Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Art Beyond the Claptrap



My own art is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside all rules and demands of society.

—EMILE ZOLA, My Hates (1866)



Morality is a tricky thing. It is a concept best defined by flux—which is to say that it is not constant, and that it has always changed through the years depending upon the society, and the era, that forms its limits and extents. What makes something moral, or immoral? This is the question. There are no easy ways to answer it without deconstructing oneself to bits.



We remember, for example, how old folks used to say that watching movies was immoral—or that women wearing pants were immoral. Today, we laugh at such peculiarities of time and history. We watch movies all the time, and our women would rather go about town in the comfort of jeans rather than skirts. Do we all feel we are going to hell? We don’t think so.



D.H. Lawrence, the controversial author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (a now classic novel which was once banned by authorities for being “immoral”), was famous for having observed exactly the same thing when he said that, “What is pornography for one man may be the laughter of genius to another.” Which is true. Morals are relative, never absolutes. Today, for example, that same novel which caused such moralistic fervor when it was first published, is being taught in schools and is considered an important work in the literary canon. What happened to the outcry? And where are those who wrung their hands accusing the book of immorality? They are forgotten—existing only as footnotes to the untenacity of human opinion.



Morality being an inherently controversial matter, however, we do not wish to say anything more about the fluidity of the concept, except to say that it is the complete opposite of what art is: that while morality is all flux and posturing, art is forever.



And having said that, we will also say that there can be no such thing as a moral or immoral art. Art can only be itself, free of the whimsy of our extended evaluations beyond the formal elements of aesthetics. We will explain this notion further by evoking James McNeill Whistler who, in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, wrote: “Art should be independent of all claptrap—should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it.”



Historically, there has always been that struggle between art and our expectations of it as members of a society, which is predominantly puritan. Michaelangelo’s David still meets hysterical opposition whenever it is exhibited, just because it is the statue of a boy (the Biblical David) in flagrante delicto, his penis and pubic hair in plain view for all the world to see. The avant garde artist René Duchamp once shocked everybody when he dug up a toilet bowl and called it “art.” John Singer Sargent’s famous painting of Madame X was a portrait of a society woman in a black gown with one shoulder left bare and strapless—the very daring of which scandalized Paris so much the woman in the painting became shunned by her own social set. And finally, one of the first movies ever made was The Kiss, which was shot by Thomas Alva Edison. This incensed the Church so much for showing two actors briefly kissing, it almost killed the new media into ever existing.



The danger of imposing morality to our estimation of art cannot be overemphasized for the possible tyranny it poses. It is a virtual handcuff to our basic freedom to think, and create. And it also clouds the very attributes great art can bring to society. We will give two examples.



In the 1970s, Filipino director Mike de Leon released Kisapmata, which is a film about a family emotionally brutalized by a father bristling with typical machismo. His uncomfortable concerns over the “welfare” of his newly-wed daughter hinted of the incestuous. One scene follows the shot of the father’s pajama fly growing nearer and nearer the daughter’s bedroom door—something that the Censor’s Board at that time considered scandalous they ordered the scene cut from the print. Critic and film historian Nicanor Tiongson writes of this: “By deeming this too much the censor eliminated not only the point of the scene, but precisely the statement being made about the ugliness of incest. By being so moral, [the censors] had unwittingly sabotaged the very morality [they] purport to champion.”



Another good example is the movie The Last Temptation of Christ, directed by Martin Scorsese, based on the controversial novel by Nikolas Kazantzakis. Both contain the now-famous scene of Jesus Christ being married to, and having sex with, Mary Magadalene. The religious right was in uproar over this “obscenity.” But I’ve always believed that the uproar was a mistake of people seeing only the detail, and not the over-all context. The context was this: Satan is fearful of Christ’s final sacrifice on the cross, and redeeming mankind of its sins. Knowing the dual nature of Jesus at that time (half-man, half-divine), Satan—in the form of a little girl—tempts Jesus for the last time, giving him this dream: he is freed from the pains of the cross, he goes home and leads a normal life no longer as the Savior of the world, and as part of this “normality,” has his own family with Mary Magdalene. (Insert very minor love scene here.) But by the end of this proffered temptation, Jesus Christ renounces Satan and the dream, and proceeds to die for our sins. What’s immoral about this? For the most part, it should be edifying of our faith as Christians instead!



The only immoral art, one should think, is art that does not provoke. When a work does not ask us to question our values, our accepted perspectives of the world, our firm ideas of how it is to be as human beings, then it cannot be art at all. It might as well be a squiggle on the wall, or worse: wallpaper. Wallpapers do not engage, or enrage. But then again, wallpaper can never be considered art. (Unless you’re Duchamp—but that’s entirely another matter together.)
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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