Culture_Wars

Culture Wars Culture Wars While I, as an artist, feel that the debate over Serrano’s “Piss Christ” and Mapplethorpe’s “The Perfect Moment” exhibit is ridiculous, I can appreciate the need for debate in our society. A world where everyone agrees with everyone else, while impossible, would be incredibly frustrating to live in. As a whole our society thrives on debate. This is why we have a political democracy, or some form of it, and not a dictatorship. Dissent and debate are important tools in our culture that are used to further the knowledge and understanding of society. Censorship should not be part of this system. Censorship has been an issue for as long as have been organized power structures in communities. Censorship is something that is done by people who are afraid of new ideas, different ideas, and ideas that are not given to them by someone higher up than themselves. Censorship is based on fear, the fear of losing one’s power, the fear of corrupting morals, the fear that young adults and children are not capable of thinking for themselves, and the fear that god will not approve. One of the main focuses behind censorship is art, afa, nea, funding, about, something, people, mapplethorpe, debate, censorship, been, should, religion, one, issue, fear, arts, artists, way, support, political, mapplethorpe’s, homoerotic, government, funded, american, wildmon, through, tax, society, serrano’s, robert, religious, public, power