IF WE CONFUSE CULTURE WITH THE CULT OF THE ARTS, then, yes, Manet, together with all his art historical brethren, is of primary importance. But if we take culture to mean the entire web of aspirations, goals, achievements, and values of a people—their conscience; their taste in ethics—penicillin counts for more than any artist.
I was reminded of this by Tracy Quan’s recent article in The Daily. Ms. Quan, author of Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl [“available on your Kindle in under a minute”] is the doyenne of the half-hooker economy. She takes after Harry Reid’s campaign against Nevada’s licensed brothels on—can you guess?—economic grounds. The sex trade, like every aspect of the hospitality industry, is a civic good. It supports public schools and other essential services needed by working families, especially in hard-hit rural areas. Non-working ones, too. Besides, kids can’t see them. No need to worry about scandalizing the little ones. Keep in mind: brothels reduce unemployment among cooks, bartenders, linen services, valet parkers and wage-earners in a spreading array of satellite businesses. Best of all, commercial sex retains a delicious “outlaw” quality that makes it quintessentially American. Just like Billy the Kid.
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Ms. Quan’s “hardworking ladies” contributed, in their time, to Edouard Manet’s grisly end. His leg, gangrenous from syphilis, was amputated on the dining room table and, in the ensuing chaos, thrown into the fireplace. Congenital syphilis was commonplace. Mortality rates from the disease, spread by prostitutes, were frightening. Such things as activist prostitutes or prostitutes’ rights are the fruit of penicillin and the subsequent development of antibiotics. The culture that publishes and promotes Ms. Quan’s pensées owes everything to bacteriologist Alexander Fleming (1881-1955), and nothing to anything hanging in gold frames in museums from here to Dubai.
Our jetsetting-call-girl turned woman-of-letters has much in common with Yasumasa Morimura’s high camp antics. The implicit anything-goes ethos of the tramp and the cross-dresser is their shared knowledge that modern medicine trumps ancient cautions against the hazards of sexual promiscuity.
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No matter that syphilis, still one of the most common STDs, increases risk of contracting HIV virus, of blindness, mental disorder, neurological and cardiac problems and, ultimately, death. Camp sensibility has erased from the public square popular ability to shun the source of its own endangerment. It is not cool to disapprove. Cole Porter, an exploitative charmer in his personal life, gave us Anything Goes. Woody Allen, a perennial creep, brought us Whatever Works. Losing a leg on the dining room table is not a modern hazard. It does not worry infantile narcissists. Or audiences looking for amusement.
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The visual arts are supposed to teach us how to look. So let us try it. We can discern the character of our culture and weigh the probabilities of where it points us—just by looking. Viewed simply on aesthetic grounds, the culture Ms. Quan and Mr. Morimura represent is a dead end. Only antibiotics keep the dead walking.
NOTE: One respondent emailed with a link to Sheri’s Ranch Brothel in Nevada. If you are in the neighborhood and looking for a Hot French Oil Massage with a Happy Ending, go ahead and google it yourself. Somehow, that is not a link I want to pass along. But the posted Sex Menu does lend a certain piquancy to the images above.
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© 2011 Maureen Mullarkey
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