Last year, there was a manufactured wingnut freak-out over a piece of art at the Smithsonian called Fire In My Belly by David Wojnarowicz. It was obviously manufactured because, as we all know, wingnuts don’t really do culture. No one had actually complained about the exhibit before some rube reporter decided to lose her marbles over it, which prompted actual congressmen [Boehner and Cantor] to do one of their little “stick it to the liberals” dances that go over so well with their hick base, threatening to cut funding from the Smithsonian. Anyway, they all said the exhibit was “anti-Christian,” which it actually wasn’t, but one would have to watch the piece to actually understand that, and again, wingnuts don’t do culture. So the Smithsonian caved, because liberals, sadly and pathetically, do that sometimes.

And now we are doing this again!

Having been pulled from an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution, a film which features ants crawling on a crucifix and a man stitching his mouth together will go on display as part of a larger homosexual exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York.

The nation’s second largest art museum, CNSNews.com reported last week, will feature A Fire In My Belly, a film by David Wojnarowicz, a homosexual producer who unsurprisingly died of AIDS, within an exhibit titled “Hide and Seek.”

[...]

Part of the larger “Hide and Seek” exhibit, which landed just before Christmas last year at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, A Fire in My Belly, critics note, is an amateurish attempt to say something, but about the only message it imparts is that its homosexual creator was a disturbed and tortured soul for whom a viewer should feel pity.

As CNS described the film, “[t]he four-minute version of the video shown in the exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery shows, among other images, ants crawling over the image of Jesus on a crucifix, two halves of a loaf of bread being sewn together, the bloody mouth of a man being sewn shut, a hand dropping coins, a man undressing, a man’s genitals, a bowl of blood, and mummified humans.”

Uh, I’ve seen the piece. One has to be incredibly stupid, if they actually know the context in which the piece was created, not to understand it. It’s art, and again, I know that culture is HARD FOR WINGNUTS, but it’s not difficult to interpret.

Isn’t this wingnut writer oh-so-pissy, though?

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League says he’s not protesting this time around, though:

Bill Donohue, of the Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights, says his organization will not campaign against the museum’s showing the offensive film. “We can’t be like in a dog and pony show every time they show the stupid video,” he told the New York Daily News.

But Donohue did attack museum director Arnold Lehman, who had defended the anti-Christian film by telling the Daily News, “For a city that prides itself on diversity and creativity, there couldn’t be a better exhibition.” Replied Donohue, “For Arnold Lehman, there is no such thing as anti-Catholic art. Catholics who disagree are apparently too stupid to appreciate the complexities of these masterpieces.”

Haha, NOT a dog and pony show? I thought that was basically the point of the Catholic League’s existence.

Anyway, so to sum up, I just had to report the exact same story I was reporting last year about this time, because wingnuts.

If you’d like to see the piece, it’s here.

Elitists of the world, unite!  No, seriously, I’m really glad to see that other museums are pissed off that the Smithsonian caved to a bunch of prudish bigots in the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s work “Fire In My Belly.”  Smith College will be displaying another work from the late artist in their Museum of Art in solidarity and protest.  Here’s part of a statement from the Smith College Museum of Art:

Wojnarowicz produced A Fire in My Belly in 1987, shortly after his partner died of AIDS. His print, Untitled (One Day this Kid…) … was created three years later, when downtown New York City was still being decimated by the AIDS epidemic and conservative forces were fighting attempts to provide treatment and education on the grounds that homosexuals and homosexual activity were “immoral.”

The Smith College Museum of Art purchased Untitled (One Day this Kid…) with support from the Dorius/Spofford Fund for the Study of Civil Liberties and Freedom of Expression. The Fund honors former Smith faculty members Joel Dorius and Edward Spofford, dedicated teachers whose employment was terminated by the College in 1961, after it became known that they were homosexual.

Freedom of expression and tolerance are essential for the sustenance of open academic communities, and the rights of museums to present works of art from a variety of perspectives, free of the threat of censorship, must be preserved. The public has been denied access to one work by David Wojnarowicz. We hope that the exhibition of Untitled (One Day this Kid…) at the Smith College Museum of Art will serve as a reminder of our society’s obligation to confront the injustices of the past and to ensure that the discourse of the future is unfettered by inappropriate political pressure.

Here is the work they will be displaying. Wow.

Says more about him than it does about gay artists, I think.

Christopher Knight at the LA Times wrote a piece which pointed out that the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue’s characterization of David Wojnarowicz’s work “Fire In My Belly” [part of the Smithsonian Hide/Seek exhibit of work depicting gay love until it was removed due to the caterwaulering of the Thomas Kinkade Prints As Fine Art set] as “anti-Christian” was completely incorrect.  I would add that it’s asinine and reveals that Donohue either never watched the video installation in the first place, or he is stupid.  There are no other choices.

Donohue has now responded to Knight, via e-mail:

“It is a sad commentary on gays that they cannot display gay art that is not homoerotic. But then again, if your sole identity is your sexuality, it makes sense. No matter, don’t ask the public, most of whom are Christians, to fund your pornography.”

Uh.  First of all, as Knight points out, the exhibit is privately funded, so stuff it on that point, Donohue.

But secondly, much of the art in the exhibit has nothing to do with homoeroticism, much less anything resembling pornography.  Knight posted pictures of quite a few of the pieces, so click over to see them.  Here are a couple of shots that, presumably, make Bill Donohue’s bits tingle, due to how homoerotically gay they are:

Romaine Brooks, “Self-Portrait”

Berenice Abbott, “Janet Flanner”

DIRTY!

It’s sort of a slow news day, but there are three interesting pieces sitting here as open tabs on my screen, so I will share them with you so that I may then close them:

1. Damon Root has an interesting analysis at Reason about the state of the Prop 8 case and its chances when it inevitably reaches the Supreme Court.  Reason is often an intellectual wasteland, but this is one case where their libertarian perspective and analysis is worthwhile reading, especially as it pertains to Anthony Kennedy:

As for Monday’s proceedings, the outcome looks likely to be favorable to Prop. 8’s opponents. Earlier this week the 9th Circuit announced that Judges Michael Hawkins, Stephen Reinhardt, and N. Randy Smith will hear the appeal. Hawkins and Reinhardt are both widely known as judicial liberals. Indeed, National Review’s Ed Whelan promptly denounced Reinhardt as arguably “the most aggressive liberal judicial activist in the nation.” But perhaps more importantly, as George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr pointed out, “Reinhardt writes like there is no Supreme Court, and as a result his opinions have a remarkable ability to annoy the Justices.” That makes the chances of Perry reaching the Supreme Court even higher.

Assuming that happens, much will depend—as it often does—on the swing vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy. And when it comes to gay rights, Kennedy leans libertarian. In Lawrence v. Texas, for instance, Kennedy declared that “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.” Similarly, in his 1996 majority opinion in Romer v. Evans, Kennedy struck down a Colorado constitutional amendment forbidding state officials from taking any action designed to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. As he wrote, “the amendment imposes a special disability upon those persons alone. Homosexuals are forbidden the safeguards that others enjoy or may seek without constraint.” Together, these decisions suggest Kennedy will once again join the Court’s liberal bloc.

2. Re: the Wingnut Freak-out over gay things at the Smithsonian, a writer named Mark Judge has a piece at Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller which is, somehow, worth reading.  This is officially the first time I’ve read anything at that site that made any sense.  It’s interesting because Judge is, like Bill Donohue, a conservative Catholic, but somehow his panties aren’t all in a wad about the gay stuff!  Indeed, he appreciates the art for what it is, and, unlike Bill Donohue, Judge is intelligent enough to understand the controversial installation about AIDS:

“A Fire in My Belly” shows a crucifix being covered by ants. To me — a conservative Catholic and supporter of Bill Donahue and the Catholic League — it made perfect sense. Christ took on our sins, which meant enduring the terrible humiliation that can come with suffering. This doesn’t mean one needs to resort to blasphemy or scatology, as (yawn) avant-garde artists have done in the past; but it also means that showing Christ with sores, or bruises, or even bugs on him can be an expression of faith and solidarity. If David Wojnarowicz was identifying a friend’s suffering with the suffering of Christ, he was just doing what Christians are called to do. Of course, liberals love to identify their suffering with Christ while ignoring the Lord’s call to conversion, of rejecting sin and becoming a new man. And gay art can particularly suffer from watch-me-suffer kitsch and bombast — “Angels in America,” etc.

He’s wrong about Angels in America, and he’s wrong about the value of blasphemy [I would argue that blasphemy is an extremely appropriate subject matter for art], but it’s nice to see a conservative religious person who hasn’t completely checked his brain at the door.  The writer actually loved much of the art in the Hide/Seek exhibit, and even talks about which piece of art in the exhibition was his favorite and why.

3.  Finally, former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper has a message for troops who would complain about having to serve with people they know are gay:  Deal with it.

Happily, the vast majority of service personnel will do what they’re told. Which will not be a hard sell given that most have already gone on record that they will not mourn the inevitable death of DADT.

Of course, if what bugs you as a pro-DADT warrior is the idea (or the reality) of being forced to get naked in a shower or jammed into a tight submarine or fox hole with someone who’s attracted to members of the same sex, the answer for you is simple: Deal with it. That brother or sister is a human being, you are a human being: Work it out. Straight cops across the country have been lathering up with openly gay colleagues for a long time now. Yet, incidents of locker room misconduct are so uncommon as not to register at all in internal affairs data.

Having spent three-and-a-half decades in a paramilitary institution, I can attest to the rarity of a policy, any policy, that is embraced by all. But I can also confirm that most police personnel adhere to even those policies they find onerous. Why? In part, because they’re made to understand the penalty for not following orders. There’s every reason to believe military personnel will likewise comply.

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who served with many gays throughout his long and distinguished service, pointed out, military personnel who can’t or won’t accept the new policy will have to find another line of work. (Don’t look for a mass exodus.) The same is true for those considering military service in the future.

Yep.  The whole piece is great, so read it.

Oh lordy, let’s watch a wingnut freak-out over nothing.

Conservatives don’t tend to like art.  They feel intimidated by it.  They don’t understand it.  They get their fee fees hurt when art does what art is supposed to do by provoking thought and feeling, by pushing boundaries in order to provide commentary, etc.  Liberals don’t get freaked out in the same way — we understand that, hello, it is art, and if it is Not Your Thing, you are not being forced to look at it or buy it.

So, the freak-out comes to us via Roy Edroso, who brings it to his readers by undertaking the entertaining, if tedious, task of reading Kathryn Jean Lopez’s words at the National Review.  K-Lo is freaked out about this piece from “Penny Starr” [drag name, most likely], a “reporter” for CNS “News.”  You see, there is an exhibit that has been running for a while at the Smithsonian, and will be running through the holiday season and after, and you see, it has naughty GAY stuff in it, and all of this is, of course, part of the War on Christmas, and is, of course, Too Soon, never forget, etc.:

The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitals, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show’s catalog as “homoerotic.”

The exhibit, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” opened on Oct. 30 and will run throughout the Christmas Season, closing on Feb. 13.

Right on through Jesus’ birthday party!

Penny then goes on to detail what has become the exhibit that’s causing the most [stupid] problems [among people who don't understand or respect art]:

“A Fire in My Belly” was created by David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992). The full-length version of this 1987 video, according to the description at the exhibit, is 30 minutes long. The version viewable in the National Portrait Gallery has been edited down to 4 minutes. The description says, “A Fire in My Belly, a compilation of footage largely shot in Mexico, weaves together numerous images of loss, pain, and death into a metaphor for the AIDS epidemic; it concludes in a picture of the world aflame.”

The description speaks of the video artist’s “poetic, yet furious, condemnation of the way greed, religion, and selfishness conspire to label certain people as outside the scope of our caring.” It also quotes Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS, as saying, “When I was told I’d contracted the virus, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I’d contracted a diseased society as well.”

The four-minute version of the video shown in the exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery shows, among other images, ants crawling over the image of Jesus on a crucifix, two halves of a loaf of bread being sewn together, the bloody mouth of a man being sewn shut, a hand dropping coins, a man undressing, a man’s genitals, a bowl of blood, and mummified humans.

A differently edited four-minute version of Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly” video posted on YouTube shows images of ants crawling over the image of Jesus (as does the version exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery), but also shows a man masturbating (an image which is not included in the edited version exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, which only shows a man’s genitals.). The YouTube version also carries a soundtrack that is different from the version exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.

Cue the sanctimonious rubes of the new Republican House majority, because it’s CULTURE WAR OUTRAGE TIME!

The Catholic site CNSNews.com brought the exhibit — called “Hide/Seek,” which “contains video of a Jesus statue with ants crawling on it, as well as works of art with strongly sexual themes” — to Boehner and Cantor’s attention, asking what they thought of it. They could have responded, “We have other shit to do before worrying about the aesthetic merit of some art exhibit in Chinatown,” but that would’ve been too easy. Instead we get:

“American families have a right to expect better from recipients of taxpayer funds in a tough economy,” Boehner’s Spokesman Kevin Smith told CNSNews.com. “While the amount of money involved may be small, it’s symbolic of the arrogance Washington routinely applies to thousands of spending decisions involving Americans’ hard-earned money at a time when one in every 10 Americans is out of work and our children’s future is being threatened by debt.
“Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves to end the job-killing spending spree in Washington,” Smith said.

MURRIKAN FAMILIES SHOULD NEVER BE CONFRONTED WITH ART OR EDUCATION, or moreover, with worldviews that are different from the average heartland teabagger, he is basically saying.

So, of course, the Smithsonian caved to the hicks:

The National Portrait Gallery has removed a work of art from a GLBT-themed exhibition after it attracted conservative and religious ire for its images of homosexuality and Christianity. Director Martin Sullivan announced the removal of A Fire in My Belly by artist David Wojnarowicz after conservative news service CNS wrote yesterday that the “Christmas-season exhibit,” which opened in October, used taxpayer money to indirectly fund an exhibition that includes imagery of genitalia, homoerotic situations, and Christ covered in ants.

[...]

Publicist Bethany Bentley says that until the article was published, the museum had not heard a single objection to the exhibition. “On Friday we had over 10,000 visitors to the gallery, and we had no complaints,” she says.

Well, of course there were no complaints. Before the manufactured outrage from people whose idea of “appreciating art” is picking up Thomas Kinkade prints on clearance, the people who were aware of the exhibition were People Who Go To Museums. There is very little overlap between the two groups.

Of course, this didn’t stop the wingnutterie from engaging in a little Muslim-bashing, because you see, Christians are an oppressed minority in Murrika, etc.:

If these “artists” really wanted to be daring and controversial, they’d create an ant-covered Quran exhibit. But the cowards take the path of least resistance and then applaud their own courage in the face of minuscule risk.

[...]

AIDS? Please, stop these BS excuses, it was meant to offend.

Yes, moron, it’s a piece about AIDS. And if it offended, if it was shocking, perhaps there is an artistic point being made that can’t be explained in the two verses, chorus, bridge and key change of a Toby Keith song. Perhaps.

So anyway, the Culture Wars are back, I guess.  The next two years are going to be such a waste of our time.

For the sake of art, the indeed disturbing Wojnarowicz piece, in its modified YouTube version, is after the jump. No, it is not safe for work, which is why it wasn’t exhibited at Your Work, but rather in a museum of art. You may watch it or not watch it. It’s harrowing, especially with the Diamanda Galas soundtrack added.  I will say, though, that the outrage over this piece, the pearl-clutching and whatnot, is simply proof that this piece of art is extremely effective, whether or not you are moved by it.

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