Shortly after the mass murder in Colorado, the Washington Post ran an article in the Style section called "When Death Imitates Art" linking the killings to glamorized violence in the mass media and popular culture. Films like Basketball Diaries, Natural Born Killers and Heathers, where teenagers wreak havoc in schools, were discussed, as well as violent videogames such as Doom and New York fashion shows featuring devils regalia. Of course teen rebellion has been part of movie history since James Dean. But strangely absent from the current debate is a description of the way accepted high culture currently embraces antisocial behavior.
The contemporary view of art is that it must offend middle-class sensibilities in order to prove the higher sensitivities of the art-lover. This is nothing new, rather rooted in the modernist project described by Ortega y Gassett's essay "The Dehumanization of Art." In this view, the difficult work of art serves to separate the elite from the mass. The purpose of art is not pleasure, but discrimination, separating the vanguard from those who will follow. The movements of the art world can be comprehended in this fashion, that the offensiveness is a device which can separate the true cognoscenti from those who are outside the inner circle.
To this end art has bewildered and offended with movements such as cubism, vorticism, abstraction, conceptual art, and so on. Counter-movements toward popularity have co-existed with these trends and resulted in Pop-Art, Op-Art, and Photo Realism, as well as traditional portraiture and landscape. But the avant-garde of art has needed to exclude the mass public in order to maintain its status.
One way this has been done has been to embrace Fascism and Nazism, as well as other repellent practices such as sado-masochism, devil worship, glamorization of serial killers, and blasphemy. In a sense this point of view is nothing new in the Arts, and would be familiar to a Wagner fan, readers of Ezra Pound, or viewers of Leni Riefenstahl's films. All were trendy with the art crowd in this country despite (some would argue because of) Nazi associations. Susan Sontag's essay "Fascinating Fascism" remains a clear case in point.
The debate over the National Endowment for the Arts over the past few years drew attention to more recent examples of this sort of shock-art.
In one memorable case, the Phoenix Museum displayed the American flag in the toilet and descrated the national symbol in other ways. One installation featured a flag made out of human skin. In another case, photographer Joel-Peter Witkin cut up cadavers and displayed them in a variety of poses, such as a man's skull used as a flower pot and Andres Serrano promoted his "Morgue" series of photographs of dead bodies. Robert Mapplethorpe's photos of sexual torture are well known, but not so widely publicized were photos by Bob Flanagan "super masochist" which also featured torture. Art exhibits by serial killers and the publication of Nazi diaries have been supported by artistic small presses. Austrian self-mutilation artists like Swarzkogler have received shows at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum.
Perhaps best-known has been the controversy over Ron Athey, an artist who sliced open the back of his partner, soaked paper towels in blood, and winged them over an audience on clotheslines in Minneapolis. The occasion, sponsored by the prestigious Walker Art Center, was reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune by Mary Abbe and resulted in a Congressional debate which led to the reduction of NEA funding which has lasted to this day.
While Congress objected, the art-world and avant-garde have defended this sadism and cruelty, at times citing the aesthetic legacy of Antonin Artaud and the Marquis de Sade.
I had personal experience of this while working as a teaching assistant at UCLA film school for an introductory undergraduate film history class. The course was a prerequisite to further study of film and television and enrolled several hundred students, including freshmen. Among the required screenings were "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." The syllabus had been drawn up by the professor running the course, who had received his doctorate from Harvard University and written his dissertation under the direction of philosopher Stanley Cavell. Among his published works is a definitive editions of writings from Cahiers du Cinema. About as establishment and as arty as one could find.
In section, several of my pupils objected to seeing the horror films, saying they were raised not to view such pictures. This caused a problem, because the exams for the course covered those disturbing (and in my view extremely disturbed) films. There was quite a bit of thinking, and then, a compromise was worked out where my students could go to the library and read about the films and their critical reception, but not have to watch the pictures. (I had to watch the films because I was teaching the course, and was particularly disturbed by an obviously sadistic and mysoginistic Chainsaw Massacre).
The inclusion of these two works in the "canon" of motion picture history (in a ten-week introductory course at UCLA) gives some idea of the value system in the academy as well as the art world. Those films, and others like them, were considered to be artistically worthy because they were "transgressive" and "called into question" middle-class values. The very gross-ness was a hallmark of artistic importance.
The killings in Colorado reminded me of that experience, and explain why no one was particularly shocked to see high school students in trench coats, pancake makeup, and shouting "Heil Hitler." It was "transgressive" and therefore the right thing to do. It is the value system of contemporary art and the academy.
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America (BBC)