One of the most withering remarks I ever heard came a few years ago when I met one of my old acting buddies for a drink. Catching me up on a colleague of ours whom neither of us had much artistic respect for, she said, "He's well. You know, he's working steadily and thinks he's cutting edge because he's in plays that have nudity."
This reminiscence is occasioned by the appearance within days of each other of two columns by Cal Thomas and Mark Steyn, respectively. Thomas makes his own the Barbara Nicolosi/Act One argument that Christians who want great art should become patrons of art rather than perpetual naysayers and critics. I wholeheartedly agree, but take exception to the gratuitous swipe Thomas takes at the old Hays code & the Legion of Decency.
An annoying contemporary piety is the idea that "censorship" is always and everywhere negative. Everyone always rolls his eyes at the Hays code, but --as this letter to the editor notes-- conveniently fails to notice that the "Golden Age" of Hollywood coincides entirely with the dreaded Code and the LoD. This is precisely because the conventions of film-making compelled actors and directors to find ways to tell their stories within the conventions. I would argue, in other words, that "censorship" here actually aided the creation of great art, in much the same way that we need friction and gravity to be able to walk. An artist must have something to push against.
When a government has the right to suppress opposition, that's dangerous. When a community censors itself, the result is often called "good taste" or even "art." To splat any old thing down on paper takes no skill or imagination. To work within rules and conventions, mastering techniques and still coming up with something fresh and original is a test of skill, imagination, vision, talent. The abandonment of any decency standards in Hollywood was supposed to yield artistic freedom and a more mature art form --why, now artists would be able to say anything and show anything! The variety of ideas that would be unleashed! Actual results: they all the same thing (begins with F). And they show the same things: sex, gore & toilet scenes --all there to assert the "artist's" bona fides as a free thinker. Why do artists perpetually feel the need to show us they aren't bound by constraints no one has been bound by for 50 years? It's about as interesting as my old colleague's bun-baring stage career.
The Steyn column makes what I think is a related point. Namely, that nihilism can't produce any stories. When it comes right down to it, this is because all drama is ultimately an expression of THE drama. If you don't believe good and evil exist, you simply can't enter in.
