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Real Answers™
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Copyright: © 2006 Gary Hardaway
585 words

DEGENERACY BY ANY OTHER NAME

By: Gary Hardaway

I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain and never will, unless someone ties me up, holds a gun to my wife’s head and forces me to watch. If this hypothetical terrorist makes the mistake of threatening my brains, I’ll gladly die for a decent cause.

We all know the depressing, ugly story, don’t we? Cowboys panting for sodomy, trysting under cover by camping, betraying their spouses and children, on and on for years. Of course, these lusty Marlboro men are portrayed as tragic victims of cruel society with its oppressive morality. I can think of no theme more nauseating, no message more perverse.

Equally pernicious, however, are the distortions and plaudits bestowed on the film by its breathless champions. Just about every review I read called the drama a “cowboy romance.”

Romance? Romeo and Juliet, or Bogie and Bacall had a romance. Degeneracy by any other name is still degeneracy. Fearing ordinary Americans might harbor such judgmental thoughts, Newsweek rushed to assure us that the “love” between the cowpokes was “sacred” and “pure.”

Oh. Right. How bourgeois of us yokels to judge revolutionary art by our narrow morality. You’d think we’d have learned by now. We’ve had so many chances to acquire the proper sensitivities.

Like when “artist” Chris Ofili created a collage of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung. How refreshingly creative, how positively brilliant! As one admiring critic declared, “It is deliberately provocative and intends to jolt viewers into an expanded frame of reference, and perhaps even toward illumination.”

But some of us just don’t get it, do we? We still think filth is filth. We stubbornly refuse to “expand” our simple minds and get “illuminated.”

When photographer Andres Serrano filled a container of urine and submerged a crucifix in it, we were supposed to hail that work as a hallmark of free artistic expression.

In fact we should have realized that Serrano offered us a new theological perspective on the Savior and his mother. Or in fancy elitist language, “Dissonance and distortion . . . urge the viewer to move beyond the superficial material plane to a higher level of spiritual contemplation.”

But, being dunces, we failed to appreciate this new, sophisticated higher dimension. Serrano’s “higher plane of spiritual contemplation” seemed very much like a plugged toilet.

Space prohibits similar comment on Robert Maplethorpe’s depiction of whips placed in . . . never mind. The very attempt to describe acts of depravity tends to contaminate both reader and writer. According to one biblical writer, that’s not surprising.

“For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.” The very mentioning tends to pollute our minds, like noxious fumes.

Yet the same writer counsels his flock to “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” Exposure requires some strong, frank language but, ultimately one must stop before crossing the border between education and degrading contagion. The situation requires careful balance.

So why say anything at all? Because the “secret” vices and visions of the darkness increasingly parade and celebrate themselves in public. To defend our minds and our culture from porn-soaked images and deviant celebration, we must call filth by its true names: degeneracy, perversion, spiritual sewage.

It is possible, even tempting, to fling these epithets like spears without regard to who gets gored. That would be uncharitable. Our rebukes should be reserved for those who ecstatically glorify the abominable. Those trapped in and addicted to vice deserve our pity, prayers and mercy.

Gary Hardaway has taught in universities in the USA, Lithuania and Canada. He holds a Ph. D. in foundations of education. "Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com

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