Yep, it's a hoax - or, if you prefer, "a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body."
« Yesterday's Culture Wars | Main | Baracky » The Art of Smashmortion (II)17 Apr 2008 10:08 pm Comments (30)
I'm glad to hear that it's a hoax - but what do you think is meant by the saying that if it were true, it would have violated "basic ethical standards"? I'm not clear on that point. 
I'm glad to hear that it's a hoax - but what do you think is meant by the saying that if it were true, it would have violated "basic ethical standards"? I'm not clear on that point.
"So this is what passes for art today, particularly at our most elite academic institutions? *sigh*" It's funny. At the end of the day, what really correlates with liberal vs conservative self-identification isn't abortion or economics, it's whether or not you think the museums are filled with entartete kunst.
I don't understand. How can Yale say this is unethical? What did she does that was wrong? How can the pro-choice position call this immoral at all? The logic is lethal. But it is logic.
Good for her. I applaud her for activating the hypocrisy switch that passes for a "moral compass" in most "social conservatives."
I can't believe people are suggesting this was a pro-choice stunt. This was a pro-life stunt. Isn't that painfully, glaringly obvious? Get it together, people.
Great sarcasm, Freddie! That made me laugh, man. There's a video of little miss sunshine railing against the patriarchal heteronormative society in which she lives. Clearly from the mouth of a pro-lifer. In fact, she is now contradicting Yale's claim that it was all a stunt: "Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly used a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant." From http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24528 Oh, and Moe, you are still a tool.
"In fact, she is now contradicting Yale's claim that it was all a stunt" Good for her.
I applaud her for activating the hypocrisy switch that passes for a "moral compass" in most "social conservatives." Er, Moe. Perhaps it's silly, but -- I know hypocrisy is the favorite (perhaps only, in some sense) "sin" for people of your ilk*. But what exactly was _hypocritical_ about anyone's reaction here?
Petey, I never cease to be amused by the puerility of people who think that by translating a phrase into German they can discredit the concept by tarring it with Nazi affiliations. If I were to start talking about how we need to ban 'arte degenerado' then would the concept suddenly seem romantic and revolutionary to you instead of fascistic? There is a long tradition of the thoughful intellectuals on the left who have believed that, yes, most modern Western art is in some sense decadent and degenerate.* Please read Paul Sweezy on rock music, or Eric Hobsbawm on violent TV shows, or Simone Weil on the surrealists. Cuba banned the Beatles, after all. Were those thinkers on the right too? The difference between those who can and those who cannot employ the concept of 'arte degenerado' isn't between right and left, it's between discernment and moral idiocy. *In some sense, of course, you would EXPECT a leftist to believe that modern Western art is thoroughly degenerate. If the modern West is completely wrong and deluded in its ideas about economics, as I believe it is, then why should I believe it's any more correct in its ideas about art, sex, or religion?
As for Ms. Shvarts, in the Middle Ages she would have gone to the fire as a witch. Perhaps the medievals were smarter than we are.
Cuba banned the Beatles, after all. "Why don't we do it in the road" and some other lousy pieces aside, I don't think this is really a point in Cuba's favor.
Well, no, I certainly don't think _the Beatles_ ought to have been banned. My point was there's nothing inherently _right wing_ or _conservative_ about holding that art ought to obey some standards of decency.
True. True. Official policy line in Mao's heyday was that any art other than a ballet about a woman who marries her tractor on a collective farm was decadent imperialist trash, right?
It's funny. At the end of the day, what really correlates with liberal vs conservative self-identification isn't abortion or economics, it's whether or not you think the museums are filled with entartete kunst. In one sense, Petey is right. Not "the museums" in general, of course -- Rembrandt and Joshua Reynolds are fine by me. But more generally -- yes, liberals now seem to have a peculiar and unwarranted notion that (1) "good" art can transfigure man, give life meaning (even without God!), serve us dinner, wax our car, and (most liberals) should be subsidized ad infinitum, however much the public loathes it but (2) "art" has no consequences, and images and ideas of degradation, violence, and evil (unless racist or somehow right-wing in intent) can cause no harm -- essentially "ideas don't have consequences". Violence in movies might be an exception, but that's the general message. Which, of course, is flatly absurd. Many conservatives may be simple philistines, and some of the rest may be nits who recognize no merit in anything created after the world ended (it did, you know, and they're right about this!) in 1915. But the general model that only good and never evil can come from art, or that it can't be immoral or trashy or horrid even if of "high quality" is hard to respect intellectually.
"I never cease to be amused by the puerility of people who think that by translating a phrase into German they can discredit the concept by tarring it with Nazi affiliations. If I were to start talking about how we need to ban 'arte degenerado' then would the concept suddenly seem romantic and revolutionary to you instead of fascistic?" I'm not doing any translating. It sounds better in the original German because it really is originally German. The whole concept of entartete kunst come from a very specific place and time. If I were to refer to Volkswagens as Volkswagens rather than as People's Cars, I don't think I'd be translating either.
Petey, do you think that it would be *possible* for art to be "degenerate?" I mean, really *degenerate*? I mean, in some sense of the word "degenerate" that you would recognize as bad?
I applaud her for activating the hypocrisy switch that passes for a "moral compass" in most "social conservatives." I think he's referring to the social conservatives who are out baying for her blood or something. Otherwise "hypocrisy" really doesn't make sense here.
Marquis, I think Orwell's remarks on Salvador Dali are apropos here. "And, after all, the worst crimes are not always the punishable ones. By encouraging necrophilic reveries one probably does quite as much harm as by, say, picking pockets at the races. One ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other. The first thing that we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp. In the same way it should be possible to say, ‘This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman.’ Unless one can say that, at least in imagination, one is shirking the implications of the fact that an artist is also a citizen and a human being."
"Petey, do you think that it would be *possible* for art to be "degenerate?" I mean, really *degenerate*? I mean, in some sense of the word "degenerate" that you would recognize as bad?" In short, no. I think there is plenty of "bad" art, but that's a function of its art, not its morals. I don't judge my art based on its morals. To do so is to miss the point in a pretty fundamental way. To do so is to treat art as if it were religion, which is a pretty lousy way to look at art. There's a wonderful movie called The Architecture of Doom about how the problem with the Nazis can be encapsulated in that they had really bad taste in art and architecture. I agree with the movie's thesis, but that doesn't mean I find the Nazis' artistic taste "degenerate". Kitsch may be poor art, but it's not poor morals. Art is about the world of the imagination. One can write a novel from the point of view of a serial killer or child molester without being a bad person. Imagination should roam free while only behavior should be constrained. A lot of folks miss this basic distinction. Now, art can certainly contain political messages that we might individually disagree with. I'm not a fan of the politics of Triumph of the Will, for example. But as art, it's a damn good movie.
Petey, Uh, no, the _concept_ of degenerate art is very old. It goes back at least to Plato, if not before. Suggesting that the Nazis invented it makes you seem historically illiterate. Most thoughtful people since Plato's time have realized that art certainly has the potential to be degenerate (in the sense of leading us away from the good, the true, and the beautiful) and there's no reason why that kind of art should be valorized. No, I don't think that what we do with our 'imagination' is without moral impact. There are sins of thought as well as of action, you know. When an artist pollutes our imagination and gets us to indulge the worst side of our nature- whether we act on it or not- they are doing quite as much harm as by, say, picking someone's pocket. The purpose of art, it seems clear, is to lead us in the direction of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Atheistic artists can do that, inasmuch as they set up a compelling standard of secular virtue that attracts us- since all forms of true virtue, whether they call themselves 'secular' or 'atheistic; or not, ultimately have their origin in God. Artists can also do that in a negative sense, by drawing a picture of the evil and horror that the world contains. Plenty of people have come to God by meditating on the world's evil, and I have no doubt that a book could be written about a child molester that spoke to people's inner sense of repugnance and drew them in the direction of virtue. But when an artist deliberately sets out to overcome all our natural horrors and repugnances, to separate what ought to be together and to put us in touch with our darkest natures, then yes I consider that both bad morals and bad art in the deepest sense. Read the Orwell quote again. A wall that stands up is in a sense a well made wall, and its builder is in that sense a good craftsman. But even the best made wall in the world deserves to be torn down if it surrounds a concentration camp. And so it goes with art.
Heck, this isn't even art. It's a nitwitted play for attention by a young woman who never progressed beyond being 4 years old in a temper tantrum. Jeremy Sokol's hoax was far more elegant, artistic, and made far more people think than this goofy stunt will ever do.
"There are sins of thought as well as of action, you know." No, I don't know that. That, precisely, is where you and I part company.
"Well, no, I certainly don't think _the Beatles_ ought to have been banned. My point was there's nothing inherently _right wing_ or _conservative_ about holding that art ought to obey some standards of decency" No, but it's still thuggishly authoritarian.
Re: No, but it's still thuggishly authoritarian. Do you think that simply by name calling you can constitute an argument? "Authoritarian" is not a very good name to call people if they don't mind the label. I would freely admit to being an authoritarian at least in large degree. I think that the basic propositions on which liberal society is founded are false ones. Nothing thuggish about it. I don't think that _the Beatles_ should have been banned because I don't think that there was anything particularly offensive about their music, although I can't judge in that particular context. (I _believe_ that the Beatles were banned on the grounds that they were encouraging laziness and drug use, but I'm not sure.) There are, of course, loads and loads of other things that I would ban. Whether the abortion art ought to have been banned is of course somewhat besides the point. Of course it should be banned, but that wouldn't go even a little way towards the root cause of a society so sick that people actually conceive of these ideas. Unfortunately Miss Shvarts' little exercise in diabolism is simply a symptom of a much deeper degeneracy in society.
You make my point for me. The thuggish part is where you think you have the right to ban whatever displeases you.
It would just be regular old authoritarianism if you had a narrow, specific reason for wanting to ban certain works of art. It's the casualness with which you want to ban "loads and loads of things" that makes you a thug.
"So this is what passes for art today, particularly at our most elite academic institutions?" It is my understanding that, from that article, this does not in fact pass for art and will not be accepted as a senior project or displayed.
mad says: "It would just be regular old authoritarianism if you had a narrow, specific reason for wanting to ban certain works of art. It's the casualness with which you want to ban "loads and loads of things" that makes you a thug." And that's true of faux-left thugs like Hector as well as the general run of rightist thugs who post here, of course. I wonder how long it would take these cretins to re-ban Joyce's "Ulysses" if they thought they could get away with it.
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So this is what passes for art today, particularly at our most elite academic institutions? *sigh*
Posted by Nathan P. Origer | April 17, 2008 10:28 PM