From: livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Can the Prime Minster be Catholic?
Date: 13 Nov 92 21:53:19 GMT
Organization: sgi
NNTP-Posting-Host: solntze.wpd.sgi.com

In article <1992Nov12.153549.9319@digi.lonestar.org>, gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo) writes:
|> 
|>        I just wanted to characterize the controversy, which 
|> is real enough. The problem is that a political institution 
|> whose charter is to represent the whole population in matters 
|> of law and equity is making moral and aesthetic judgments that 
|> clearly divide the population. The very fact that the NEA has 
|> to make a generic ruling on what is and is what is not obscene 
|> intrinsically intrudes on the freedom of the artist.  The 
|> conflict is between equity (political sphere) and freedom 
|> (cultural sphere).  This is a problem even when there is no
|> dispute about obscenity or morality.

Right, and the interesting thing is that for the first twenty-odd
years of its existence, the NEA system seemed to work reasonably
well.   On the one hand, (some) deserving artists got funded, and
some of those even became famous and self-supporting in due 
course.

Meanwhile, the NEA itself seemed to avoid funding art which would
attract the attemtion of the obscenity *laws* as opposed to the
Helms Bill, or similar Congressional attmepts to (re)-define
obscenity.    There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that the
notion of "making moral and aesthetic judgments" worked as long
as everyone was satisfied over the very long term.   What the
NEA funded didn't have to be what everyone wanted every day of
the week, as long as over a sufficiently long period of time,
they produced things with which most people could identify,
once in a while.

Then the whole trend towards public awareness of, and daily
examination of public morality, led by the Christian Right, got 
started, and the horizon by which people examined the balance of
moral decisions was drastically foreshortened.    They didn't just
want the balance of aesthetics and morality to even out in the 
long run, but rather they wanted it to match their own standards 
right then and there.

And so a basic principle, by which the NEA was funded by Congress, 
but not directly overseen by them - something like the BBC, in 
fact - was overturned, and then NEA grants became the subjects of 
day-to-day debate in the House and Senate.

|> 
|> It's not something that can be decided by democratic vote either,
|> even if the majority rules the work to be obscene.  That is why
|> according to Steiner the cultural and political spheres should 
|> remain independent of each other.

Well, yes and no.   I think that the NEA debate illustrates how 
wide the word "democracy" must be spread.   It was a formal 
democratic process which set up the NEA in the forst place.   Then
the day-to-day decision making was delegated to a group of "Art 
thinkers" who didn't need to pass each grant through congress like
an Amendment to a Bill.

This had the agreeable effect of keeping debates about Art out of
the formal democratic system, while allowing the greater public
to have the feeling that they had some control, however tenuous,
over how their tax money was being spend.    It was the kind of 
control that is never exercised directly so long as the decisions 
of the "Art thinkers" don't stray too far from the mainstream.  In
the same way, we allow "Engineering thinkers" a degree of autonomy
in designing bridges to be built with public money, as long as they
don't fall down too often.

It's a kind of democracy which is not exercised directly, through
votes, but is rather a semi-permanent license to specialists to
do their specialised thing, with public money, with the only sanction
being that they ought not to draw too much attemntion to themselves.

Of course, Art and Bridges are not the only example of this.   The
Prison Service, the Law, the Armed Forces, the Police, are all to
some extent self-managing as long as they don't draw attention to
themselves too often.

|> 
|> Curiously enough, while the law, in the usual sense of the word,
|> belongs to what Steiner called the political sphere, magistrates
|> act primarily out of the cultural/spiritual sphere.  All judgement,
|> including those regarding equity, ultimately require the element
|> of freedom. So a judge is more like a teacher or an artist than
|> a politician.  Our U.S. Constitution has a flavor of this in its
|> creation of a separate and relatively independent judiciary.  But
|> it too has overstepped its bounds and muddied things.  The court
|> has been legislating and administering and the Congress and 
|> President have politicized the selection of judges.

And this is an area where there appears to be a genuine difference
between the US and UK.   In the UK, there is more tendency to leave
Professional XXXr's to their own devices, so long as they don't
draw too much public fury by their actions.    We tend to play a
game of awe with respect to our Judges, for example, and we wouldn't
dream of electing them - tut, how distasteful - or exposing them to
the kind of circus Judge Thomas went through, but the moment one 
of them makes a truly stupid remark - about battered wives, say -
then the Great British Public, led by the Great British Press -
come down on them like a ton of bricks.
 
|> But the Helms bill is just as bad as the existence of the NEA in
|> the first place.

And that is the only place where I would seriously disagree with
what you have written.   I think that in a society there is room
for publicly funded activities - Courts, the BBC, the NEA, the
Armed Forces - which do not undergo the same kind of day-to-day
debate and scrutiny that the Government's economic and political
activities do, but which do risk a sudden and unpleasant intrusion
of public enquiry when they get too far out of line.   I didn't
like the NEA debate, but it reminded people that the NEA was
there, and the Barbarians didn't capture too much of the City,
most of which we will take back by stealth later in any case.

Final thought.   My personal opinion is that the NEA did not, in
fact, get too far out of line.    I think Mapplethorpe is a
stunning artist.   Unfortunately, Helms gets a voice in this, too.

jon.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british