Invitations and Becomings

Tonight the AMA is demanding plays or films involving smoking be refused government funding. The story makes a nice complement to the Bill Henson controversy, but that's only because this is the kind of moral incursion into the arts that should be vigorously resisted.

The AMA's argument is simply bankrupt. The AMA argues that, since smoking is a "blight on society", it should not be depicted anywhere on stage and screen, or at least not when that depiction is tax-payer funded.

Well, one wonders why the AMA is content to rest with cigarette-smoking, when drug abuse is so rife in film and theatre, or drink driving, or for that matter, murder? Surely, the AMA doesn't really think that these behaviours are less of a blight on society than smoking, does it?

It's ironic that the AMA only wants to ban the representation of behaviours that audience members might actually admit to. It's as though the AMA is defending the audience against its own artistic representation. Perhaps they're protecting that audience and society at large from themselves in more ways than one.

On the other hand, if its response to PM Rudd's comments on Nine's Today show a week or so ago is anything to go by, the arts community itself sometimes seems to need the same kind of protection. Confronted with some of Bill Henson's photos, the PM said he found them revolting. In response, the entire arts establishment came out in defence of Henson's right to make art as he sees fit.

Who did Henson need defending against? The Prime Minister? His comments amounted to an aesthetic judgement, which he grounded in a rather quaint sentiment ("let kids be kids"). He didn't like it, because he didn't like kids being used as artistic subjects. Well, that's not the same as saying that Henson's artistic use of kids is objectionable, or that it amounts to pornography.

The appropriate response to Rudd's comments would have been: Mr Rudd is entitled to his opinion on Bill Henson's art, and we in the arts establishment are glad that great Australian art like Henson's provokes debate in this country. That is, kill the story.

Instead, our Cate and friends decided to play right into the hands of the most conservative elements of society, by blurring the very line between aesthetic and moral judgement that they claim to want to defend, by claiming that Rudd's comments amount to a moralistic attack on Henson and art in general.

Of course, if Rudd, or anyone, were to argue that any art that represents a child constitutes a harm toward that child, regardless of the actual feelings of the child, the intentions of the artist, or any consent given by either the parents or the child, they'd have to explain why they don't have a problem with all the Greek or Roman art sitting in art galleries across the country depicting young boys and girls as sexual objects.

What this and the AMA story have in common is that both show that it's very difficult to represent something without ... well... actually representing it. Trouble is, if you want to be able to talk about something seriously - whether it be the sexualisation of kids or the way smoking becomes part of someone's identity - without simply falling back on cliches (e.g. "let kids be kids"), you need to find novel ways to represent that thing. These representations are necessarily less safe than those cliches, because they are less easily distinguished from the object itself, but they are essential for a genuine, mature discussion of any problematic phenomenon.

A mature society will recognize that it needs this kind of representations, and not flinch at either their display, or on the other hand, balk at the claim that they are dangerous and that some people find them "revolting". They're supposed to be dangerous. That's surely part of what makes them art.