With minimal fanfare, I frothed up a few words addressing the ongoing trend towards the prohibition and removal of taboo elements within the realms of art, culture, media, and academe resulting from sundry moral panics and mass hysterias largely propagated by the social order.
A relatively brief glimpse into the open-ended question of how the enjoyment of guilt, fear, and group narcissism/sadism came to replace the enjoyment of freedom within today’s so-called “culture underground”…
“If you can’t face Hiroshima in the theatre, you’ll eventually end up in Hiroshima itself.”
— Edward Bond
“The fight that seems so radical and virtuous meshes perfectly with the maintenance of the social order.”
— Jack Wright
“Neither art nor the artist has a moral responsibility to liberal social causes.”
— Camille Paglia
“I’d rather be whole than good.”
— C.G. Jung
“God save us from people who mean well.”
— Vikram Seth
There is a force which lies at the heart of truth, meaning, beauty, humour, eroticism, mystery, madness, and desire. This primordial and essential force is known as taboo, from the Tongan word “tabu,” meaning ‘set apart, forbidden.’ First introduced into the English language by Captain James Cook in 1777.
Taboo — not to be confused with puerile transgression, sophomoric rebellion, or chintzy shock tactics (épater la bourgeoisie) — is the very crux and crucible of the creative spirit. The soul and lifeblood of the muse.
Taboo, much like art or nature itself, requires human understanding as much as any individual needs to be understood by taboo. It is concealed within a vast and complex underworld of impenetrable darkness; sublime and forbidden realms that contain our deepest fears, fantasies, insecurities, embarrassments, disgusts, satisfactions, traumas, joys, anxieties, fulfilments, humiliations, and pleasures.
Taboo exists most abundantly within the furthest recesses of our collective being and subjective imagination; the divine chthonian locus sought by the boldest and most insatiably curious of mankind throughout history to transform both himself and his world.
Taboo is by definition and design associated with significant short-term risk, volatility, and discomfort, however history has revealed time and again that within the fetishistic context of artmaking, it also contains the potential to lay bare and illuminate far-reaching profundities; disorienting insights and earth-shattering truths that surpass the limits of rational thought, intellect, and at times even language itself.
Taboo perennially inhabits the arcane realm of the unknown, and as [artist/filmmaker] Jack Smith once declared, “What is not known is important.” We all at least begin as Freud’s “polymorphous perverse” child.
Thus, the question stands: How could anyone who has been even remotely affected, seduced, or enriched by the sublime power of art come to demonize or suppress the aestheticized exploration of taboo within this very realm? To do so would seemingly constitute an incomprehensibly loathsome act – one akin to the direct condemnation of consciousness and imagination itself, and thus by extension, free thought, free expression, and free LIFE.
Over at least the past decade or so, myself along with what I suspect to be myriad others, have witnessed an increasingly significant number of contemporaries hastily complying with the trend of this precise variety of attempted abolishment (to make no mention of those who passively remain silent in the face of such behaviour; perhaps commenting anonymously online or anxiously whispering among trusted friends, collaborators, and confidants, but more often than not, biting their tongues altogether out of fear of social or professional ostracization).
The tactless “cancellation” crusades carried out by sadistic tattletales and obsequious informants constitutes the ultimate violation.
The highest betrayal.
Some (myself included) might go as far as to claim that such repugnantly mobbish, incurious, and antisocial behaviour is even more pernicious than a physician’s betrayal of the Hippocratic Oath. One would not be incorrect in declaring that these actions represent the callous, cold-hearted, and myopic desecration of both muse and logos.
Make no mistake about it: censorship of dissident thought or expression of any variety is the craven attempt to both cease and hinder the expansion and refinement of consciousness!
Annie Le Brun: “…artists who distinguish themselves by an unprecedented, submissive attitude toward cultural politics and institutional strategies have irremediably altered the artistic landscape merely through their occupation of it.”
The self-appointed latter-day nuns, clerics, and clergymen of moralism enacting their brand-new-never-been-done-before holy war against all suspected sinners would have you believe that any work tagged as either problematic or unacceptable can never – according to the divine gospel, doctrine, and dictum of what was once upon a time referred to as wokeness (READ: militant identity politics) be considered art due to some degree of perceived oppression (rather than exploitation) that has occurred as either a direct or indirect result of the work in question.
It matters not how ludicrous or absurd prima facie any accusation of suspected wrong-doing happens to be.
Nor is it seemingly of any great concern what the credentials, experience, or trustworthiness happen to be of the shrieking zealot crying, “Witch!”
Rather, what remains sacrosanct above all else is that the presence of true evil was felt, and the perceived victim’s lived experience is in no way denied or invalidated (read: challenged or criticized to any degree, however infinitesimal).
Furthermore, in such cases it is deemed beyond question that every effort should be made to ensure that any and all examples of suspected infractions are henceforth banned, censored, disavowed, defenestrated, buried, and wiped clean from the historical record; with not even a shred of doubt, ambivalence, or remorse. When it comes to those who’ve been fully baptized in the sacred waters of “woke” liberalism, their citadel or cathedral of divine moralism must remain pure, intact, and sanctified at all costs – safeguarded from any and all potential dissidents and infidels.
In summary, if for any reason one is befallen with the curse of being labelled a racist, misogynist, antisemite, white supremacist, xenophobe, transphobe, fatphobe, homophobe, islamophobe, Nazi, fascist, ad infinitum; they must then be hastily tried and condemned for the moral crime of Wrong Think.
Perhaps most notably in these kangaroo court trials of suspected heresy, there is a conspicuous absence of impartial juries or judges, let alone consideration for due process (remember that?). Only the barbaric brutality and expeditious/chaotic tyranny of mob rule.
Lest anyone somehow be deceived into thinking otherwise: This is puritanical Stalinism through and through.
The grand irony is that 999 times out of 1000, these rabid paragons of sanctimony are so hopelessly deluded by their own ideological indoctrination, upwardly mobile/social class interests, and unbridled thirst for REVENGE that they actually imagine themselves to be the countercultural pioneers and courageous seekers valiantly probing the murky and endarkened depths of taboo. Insufferably smug, humourless, and more often than not well-heeled, today’s pearl-clutching Care Bears frenziedly attempt to socially pressure and hoodwink anyone who suffers the misfortune of crossing their paths into believing that their debased platitudes, safe-space transgressions, hollow abstractions, and predictable posturing somehow constitute something more than the embarrassingly trite and toothless expressions of conformity that they are!
(Did I mention they’re often well-heeled?).
Of course, it doesn’t take anyone in possession of even a handful of functioning neurons more than a few brief moments to sense that the petulant drek and linguistic snake oil plopped down before them offers little beyond the obvious reflection of these self-described creatives’ own boredom, mediocrity, and staid prudishness.
The endless grey sludge of content.
Dunning-Kruger effect for the MFA set.
The make-believe martyrdom of these true believers more often than not amounts to little more than petty bids for status, attention, and acceptance – pining for any opportunity to give the appearance of immense personal risk, danger, and sacrifice. In reality; their desiccated drivel is conformist to the bone, lacking entirely in any discernible degree of skin in the game.
By glorifying group narcissism and victimhood identity instead of pitying it, it exemplifies only the strength of weakness and never the strength of strength. The battle cry of today (emphasis on CRY) is, “To the VICTIM belong the spoils!”
What we in fact have before us is the status quo dressed up in the worn out, tepid, and contrived garb of so-called radicalism, revolution, and rebellion. White sheep painting themselves black in pathetic acts of ritualized humiliation. Only the pure and reductive binary of good and evil are permitted within their borders, whereas thought-provoking ambiguity, mystery, and ambivalence are seldom to be found.
Their impotent ejaculations meagrely dribble out onto the linoleum, evaporating as quickly as they are forgotten.
The only blades they ever brandish are butter knives.
The emperor indeed has no clothes.
It should come as little surprise to anyone that these preposterously banal and warmed over displays of “righteousness indignation” (read: childish tizzies and histrionic tantrums) are universally sanctioned and supported by virtually every state, NGO, CBO, non-profit, academic, bureaucratic, legacy media, and corporate/global institution (financial or otherwise), with overwhelming aplomb. Every managerial administration, human resource, and state department collectively gaze down in unison and approvingly nod their simpering noggins.
As a whole; whether they possess any degree of awareness of it or not, these diehard adherents to The Resistance™ constitute the cosmopolitan culture wing of the technocratic social order, further facilitating its ever-expanding panopticon-like surveillance mechanism. They effectively serve to do little more than strengthen, flatter, and lick the boot of the very thing they feign opposition towards.
Today’s seething sycophants and crybullies are in fact – I suspect unwittingly – the agitprop arm of “woke” progressive capital. The waterboys, shock troops, and useful idiots of power.
In exchange for their deference and genuflection towards the establishment, they receive meagre social points, approving pats on the head, and increased attention of one form or another which go towards building up or establishing their own personal brand(s) and online avatars within the tightly controlled frame, network, and hierarchy of imperial hegemony.
Capitulating to the compulsory pressures of the super-ego, these eagerly compliant professional caste lemmings practically beg to don the yoke of self-commodification/entrepreneurship in order fulfil their [market-based] need for acceptance and approval from the administrators of authority and officialdom.
In today’s topsy-turvy world, liberal authoritarianism and anarcho-tyranny have come to be synonymous with corporate oligopoly.
Where at one time, there was a relatively robust and [intellectually/economically] diverse social milieu, there now only exists an intensely fractured, isolated, and alienated wasteland of plagiarized self-aggrandizement; filtered through an endless series of manufactured moral panics and mass hysterias. The net effect being that the majority of credentialed knowledge as it relates to the examination of art and its social function/relations here in the US and abroad has been limited almost exclusively to the realms of metaphorical linguistics, fourth-rate Theory, and fish-brained politicization.
Propaganda begetting more propaganda.
“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”
TRANSLATION: “An artist with no flair for propaganda is an unemployed artist.” Anti-anti-anti-anti-anti-anti-anti… ad nauseam. Punks™, anti-fascists™, anti-racists™, and anarchists™, all rendered the same.
All conditioned to contain the souls of bureaucrats.
Beyond claims of pure naïveté, the only reason one could fathom anyone not disregarding these fraudulent traitors, feckless careerists, and flagrant snitches outright, is if they too were possessed by a similar ideology du jour; fully succumbing to the persuasive social pressures of tribal groupthink. What is perhaps most amazing in all of this is how many contemporary “artists,” most conspicuously within the realm of music (for reasons I’ll avoid delving into here), so often lack any degree of vision or imagination when it comes to their ability to interpret meaning from artmaking rooted in taboo.
Rather than charitably affording the possibility of myriad subjective interpretations that potentially differ from one’s own, their rigid conclusions are predicated on an absolute and fundamentalist belief in the dubious notion that REPRESENTATION = ENDORSEMENT.
As the perennially dauntless, intrepid, and aforementioned free playing saxophonist and writer Jack Wright shrewdly observed, “Most people aren’t listening to music. They’re listening to culture.”
i.e. The majority of listeners are listening for whatever affirms the ideological tenets of their consumer-driven group identity, as opposed to opening themselves to a degree that allows them to embrace the experience of being confronted with a subjectivity of genuine confusion and disruptive ambivalence – disorienting emotions and states of consciousness that expose the acutely precarious reality of our own condition; the shaky ground upon which we all stand.
In 2018, a New York art gallery cancelled an exhibition of black-and-white abstract paintings by the artist Boyd Rice following allegations that Rice was a “neo-Nazi” (Rice, who has publicly collaborated with known homosexuals and whose wife is of Jewish descent, denied the claims).
Mitchell Algus, who had exhibited similar works by Rice at his own New York gallery in 2007, openly admitted that artworld professionals have abandoned the “bold, cutting-edge, uncompromising, transgressive, risk-taking” hype of yore, renouncing any principles beyond going with the flow of au courant market and social pressures, stating:
“I said, ‘Just cancel it and get things out in the open. It’s not what people are making it out to be,’ ” Algus recalled.
He added that, in the 11 years since Rice’s show at his gallery, discourse has shifted. Whereas Rice’s persona and lyrics may have once been viewed as a countercultural shock to the system, Algus said, they now come off as racist, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic in what Algus described as a “hyper-political troll-world.”
“In this current political social climate, [Rice] has become a pariah,” the dealer said. “Things have changed.”
The question here is what is the criterion on which art is accepted by galleries, museums, curators, and academics today, and how has it changed?
For the cynical careerists or ideologically possessed, all art must be judged by politics, which means their particular point of view, rather than the long Modernist tradition of aesthetic judgment. This of course is a tradition that people actually making art (unlike the art world managers) support in terms of aesthetic appreciation, and are only intimidated to go against by the bosses.
In the Spring of 2017, underground writer, performer, publisher, and one-time theatre director Ric Royer was called-out on social media and labelled an “abuser” (among other things) for being unfaithful to his then girlfriend. Following the online pile-on, venue-owners were successfully coerced into cancelling his performances, employers pressured to fire him, associates threatened to disassociate with him, and he was subsequently stalked and harassed in public to such a degree that he was forced to move hundreds of miles away.
Royer was treated like a criminal within his own concrete community and his life in Baltimore was effectively ruined.
He continued to be haunted by allegations even several years later.
Royer stated in a piece he wrote for Medium in 2020:
“I was – and still am – a difficult person.
I’ve let unresolved childhood stuff sabotage several relationships, and I had a difficult time shedding the “bad boy” persona before it settled into the altogether less appealing “bad man” persona.
It’s hard to rally sympathy for the consequences of a reckless life, but the extent of my public shaming was straight up bizarre. Like a human whack-a-mole game, I continue to get anonymous emails sent to publishers and collaborators any time I attempt to return to creative work.”
He went on:
“Not all cases are the same – some are perhaps more deserving of a demand for accountability than others, but enthusiasm for persecution idles high in the arts, manufacturing a consensus that those considered “bad people” should not be free to make art. This, despite the fact that the arts have long been a haven for misfits, troublemakers, weirdos, and anti-social outcasts of all kinds.
During the culture wars of the 1990s, controversial artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Karen Finley provoked hysterical conservative efforts to curb federal arts funding.
But today, it’s the artists themselves who are the zealous guardians of decency, and in the process of purging those deemed enemies of progress, some very important art gets caught in the widening net of the “super-problematic.”
What’s noteworthy to examine here is how things have played out at the non-official level, how the behaviour and ideologies within unofficial realms (i.e. the so–called “underground”) have come to mimic that of the official institutions in an ancillary manner rather than providing legitimate alternatives – alternatives which have historically served to challenge both the needs and restrictions of the social order.
Royer writes:
“One of the more uncomfortable but unremarked-upon realities in this march of progressive punishment is that it often finds itself tangled in basic class issues.
For all the talk about empowering the historically powerless, the moral codes are still largely authored by privileged actors and written in the language of wish-fulfilment. The poor are not cancelling anyone or anything.
It’s worth emphasizing how pronounced class dynamics are in contemporary art scenes, likely a result of academia’s influence on the arts.
I can’t help but feel that class and difference played a major role in my situation. My bad behaviour and strained personal relationships alone did not lead to my disgrace, but I feel certain that my failure to fit in politically or in social status (which was reflected in my artwork as well) also had much to do with it.
For dirtbag artists, access is primarily administered by the graduates of expensive art schools.”
Here he continues, asking perhaps the most crucial question:
“What about those who aren’t powerful in the first place?
Call it whatever you want, but it’s unfortunate that the debate about cancel culture has been straw-manned to focus on those “too big to be cancelled” instead of those too small to fight back, especially when their exile is unwarranted or baseless. Those stories disappear after the point of scandal, too inconsequential to care about.
When destroying someone can be done with such ease – without the need for dialogue or due-process – that is power too.”
What is critical here is to split politics from art.
Artists have every right to affirm empathy or identitarian politics if that is their view, but do they want ANY politics to determine whether their art and the art of others is to be available to the public?
Furthermore, is any artist deserving of punishment, be it by law enforcement or sanctioned vigilantes, for creating and distributing “problematic” works of art?
Cowheartedly succumbing to social pressures from fellow ingrates and Salafists, a former “friend” offered me his unsolicited advice at the conclusion of a concert event he listlessly coordinated several years ago: “Art should always be moral.”
Ironically, this mind-numbingly moronic turd of wisdom sluggishly wormed its way out of his chronically agape maw whilst his collectively umbraged comrades took to impetuously slashing the tires of my car as a justified act of retaliation.
What was my unspeakably vile act of transgression?
What crime or wrongdoing had been committed?
Despite a conspicuous absence of physical violence, abuse, or harassment of any kind, my moral violations were apparently far too heinous and unspeakable for any of these spineless dolts to produce a single coherent answer.*
Their logic bore a striking similarity to one of the all-too-familiar neoliberal/neocon catchphrases: “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
To them, the charged and inexplicable imagery, iconography, and sounds presented within the context and framework of a performance at an informal underground venue they had paid admission to was enough to justify an act of hostile aggression without any questions asked regarding the intentions or motivations behind what they had just witnessed.
Is there any possibility for tapping into “the dark matter of the soul” within this thoroughly facile, moribund, and dogmatically rigid form of “thinking”?
Where do figures like Oscar Wilde, Ezra Pound, Crispin Glover, Lautréamont, Lenny Bruce, Tom Wolfe, D.H. Lawrence, Andy Kaufman, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Artaud, Delany, Laibach, Orwell, Sartre, de Sade, Nabokov, Pasolini, Polanski, D’annunzio, Haneke, Huxley, Noé, Evola, Wagner, Marinetti, Twain, Mapplethorpe, Shakespeare and others fit into this picture?
When asked this very question, the response I was offered was simply, “Yeah, but those are all ‘old heads’, what about now?”
Under presentism, no one rolls over in their grave. Rather, the present dances on all the graves of the past and covers them in TRIPE.
What exactly is our society expected to do with artists who feel no compulsion or obligation whatsoever towards liberal social causes?
Is there any room for those whose work doesn’t serve any kind of ideological apparatus, state function, or obvious degree of political relevancy and/or “usefulness”, moral or otherwise?
What of those who don’t give a rat’s ass about saving “democracy” (read: oligarchical liberal order)?
How dear reader is it even possible within this dreadfully poisoned framework to assess the brazen and uncompromising works of those who outright reject and categorically disregard all forms of dogmatism?
Believe it or not, the stain upon the world that the daffy somnambulist who uttered this in(s)ane morsel of woketardery is most known for is having briefly performed in a band called AIDS Wolf.
Is it really any wonder as to why we’re living through an unprecedented era of cultural paralysis plagued by aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual bankruptcy?
Is anyone really all that surprised by the exponentially skyrocketing levels of anxiety, deaths of despair (suicide), sexual ennui, divorce, and crushing apathy/malaise?
Aside from a grossly expanding rate of economic disparity and perhaps certain chemical factors, what else could possibly be the reason for the declining number of births, marriages, and sexual relationships occurring in every nation affected by the liberal order of American empire?
With a new epoch of increasing uncertainty presently before us (unofficial artists and others outside of the rat race), facing an all-pervasive power elite that’s more consolidated than ever before, I offer a prayer for dogmatic moralism to once and for all be cast aside in favour of a steadfast return to indomitable aesthetic adventure! Nobly intrepid pursuits that lead those of a certain mind to tenaciously seek out and dwell within the very heart of taboo.
A prayer for those who boldly and single-mindedly heed the call which beckons them to throw caution to the wind and cross the Rubicon – immersing themselves within the domain of untamed imagination, the domain of eternal mystery, the domain of boundless and obsessive desire, the domain of unadulterated enjoyment, and the domain of MINDING YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
To quote the immortal Mel Brooks, “Try to rise below vulgarity!”
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*Mind you dear reader, this fateful incident occurred in Montreal. The last city in the Western world to succumb to secularization; almost instantaneously swapping the old religion of Catholicism in the 1960s for the new religion of Provincial statism.
Followed shortly thereafter by the empathy politics of liberalism (i.e. global corporate finance) and the adoption of rich cultural traditions/newfangled amusements including (but by no means limited to): dilettantism, furrydom, polycules, virtue/vice signalling, unicycling, and live action role-playing.
Links
- Evan Lipson – Instagram
- Boyd Rice – 2018 ArtNet Article About Boyd’s Cancelled Show
- Boyd Rice – 2019 Aither Interview
- Ric Royer – 2020 Medium Article: ‘The Troubled Maker: Transgressive Art, Public Shame, and Mike Tyson’
- Ric Royer – 2024 Aither Interview
Article header art by Dan Thrax.
All other images supplied by Evan.
