December 04, 2003

ADVANCES IN ART AND EDUCATION (CONT.)

How fortunate that we live in an age where archaic inhibitions have been discarded in favor of artistic "freedom". At NYU a film student has advanced the claims of art to include live sex captured on film. No doubt this is just what our uptight culture needs. Horsefeathers has no problem with straightforward pornography, but why are such liberated rebels so eager to wrap themselves in the mantle of "art"? Note the following:
"...Professor de Jesus said he supported the film from the start. "It did have redeeming values, and it was fine with me, especially having seen her previous work. She's a young woman with lots of integrity." But when he checked with the administration, he said, "All I kept hearing was, `No, no, no, she can't do this.' " Ms. Carmicino said that she then withdrew the idea to avoid putting her professor on the spot.

In Ms. Carmicino's view, the university was censoring a work about how people censor their own behavior. She said her video, titled "Animal," was supposed to depict the contrast between public and private behavior: "The whole concept of it was to compare the normal behavior of people in their everyday lives versus the animalistic behavior that comes out when they are having sex."

She planned to intersperse 30-second clips of passionate sex with scenes of the couple engaged in more mundane activities, like watching television and reading a newspaper.

Simulating the sex would have defeated her purpose, she said. "That's censoring the sex part. My thing is how we censor ourselves during the day when we're not having sex."

Mr. Pierce, the Tisch spokesman, said that film and art students at the university frequently try to test limits. Administrators often have to apply sensible guidelines for provocative works, and rarely draw news media attention when they do so, he said.

Conversations with several Tisch students sympathetic to Ms. Carmicino's efforts made it clear that explicit content in classroom work was not unusual.

Vera Itkin, 20, a sophomore, said that one film in a class contained graphic secondhand footage from a pornographic movie and that two scripts called for hard-core sex scenes, one with dead people.

Lisa Estrin, 19, a sophomore, said she made a film showing simulated sex between two stuffed toys, Minnie Mouse and Lamb Chop.

Ms. Carmicino also has the support of her mother, Theresa Carmicino, a retired social worker in Shelby Township, Mich., near Detroit, who said, "It's not subject matter I probably would like, but I think she had the right to represent herself the way she likes." See the rest here

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