Note: This paper was presented at the Second Annual Conference on Intellectual Freedom, Montana State University-Northern, April 1996.
I went to the 1996 Conference on Intellectual Freedom at MSU-Northern in order to discuss an incident that ignited a controversy still alive on my campus. As a case study the incident is inconclusive in part because it poses more questions than answers. Although none of this ever became more than a minor academic tempest, it seems to me a good example of a typical conflict nowadays: the conflict between deliberately provocative art and unsophisticated, rapid-response indignation.
At Gonzaga University in Spokane, our literary journal is called Reflection--an annual publication edited by the students, which publishes poetry, short stories and photography, mainly by students and faculty. A faculty advisor oversees each year's issue. I was the faculty advisor to Reflection myself until I became English Department chair and we hired a professor who then became faculty advisor to the journal.
Last spring's issue of Reflection (1995) contained a student short story entitled "Something Stirs Among the Sheets"; the story's title is followed by a dedication: "For Charles Bukowski, 1924-1994." Bukowski wrote violently realistic, sometimes funny stories about alcoholics, prostitutes and other down-and-outers. Collections of his stories include "Woes of a Dirty Old Man" (1969), and "Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness" (1972). The film "Barfly" was based upon one of his novels. So this short story presented itself as an homage to Bukowski. In the story a gin-drinker named Dexter Travers meets an incongruously beautiful woman in a dive bar. She is as unexpectedly friendly as she is beautiful and soon, at her invitation, she and Dexter go to her apartment. The woman (never named in the story) surprises Dexter further by almost immediately stripping off her clothes and writhing on the bed in order to signal her desire for him. The story reaches its crisis, however, when Dexter, soon sitting naked next to her on the bed, proves physically unready, perhaps unable, to perform. I'll quote from this point in the tale:
"You shouldn't have had so much to drink," she said with obvious disappointment. "You son of a bitch. You get a girl all hot and bothered and then this. You can't even call yourself a man."
The woman's anger builds, her language becomes even more abusive, and then she hits Dexter on the ear. Only one paragraph remains to the story, and it is this final paragraph which caused the trouble at my school:
Before Dexter could think about this comment and before she could make another, his open hand connected with the side of her head, knocking her backwards onto the bed. Dexter thought about apologizing but noticed that she was smiling. She was not looking at his face but much lower. He followed her gaze until he saw it too. Something had stirred among the sheets. Sometimes snakes do crawl across the foreheads of men.
Obviously, this story is meant to provoke a response from its reader and it succeeded. Articles appeared in the student newspaper and there was talk of formal complaints being filed. The President of the university, Fr. Bernard Coughlin, S.J., sent a note to the university's vice-president, who passed copies of the note along to the faculty advisor of Reflection, to the student editor, and to the chair of the university's Publication Board (an oversight committee for the campus newspaper, yearbook and student journals). In his note Fr. Coughlin said, "It is not simply that [the story] is a cheap piece. It cheapens the other contributions. It is out of character for Reflection."
You'll notice that Fr. Coughlin objects to the story's vulgarity or tawdriness; it is "out of character" for the publication--a lapse in taste. In essence Fr. Coughlin is objecting to the story's violation of decorum: the conventions of seemly appropriateness, the understood high tone to be maintained at our school. It is almost a question of manners. Fr. Coughlin's objection, it seems to me, is a legitimate objection, and one which even avid free-speechers ought to allow him. Those who operate artistic venues--theaters, galleries, magazines--have the right to establish and maintain the tone, taste or aesthetic approach they wish to foster in their venue. They may espouse or reject shock value, prefer the refined or the raw, offer their audience the realistic or the fantastic. Fr. Coughlin, as the legal publisher of Reflection, is at least entitled to register his distaste when the standards of decorum he presumed governed the editorial decisions for the magazine were abandoned. He did not try to fire anyone, expel the student writer, or recall the journal after its distribution.
On the other hand you might argue that the journal, really, is only held in trust by Fr. Coughlin--that in truth it is the students' journal, a place for them to experiment artistically, which includes challenging decorum. Indeed, the faculty advisor to Reflection, Prof. Dan Butterworth, made the good point, during the ensuing debate, that allowing students to make their own decisions in their creative writing and in their editing--to learn by doing, in other words--is the real purpose of the journal. Bad decisions, bad taste, and unsure standards are to be expected and tolerated. Both Fr. Coughlin and Dr. Butterworth have a point worth arguing about. De gustibus disputandum est: in matters of taste there is disputing.
The next official reaction to the story shifted the debate from matters of taste to the question of "correct values." Victoria Loveland, the university's "Ombudsman for Sexual Harassment" (an official title), wrote a long letter of complaint to Dr. Butterworth, the Reflection advisor. Her letter provocatively begins, "Freedom of press and speech notwithstanding," and continues:
Publishing material which describes degrading, vulgar and violent sexual behavior undermines our efforts to teach our students and employees appropriate values and conduct. Our colleagues on the Faculty Harassment Committee have also been working to better define and to help eliminate from instructional settings those pedagogies which [sic] inappropriately use sexuality and vulgarity merely to titillate and not educate. This type of material, in a medium which does not allow for explanation or discussion, is contrary to their work. * * *I am not quarreling with the student's freedom to write the story, but with it appearing in a Gonzaga publication for all to read.
This letter should raise many questions. On a university campus, supposedly a place dedicated to open inquiry, can freedom of press and speech ever be "notwithstanding?" That is to say, should these freedoms not withstand the pressure of "appropriateness" rules set by a committee or, much worse, autonomous censorship by a non-faculty "harassment officer?" Why is material which "describes degrading, vulgar and violent sexual behavior" either "educational" or "merely titillating?" After all, the artist often considers it his or her job to depict the human condition realistically, not to "teach right values and conduct."
It depends upon the artist. Uncle Tom's Cabin is a passionate, artistic demand for justice, an indictment of the outrageously wrong values and conduct which sustained slavery. But if another artist chooses to depict the southern slave culture with a mixture of irony and nostalgia--as in Huckleberry Finn--can we approve the first book and reject the second as insufficiently right-minded? If we reject Huckleberry Finn (and, as you know, it is frequently rejected these days), what have we thereby declared art's job to be? Should art, like embroidered samples, prettily state platitudes? Or, like spray-painted slogans, should it denounce the evils of the day? King Lear, perhaps Shakespeare's most overwhelming play, is filled with "degrading, vulgar and violent behavior," both sexual and otherwise, and it can be argued that these spectacles of brutality declare cosmic nihilism and despair; are these "right values and conduct?"
Charles Bukowski and William Shakespeare don't seem that far apart, at least in this case. As a teacher of Shakespeare myself, I need to know whether King Lear should be "eliminated from the instructional setting" of my Shakespeare course.
The university's Harassment Ombudsman also objects, in her letter, to the student story appearing "in a medium which does not allow for explanation or discussion." Our next question: Is the artist under an obligation to explain the story he writes, the painting she paints, or the dance the troupe performs? Are we under an obligation to surround disturbing artworks with guardrails of explanation, everpresent glosses which reassure the audience by saying "You see, the work really has this appropriate meaning." For instance (to recur to Shakespeare), when Desdemona, dying, says she herself is to blame for her murder, and sends her best wishes to the husband who has murdered her, we are shocked and deeply troubled. What can Desdemona mean by taking the blame upon herself for this most unforgivable crime? This is not appropriate; this does not teach the right values for our feminist era. But should Shakespeare, or an editor of Shakespeare, be required to alter or buffer the drama to defuse any possible outrage in the reader? Should the lines be cut, or should a footnote to the lines suggest that
Obviously, interpretation of the drama is the actor's job, the director's job, the audience's job, and the reader's job--not just a job, but a right, a right to think for yourself. Likewise, the dramatist's job and right is to provoke thought by not explaining but by dramatizing. The poet Wallace Stevens, in his mocking poem "A High Toned Old Christian Woman," declares that art will embrace all life, even though "this will make widows wince. But fictive things / wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince." The artist may, in fact, wish to confront us with those things which are inexplicable in our souls. Art can capture our sometimes tragic predicament so evocatively because it is not bound to explain itself rationally or reduce itself to safe, popular ideas.
Ombudsman Loveland objects "not [to] the student's freedom to write the story, but with it appearing in a Gonzaga publication for all to read." Her distinction seems nonsensical. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press presume that an audience will have voluntary access to what is said or written. If the censor permits you to speak, but only to yourself, you are not free.
For these reasons, the faculty advisor to Reflection, Prof. Butterworth, did not act as a censor; he did not forbid the student editors from publishing the story. He pointed out to them that the story was likely to offend many readers. He declined to overrule the student editors' judgment, on the grounds of both freedom of expression and educational integrity. Yet in a second memo the University Harassment Ombudsman repeats her objection that "the medium [of the short story] does not allow...an explanation of the author's reasons for writing it or his feelings about the values it represents. I fear especially that people new to the university might be confused or troubled to then find an openly published story such as this." She does not take into account the possibility that the story was intended to confuse or trouble people, which is why authors often deliberately exclude their own explicit statements of feeling or values from their stories. The student writer, of course, was not trying to represent the university, he was trying to represent troubling, confusing human experience (and maybe to shock the university, a popular student motive for all kinds of activity). The Ombudsman, however, says in the memo that she will begin discussing with the university's vice-president "specific standards" university publications will oblige artistic works to meet in order to be found suitable for Gonzaga's community.
There is an ancient and long-held idea that literature should be character- or soul-improving, that literature ought to prove dulce et utile, delightful and useful, to its audience, and that the writer is a moral teacher to the community. Horace, Virgil, Augustine, Dante, Sidney, Spenser and Milton all believed this idea, and it informs their masterpieces. Dante's prefatory letter to Can Grande della Scala asserts that the purpose of the Divine Comedy is to save the reader's soul; Milton hoped that his own poetry would help "repair the ruins of our first parents," Adam and Eve. Spenser, in the preface to The Faerie Queene, asserts that "the general end therefore of all the book is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline"--to teach right values and conduct, in other words. So, while our university Ombudsman is not aware of it, a powerful artistic defense of her art-as-edification opinion could be used to support her complaint against the student story. Yet how would that student story fare if examined on the grounds of "right values?" Let us return to the offending paragraph, and refresh our memories:
Before Dexter could think about this comment and before she could make another, his open hand connected with the side of her head, knocking her backwards onto the bed. Dexter thought about apologizing but noticed that she was smiling. She was not looking at his face but much lower. He followed her gaze until he saw it too. Something had stirred among the sheets. Sometimes snakes do crawl across the foreheads of men.
The most striking line in the paragraph--in the whole story--is the last: "Sometimes snakes do crawl across the foreheads of men." What does it mean?
We've just read a scene in which both the man and the woman are sexually excited by violence. For the purposes of our discussion, let us say that art can be defined as an aspect of reality, recreated in some medium, with an attitude taken towards that reality. In this story's last line, surely the writer is adopting an attitude towards the scene described. The snake, needless to say, has always symbolized evil, falsehood and sinfulness--the book of Genesis made that association permanent and inescapable. Isn't the student writer suggesting that in this bedroom scene we witness, once again, mankind's tendency to do wrong, to be enticed by wrong impulses, to reveal its fallen nature? Here is not Nathaniel Hawthorne's "bosom serpent" of sinfulness but the "forehead serpent," emerging from the tall grass of the mind where evil dwells, to crawl across the brow. I can scarcely think of a more overtly, albeit symbolic, moral comment upon the events of the story. The author reminds us, with his last line, of our wicked capacity for violence, lust and degradation.
The story does not celebrate these traits; nor does it preach against them; nor does it deny their existence. It depicts them and classifies them. It says, here are human actions; these actions are part of our inheritance of sin. Thus the moral of the story seems absolutely appropriate for a Catholic university. But the symbolism of the story's closing comment apparently made the attitude too difficult for some to grasp.
In my opening paragraph I called this case study "inconclusive" because the issue is still open and charged on our campus. The creative writing students, the faculty advisor and the administrators involved all remain hypersensitive because of the debate this short story provoked at our school. It is an uncomfortable feeling, but not, upon reflection, an unhealthy feeling. The issues raised--whether bad taste is bad art or even bad conduct, whether free expression or censorship is more dangerous to a school--are too serious not to remain open and charged. When such questions make us uncomfortable, and we know much is at stake, real education, or real art, is probably happening.