speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Dichotomising Continua, Denying Ambiguity
realistically after simulating oral sex on a row of rubber phaliuses. 23
That some art shocks does not elevate everything shocking into art. 24
The invocation of art to justify the harms of speech merely shifts
debate from an arbitrary boundary to an ineffable essence. We
certainly can have no confidence in the judgements of contemporaries.
When Eduard Manet's "Olympia" was first exhibited Theophile
Gautier sneered: "[l]tcan be understood from no point of view, even
if you take it for what it is, a puny model stretched out on a sheet. . .
. Here there is nothing, we are sorry to say, but the desire to attract
attention at any price." The Salon jury rejected Manet's "Dejeuner
sur I'herbe," refusing to reconsider at the request of Napoleon III. 25
The Nazis equated expressionist portraiture with the physiognomy
of deformed mental patients, labelled Jewish art degenerate to justify
banning it, and launched a House of German Art and an annual
Great Exhibition. 26 Most of what the Soviet Union lauded as socialist
realism remains of interest only to historians. These controversies
continue unabated. In 1977 a state legislator condemned the California
Arts Council for supporting a musician who performed underwater
to entertain migrating whales and composed a piece to
accompany kangeroo rats dancing in Death Valley. 27 In 1992
Catalonia's greatest artist, Antoni Tapies, sculpted a 60-foot sock
with a hole in the heel as the centerpiece of the new National
Museum of Catalan Art. Although the government was furious, Oriol
Bohigas, a well-known architect, insisted: "It is Tapies's most important
work." 28
Artists resist state regulation not only to preserve their autonomy
but also because of art's irreducible ambiguity. Leonard Freed
declared: "The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is.
Otherwise it would be propaganda." 29 John Gardner agreed: "Morality
is infinitely complex, too complex to be knowable, and far too
complex to be reduced to any code, which is why it is suitable matter
for fiction, which deals in understanding, not knowledge." 30 Meaning
depends on context, yet law decontextualises the determination
of guilt and liability. 31 Although memory can aggravate or ameliorate
the hurtfulness of speech, law takes a shallow view of history. It is
uninterested in the characteristics of the parties, their relationship, or
the environment within which they interact. It imposes an artificial
symmetry on the real asymmetries of social life. The film "White
Men Can't Jump," which unfavourably compared the character and
athletic prowess of a white basketball hustler with his black counterpart,
was a commercial and artistic success, but it would no longer
be acceptable to make a movie entitled "Women Can't Add." 32
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