THE MEDIA AND OUR COUNTRY ' S AGENDA
593
the archetypal democratic hero. The sides are chosen. In the name of
democracy, democratic cu ltu re is declared an evil perversion. Many
adventure films adopt a milder version of this drama by rounding up the
usual suspects-the villainous representatives of the government, its
agencies and its scientific elite-while the idiosyncratic rebel wins jus–
tice for his cause.
Democratic culture, of course, is by definition not monolithic. And
there are many examples of untempered self-regard instead of ill-tempered
self-disdain. But among intellectually oriented and trained audiences,
rebellion is, in general, treated as more authentic than advocacy. Even
Rambo in the hit movie apparently celebrating American military patri–
otism and heroism was a rebel-undermining the corrupt military that
was standing in the way of the truly democratic one. This is why, in the
1990S,
gangsta rap earned such grotesque cultural respect.
These views have even affected the ways in which art itself has been
discussed during the last fifteen years. A recent national General Social
Survey of more than
2,800
American adults, for example, offered a
choice between two understandings of art-meant
to
reflect the oppos–
ing positions in the now-famous controversies involving photographs of
a crucifix dipped in urine, S&M nudes, and a dung-punctuated
Madonna. The first choice was: "Art should ce lebrate what is most
beautiful about the world and the human spirit." The second was : "Art
should freely express an artist's deepest thoughts and emotions, good or
bad." These choices are loaded in the avant-gardist's favor: one restricts
art
to
affirmation, the other treats it as free expression. One extreme
leads to sentimenta l kitsch, the other,
to
position politics. The first
choice was the philistine offense; the second the artists' polemical
defense. It was a polarity encouraged by the artists.
But why this emphasis by defenders of controversial art on the phrase
"freely express"? Why is the defense of controversial artwork often
framed by typically American invocations of "freedom of speech"? That
defense seems selected more for its propaganda value as an invocation
of democratic ideals than as a serious principle. For it has never been
applied universally. Freedom of speech seems
to
work fine as a defense
when applied to works by Mapplethorpe or Serrano or Ofili, but would
hardly have been invoked if the NEA had been sponsoring fascist,
homophobic, or racist art. The vocabu lary of American democracy is
used, but only in order to condemn the pieties and the proprieties of
democratic culture and attack them from the left in the name of democ–
racy. The invocation of "freedom of speech" in these cases is also an
attempt to cloak the artwork in democratic principles though no speech
