Culture Wars The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter (z-lib.org)

224	THE FIELDS OF CONFLICT

the institutions that train them have any intention of stepping away from the fight.

A TRAIL OF IRONIES

If education is .a symbolic territory over which bpposing sides compete for advantage, the terrain is vast and perhaps it is impossible to gain a sense of direction for the whole battle. An observation about the battles at the lower levels, however, may offer a useful insight. T~e observation begins with a short trail of historical ironies. Once the defenders of the public school establishment against the pope's authority in Rome, Evangelical Protestants (the most· prominent faction among the orthodox alliance) have not only adopted the policy positions of their nineteenthcentury Catholic adversaries, they also work in collaboration with their traditional Catholic adversaries in the effort to demonopolize, and. thereby weaken the power of, the public school establishment. For their part, progressivist voices on the contemporary scene defend their own cultural advantage in education in virtually the same manner as the Evangelical Protestants did in. the nineteenth century: by appealing to public order and community good. The latter point is nicely illustrated in this way. In a speech delivered in 1888, one of the pioneers of public edu-: cation on the western frontier, Reverend George Atkinson, linked the instruction of students in the "principles of rectitude" outlined in the Decalogue, Proverbs, and the aphorisms and parables of Jesus to the requirements of citizenship and national interest. This was the defense of the Protestant establishment. "If it be objected," he argued, "that this will infringe the rights of conscience, the answer can be made, that no right ofpersonal conscience is so sacred as the right ofself-preservation ofa body politic."81 Nearly a century later, the National Education Association likewise linked its opposition to government support for alternative education to the "transcendent purpose of public schooling-promoting the common good."82 A similar appeal to the common good-or to the preservation of the body politic-could just as well be (and often is) made by the defenders of the modern secular university. Such are the arguments of a contested and sometimes nervous hegemony.

9

Media and the Arts

One does not need to endure a thousand bleary-eyed evenings with Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw to understand how important a role the media of mass communications plays in our lives. Television, radio, magazines, newspapers, news magazines, the popular press, as well as music, film, theater, visual arts, popular literature, do much more than passively reflect the social and political reality of our times. Like the institutions of public education discussed in the previous chapter, these institutions actively define reality, shape the times, give meaning to the history we witness and experience as ordinary citizens. This outcome is unavoidable in many ways. In the very act of selecting the stories to cover, the books to publish and review, the film and music to air, and the art to exhibit, these institutions effectively define which topics are important and which issues are relevant-worthy of public consideration. Moreover, in the substance of the stories covered, books published and ;·eviewed, art exhibited, and so on, the mass media act as a filter through which our perceptions of the world around us take shape. Thus, by virtue of the decisions made by those who control the mass media-seemingly innocuous decisions made day to day and year to year-those who work within these institutions cumulatively wield enormous power. In a good many situations, this power is exercised unwittingly, rooted in the best intentions to perform a task well, objectively, fairly. Increasingly, however, the effects of this power have become understood and deliberately

226 THE FIELDS OF CONFLICT

manipulated. Is it not inevitable that the media and the arts wouid become a field of conflict in the contemporary cul~

There are at least two matters to consjd~~ the cont~

deline reality, so central to the larger culture war		inevitab	a
s ru e o control the "instrumenta it "	· d	· ·on. This means

that the battle over this symbolic territory has practically,taken shape as a struggle to influence or even dominate the businesses and industries of public information, art, and entertainment-from the major television and radio networks to the National Endowment for the Arts; from the Hollywood film industry to the music recording industry, and so oth-&lt ~ore. At a more subtle and symbolic level, the tensions in t,!!is field of conflict pomt to a struggle over the meaning of "speech" or,the meaning of "ex ression" that the First Amendment is supposed to protect. n erlying the con ict over this symbolic territory, in other words, are the questions, "What constitutes art in our communities?" "Whose definition of entertainment and aesthetic appreciation do we accept?" "What version of the ·news is fair?" And so on.

TAKING ON THE ESTABLISHMENT

We begin by considering a brief vignette of an event that occurred at a pro-life march in Washington, D.C. The day was filled with speeches from politicians, religious leaders, pro-life leaders, and other luminaries. Several hundred thousand people listened attentively, cheered, chanted, prayed, and sang songs. Such are the rituals of modern political rallies. At one, point during the rally, however, a number of pro-life advocates spontaneously turned toward a television news crew filming the event

·from atop a nearby platform and began to chant in unison, "Tell the truth!" "Tell the truth!" Tell the truth!" What began as a rumble within a few moments had caught on within the crowd. Soon, tens of thousands of people were chanting "Tell the truth!" "Tell the truth!" "Tell the truth!" Of all the aspects of the rally covered in the newscast that evening or in the newspapers the following day, this brief and curious event was not among them.

The story highlights the conviction held by virtually everyone on the orthodox and conservative side of the new cultural divide that the media and arts establishment is unfairly prejudiced against the values ·they hold dear. They do not tell the truth, the voices of orthodoxy maintain, and what is worse, they do not even present opposing sides

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227

of the issues evenhandedly. Here is the National Right to Life Committee's direct mail statement: "ABC, CBS, and NBC [have] Declared War ... on the Movement....We cannot let a handful of network executives and Hollywood writers, actors and directors poison America with their godless attitudes, which are anti-religion, anti-family and antilife." Tim LaHaye echoed this sentiment in his own mail appeal:

It's no secret to any of us how the liberal media manages the news and helps to set the national agenda on public debate. They report the news in such a way as to promote the political goals of the left. This censorship of Christian principles and ideas covers many more issues than abortion and the homosexual lifestyle. The media slants what is reported in the areas of natfonal defense, the budget, school prayer, and Soviet expansion in Central America, among others. The truth in all of these areas is being hidden. 1

Of the film industry, another spokesman said, "The people in Hollywood are so far removed from the people of middle America. They have / hostil_ity toward people who believe anything at all. They live in a he-

donistic, materialistic little world."2	.	.
Exaggerated they may be, but the general perceptions are not totally

born out of illusion. Studies of the attitudes of media and entertainment elites, as well as of television news programming ind newspaper coverage of various socfal issues and political events, have shown a fairly strong and consistent bias toward a liberal and progressivist point of view.3 The field over which these particular battles are waged, then, is unevenand the contenders recognize it as such. One contender takes a position of defending territory already won; the other strives to reclaim it. There

!!.re three major ways in which traditionalists baye snnght to reclai:wmth symbolic (and institutional) territory. J

-one wa has oeen in a direcThssault against the media and

esta 1s ment. c mrin a lar· e-circulation news a r or a networ was ' something that had been "a dream of conseryatjyes for yea~" according to Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus.4 Early in 1985, such an assault was mad~ After years of frustratjon with what it called "the lib.s,ral b!as" of CBS. a group called Fairness jn Media (FU4) spearheaded a move to buy out the television netwQ!;_k· Through its leading spokesman, Senator Jesse Helms, FIM sent a direct mail letter to more than a million conservatives across the country urging them to purchase twenty shares each of common stock in the company, the end of which would be to "become Dan Rather's boss." The plan was not a ruse. Conservative

228 THE FIELDS OF CONFLICT

spokesmen called the idea "inspired" and "realistic,''"and hundreds of people called FIM to find out how to participate. Officials at CBS initially brushed off the propnsal hut won were engaged in rearguard a~on against it, hiring two law firms, ?A iA'J88lment hankjpg house andJSveral

public rel ns firms. Its official response: "CBS intends to take all appropriate steps to ma~tainthe independence ~ndintegrity of its news

organization." At CBS, a spokeswoman added, "our sole purpose is journalism and our goal is objectivity."5 Conservatives and others in the orthodox alliance would naturally respond, "whose standards of objectivity?" Ultimately, of course, the bid to take over the network failed but those who supported the idea were riot put off. "It may take a while to

mplish [this goal]," one editorialized, "but it's a goal well worth waiti g-and striving-for."6

/'\ / he persistent effort of the orthooox alliance to hold the media ;>'f!) . blis~table for the content 1t presents 1s another strategy.

umerotis nattonal and local organizations are committed to this task;

covering a wide range of media. Morality in Media, for exam le is an 1.2.terfaith organization founded in 1 y three clergymen in order to stop traffic m pornography and to challenge "indecency in med@" and towork "for a media based on love, truth and good taste." Accuracy in Media has__,_ since 1969, sough,t to combat liberal bias by exposing cases where the media have ~ot covered stories "fairly and accurately." The Parents' Music Resource Center, established in 1985, is concerned to <"fiise the awareness of parents about the content of modei:n rock music, especially heavy metal music. Its specific focus is, according to one of its founders, "not the occasional sexy rock lyric ... [but] the celebration of

the most gruesome violence, coupled with explicit messages that sadomasochism is the essence of sex."7 OfC: of the most visible of all me!!_ia watchdo ou s is the American Family Association and the affiliated

._CLeaR-TV, or Christian Lea ers for Responsible Television. Founded

. by the Re~nd Doellltl Wildmon, the American Family Ass~on membership claims ordinary believers ~ religious leaders f~m all Christian faiths, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox, and together they propose to combat the "excessive, gratuitous sex, violence, profanity, [and] the negative stereotyping of Christians."8

These organizations are joined by many others both national and local, including town and city councils around the country that share a similar concern about the content of public information and entertainment. They are effective because they are grass-roots in orientation (or at least they pose as being locally connected to the grass-roots), and they

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229

make use of proven techniques of popular political mobilization: letter writing, boycott, countermedia exposure, and the like.

. As much a· support structure for the various orthodox and conservative subcultures as a weapon in the culture war, communities within~

the orthodox alliance have created an entire network of alternative elec-~ tronic media. These alternatiye medja challenge the media .and arts

. establishment a third wa~, then, through competition, offering pr0; gramming that defines a fundamentall · · · · y and vision o menca. Conservative Catholics and Orthodox Jews play arfferent roles in some of these media, but it is the Evangelicals who dominate. this alternative media industry. T~ke film as an example. The

mainsta	dramas produced by Billy Graham's World Wide Picture~
always been e 1 eratel Evan elistic in to e and ur ose.		e recently,
h~ ever,	vangelicals have begun to create films that "uphold traditional

values." For exam le, Florida-based Evan elist D. ames Kenned , frustrated and angry about e msensitivities of the Hollywood film establishment toward religiously ol?servant Americans, founded a film company in the late 1980s. "We're tired of sex and blasphemy and 1mmality, of sadism andiOfluencing people for ill," he said. "We believe there are people who would like to watch something other than drugs and sex. Now, I know there are various kinds of reality in this country, including the reality of the toilet. But how about the realities of morality and courage and devotion?"9 Though Evangelical in nature, Kennedy's initiative has received support from Catholic and Jewish quarters as well.rn

Even more vi orous challen es have been made b the Evan elicaldomi!la e television and radio industr:y. Within the Evangelical Sl!,b- culture aJone rh5rr were over 1 300 rrHgious radio stations, over 200 rs!igiw!s tel~ision statioqs and 3 religious television networks broadcasting in the United States by the early 1990s.11 The Catholic place in this industry is relatively small by comparison but it does make an important contribution. The programming goes far beyond televised religious services or radio broadcasts of sacred music to include religious

talk shows, soap operas, drama, Bible studies, and news commentary.. In addition to these enterprises is a bmjon-dollar boOk jndust~~e

up, witt>,_ill....the Eva_ng&:li&al e~i' alone gf over 80 publishing houses and ov:~r...§a.OOO indepew;lem rcligfous bgokstm:"'i) that publish and market books on, for example, how to be a better Christian, how to raise children, how to cope with a mid-life crisis, not to mention a sizable literature on what is wrong about America and what you can do about it. And a

230 THE FIELDS OF CONFLICT

multimillion dollar music industr extends far be ond the latest rendition o essed Assurance" by George Beverly Shea to Hasidic and Christian rock and roll, folk, heavy metal (groups called Vengeance,

---Petra, or Shout singing such-releases as "In Your Face"), and even rap music.

..

THE POLITICS OF FREE SPEECH

What makes these battles over the media and arts especially interesting is that they reveal a conflict that is several layers deeper. The first layer of conflict concerns the nature and meaning of art and music, as well as the nature and meaning of information. Inevitably this conflict leads to the more philosophical and legal disputes over the nature of "speech" and "expression" protected by the First Amendment. There is no end to the number of "headline cases" in which these sorts of issues are worked out. The fact is that each dispute contains within it all the underlying philosophical and legal tensions as well. Collectively, they make the matter a crisis over which actors on both sides of the cultural divide urgently press for resolution.

To demonstrate how this conflict is played out at these different levels, it is necessary to get down to specific cases. The object here is not to comprehensively survey and catalogue the various disputes over media and the arts in recent times. The following sampling of a few widely publicized controversies from different areas of public expression demonstrates a larger pattern of disoourse among the contenders, one that ultimately carries us to the deeper issues of expressio~ and censorship in the culture war.

The Avant-Garde and Its Discontents

It begins with the quest for novelty. This impulse is undeniably a driving force in, the arts, entertainment, and news media. The quest is based on the premise that the new will somehow be better than the old, a premise that fits well with America's utilitarian demand. for improvement. The expectation that the media and arts will continue to innovate keeps an audience coming back for more. Cultural tensions, of course, inhere within the quest and on occasion they erupt into full-blown controversy.

MEDIA AND THE ARTS

231

Art

Out of a bud et of more than 150 million dollars a ear, the National E@owment or the Arts unds literally hundreds upon bun re<ls of projects in theater. ballet. music. photography. film. painting, and sculp-

t~e. In the late 1980s, however, it became widelx publicized that the National Endowment for the Arts had indirectly funded two contr~ver­ sial ..photographic exhibits. One project, by Andres Serrano, incl~ed,

among others, a photograph of a crucifix in a jar of Serrano's urine, entitled Piss Christ; tb.e other project, by Robert Mapplethore_e, included, among many others, a photograph that turned an image of the Virgin Mary into a tie rack as well as a number of homoerotic photos (such as one showing Mapplethorpe with a bullwhip implanted in his anus and another showing a man urinating in another man's mouth). All of this was well publicized. Avant-garde? To say the least! But Serrano and Mapplethorpe are, their defenders maintained, "important American artists." One critic called the photograph Piss Christ "a darkly beautiful photographic image."12 Likewise, the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston concluded of Mapplethorpe's exhibit, "Mapplethorpe's work is art, and art belongs in an art museum."13

For those in the various orthodox communities, the controversial aspects of the Serrano and Mapplethorpe exhibits were not art at all but obscenity. "This so-called piece of art is a deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity," said one critic. "Morally reprehensible trash," said another. Of Serrano himself, a third stated, "He is not an artist, he is a jerk. Let him be ajerk on his own time and with his 9wn resources." The American Faruili' Association ,n:spo11ded with full-page advertisements in newspapers askin " · w ou want our tax dollars spent?"14 -

-·--r ese voices had a sympathetic hearing mt e a so government as well. In response to the National Endowment for the Arts funding of these projects and the likelihood that it would fund still oth~r such projects in the future, Senator Jesse H~lms introduced legislation that

would forbid the	·	-r
in ecent.	dowme or the Arts ~ reed to make	nts

availableonly to those who pledge not to do anything of this nature. The endowment, a Helms ally argued in support of this proposal, should not showcase "artists whose forte is ridiculing the values ... of Americans who are paying for it."15 Conservative columnist Doug Bandow argued similarly, "There's no justification for taxing lower-income Americans to support glitzy art shows and theater productions frequented primarily

232	THE FIELDS OF CONFLICT

by the wealthy."16 Still others cited Thomas Jefferson's dicturri that it is "sinful and tyrannical" to compel a person to contribute money for the propagation of opinions with which he or she disagrees.

Music
	Bap isjnst one mete iRRQ¥ation in youth;nriented m~that.hepn
decades before with rock and r			ripy5 .questions were raised about
the	or an content of this innovation, however, with the 198~e
of As Nasty As T,		~	ew.
n	one	um there were over 200 uses of the word "fuck " over

-iOO a11e11 Sf exp1ici.t terms for male and female g~njtalia. over 80 deJcriptiops of oral sex, and the word "bitch" was used over 150 times.

And what about the work of groups like Motley Criie, which in~ images of satanism, and the rap group the Beastie Boys, who mime · masturbation on stage, or N.W.A., who sing about war against the police (in "Fuck tha Police"}, or Ozzy Osbourne, who sings of the "suicide solution?" Was this really music? ·

The arts establishment responded with a resounding "yes." Its end9rsements were positive and sympathetic. Notwithstanding the violence and irreverence, one essay in the Washington Post described rap in particular as "a vibrant manifestation of the black oral tradition....You cannot fully understand this profane style of rapping if you disregard the larger folklore of the streets."17 A review of 2 Live Crew and rap in general in the New York Times claimed that this form of musical expression "reveals the tensions of the communities it speaks to. But with its humor, intelligence and fast-talking grace, it may also represent a way to transcend those tensions."18 Even at its grossest, one critic wrote in Time, this entire genre of music represents "a vital expression of the resentments felt by a lot of people."19

N~ess to say, the opini.Q!!S within the orthodox mmgmnitie~

l~thusias~c. One American Family Association member called the workOl'1lle"iiPpoets of 2 Live Crew as well as other exemplars of

popular music, such as the heavy metal of Motley Criie, Twisted Sister, and the like, "mind pollution and body pollution."20 An attorney involved in the controversy commented, "This stuff is so toxic and so dangerous to anybody, that it shouldn't be allowed to be sold to anybody or by anybody."21 BeaaHH thjs album was beiRg sgla to Children. be continued, the group's leader, Luther Camphrll, was notlijpg less than "a psyd;; logicalchild molester."22 Judges in Florida ·. the se · =t,'

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233

fu!.ging the lyrics to As Nasty As They Wanna Be to yiolate local obscepity J~ Police arrested Campbell for performing the music in a nightclub after the decree s well as record s o wners who continued to sell t e um. In response, Campbell promised two things: a egal appeal

ailcl a new album-"this one dirtier than the !ast."25

Film

Of all the films roduced b Universal Studios erhaps none has been more controversial than The Last Temptation of Christ, base on the i95s best-selling novel by Nikos Kazantzakis. The intent of the film, according to its director Martin Scorsese, was to present the basic humanity of Christ who discovers-nay, chooses-his divinity. The film

. portrays a Jesus plagued by human doubt and subject, though not quite vulnerable, to the range of human temptations, including lust, pride, anger, power, and the fear of death. Christ, for example, is shown to f~~tasize about being married to Mary Magdalene and having sexjlal intercourse with Q;r; later1 after she has died1 he imagines marrying Mary (of Marv and Martha) and then still later, committing adu!t.,ery with Martha J!e is also shown. confessing in anguish, "I am a liar, I am a hypocrite. I am afraid of everything ... Lucifer is inside me." In the

end,.-howeyer be j5 5howp rePOYAEiAS the final temptation the; Qll';;;'by

.

S~ reject his role of Messiah, and accepting his destiay to die for humankind.

A biblic~costume epic this certainly was not. Although the film critic establishment was not entirely enamored with the technical aspects of the film, o,verall they gave the film high marks for its sensitivity and artistry. USA Today called it "an extraordinary accomplishment." The Los Angeles Times deemed it "an intense, utterly sincere, frequently fascinating piece of art by a director for whom, clearly, the message of Jesus' life had immediacy and meaning." The Washington Post called it "a work of great seriousness by one of this country's most gifted filmmakers." In the words of the New York Daily News the film was a work of"integrity, reverence and a good deal of cinematic beauty." And finally, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner called Scorsese's work "one of the most serious, literate, complex and deeply felt religious films ever made."24

It is not surprising that progressivist opinion in the denominations was generally sympathetic to this view. A spokesman for the National Council of Churches called the film "an honest attempt to tell the story of Jesus from a different perspective." The Episcopal bishop of New