Judy Fenton, your one-issue candidate!
Oct. 17th, 2007 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsJudy Fenton is running for Seattle City Council, and she's running for one reason and one reason only. She hates a piece of public art, and wants to use her authority as a member of the city council to pressure the Seattle Art Museum to have it removed. The art in question is the sculpture Father and Son, which features two nudes, one an adult male, the other a young boy both reaching out one to another, surrounded by fountains. The pumps run on a schedule that causes the fountains to rise up, obscuring one figure or the other most of the time. The artist, Louise Bourgeois, is famous for her sculptures on sexuality, trauma, childhood, and alienation-- not always all at once in the same piece, mind you. The most common interpretation of Father and Son is one of alienation, of the inability of the two figures to succesfully reach out to one another, or even to clearly see one another through the emotional mist and rain created by the social impositions of masculinity.
I went to the Seattle Art Museum's sculpture park earlier this year with a bunch of fourth-graders. They didn't find anything difficult about the statue. They thought it was a bit strange, but neither shocking nor particularly memorable. What was much more cool, to them at least, were the watercarved benches that looked too much like staring eyeballs from behind, or the hanging indoor art inside the park's visitor center.
Fenton claims that after all we've done to try and teach kids to be safe, the sculpture sends the wrong message. She's not sure how, but if she were on the city council she might have the power to have the statue removed. She's been endorsed by the Republicans, and we should probably take their word on whether or not her position is right: after all, Republicans totally know how to identify sexual deviants among us.
Personally, I think Ms. Fenton needs to get a life. There is zero lewd about that sculpture, and no "sexual predator" is going to use it as a way to convince his victime of, well, of anything. What's next? Preventing kids from viewing Michelangelo's David, or Boticelli's Venus, or demanding that Disney stop distributing the uncut edition of My Neighbor Totoro because there's a scene where the father bathes with his kids? I mean, come on, she's taking the whole "Men are predators, we must keep them in cages, we can't even begin to suggest that they can be healthy caregivers without keeping a sharp eye on them." Ms. Fenton is pushing a line of thought that's destructive to both fathers and children. Don't buy.
At least in the Oral Roberts University scandal, it's Mrs. Roberts who's accused of having an adulterous affair with a college boy-toy.
I went to the Seattle Art Museum's sculpture park earlier this year with a bunch of fourth-graders. They didn't find anything difficult about the statue. They thought it was a bit strange, but neither shocking nor particularly memorable. What was much more cool, to them at least, were the watercarved benches that looked too much like staring eyeballs from behind, or the hanging indoor art inside the park's visitor center.
Fenton claims that after all we've done to try and teach kids to be safe, the sculpture sends the wrong message. She's not sure how, but if she were on the city council she might have the power to have the statue removed. She's been endorsed by the Republicans, and we should probably take their word on whether or not her position is right: after all, Republicans totally know how to identify sexual deviants among us.
Personally, I think Ms. Fenton needs to get a life. There is zero lewd about that sculpture, and no "sexual predator" is going to use it as a way to convince his victime of, well, of anything. What's next? Preventing kids from viewing Michelangelo's David, or Boticelli's Venus, or demanding that Disney stop distributing the uncut edition of My Neighbor Totoro because there's a scene where the father bathes with his kids? I mean, come on, she's taking the whole "Men are predators, we must keep them in cages, we can't even begin to suggest that they can be healthy caregivers without keeping a sharp eye on them." Ms. Fenton is pushing a line of thought that's destructive to both fathers and children. Don't buy.
At least in the Oral Roberts University scandal, it's Mrs. Roberts who's accused of having an adulterous affair with a college boy-toy.
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Date: 2007-10-17 05:42 pm (UTC)My impression from working with the public in other venues is that most children, who usually learn *very* early that being naked is socially unacceptable, are more likely to giggle about the nakedness rather than be confused by it; on a par with animals pooping at the zoo. It isn't a classy take, but it's a likely one.
I don't like the sculpture there personally because I find it a terribly sad one for such a prominent place, but lewd or in need of removal? Hardly.