might consider this 44 LUCID DREAMING CHRONOGRAM.COM 11/06
one the “culture hiccups.” America was pretty much a cultural backwater for much of its history, until the world historical event of World War II abruptly shifted the center of power from Europe to the New World, squarely placing it on America’s shoulders. We were still a largely agricultural country when that mantle was transferred, even as American artists broke through to the big time with Abstract Expressionism—Pollock, de Kooning, and the others (many, like de Kooning, immigrants themselves) became the poster boys for “Freedom on the March” during the height of the McCarthy era. At that point, the establishment had developed a vested interest in promoting American art and artists on the international stage. It provided credibility, cultural currency, and a sense of sophistication that was necessary as we emerged as a global superpower. Lyndon Johnson signed the law authorizing the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), in 1965, one small part of his progressive social agenda, and one that was seen to have great intrinsic merit at the time. Twenty-five years later, however, the ascendant religious right, ever distrustful of presumably elitist things like art and culture, used the NEA as fodder for its blistering, base-building attack upon all things secular and humanist. Art was at the top of that list. It was high profile, and produced a big bang for the buck. Demagogues like Donald Wildmon of the AFA could feed the paranoia of the simple Christian folk he presumed to guide, using new media like mass fax and e-mail campaigns to barrage unwitting lawmakers with complaints about hot-button issues like anti-Christian art, homosexuality, and why the heck aren’t kids allowed to pray in school. Winning their place in the 1994 “Contract for America” campaign of Newt Gingrich, the direct attacks on artworks have died down considerably. The NEA is no longer permitted to issue grants directly to individual artists, and its budget has been slashed to a pittance. But even now that the glare of the television lights has faded away, we’re left with a country that has effectively devalued art, and that distrusts artists on a fundamental level. As Modern Art