BY BEN WINTERS
"ArtsLine"
straps on the snowshoes this week and heads to the Great White North,
where a judge on the Supreme Court of British Columbia has issued a controversial
ruling on a very controversial subject. The acquittal of John Robin Sharpe
on March 26 on two charges of child pornography (and simultaneous conviction
on two other charges of child pornography, about which more below) was
a big story in Canada, though little reported in the U.S. press. (Of course,
Canada could be colonized by a race of super-intelligent Venutian space
alligators, and it would be little reported in the U.S. press.)
Sharpe writes fiction. The Globe and Mail, one Canadian paper, described his fiction thusly: "'Boyabuse’ is a collection of 17 short stories. The stories include tales of men having sex with boys aged 12 and younger, boys having sex with each other, children being flogged, torture, and painful circumcision. One story features a Canadian wilderness camp for boys who are in trouble with the law, where the boys play a game involving flogging and torture." This unpalatable list continues.
But Sharpe was found not guilty of the child pornography charges stemming from "Boyabuse" (full title: "Sam Paloc’s Boyabuse: Flogging Fun and Fortitude; A Collection of Kiddie Kink Classics"), nor for his other opus, a 32-page story called "Stand by America 1953." Justice Shaw arrived at his decision after hearing testimony from various literary experts from Canada’s academic sector. "Although he found the writings 'morally repugnant,’ [Justice Shaw] ruled that Sharpe’s written works met the Supreme Court of Canada test of having some 'objectively established artistic value, however small,’" reported Neal Hall in the Vancouver Sun.
At the heart of this story is that ticklish phrase, "objectively established artistic value;" artistic value being a remarkably subjective idea when you get right down to it. There are, of course, places in which this question is easily answered; they are typically the same places where shoplifters have their hands removed. In places like Canada, or the U.S., judges in Shaw’s (unenviable) position must carefully read stuff like "Boyabuse" and issue rulings like this one, as quoted in the Globe and Mail on the 26th:
"…I find evidence of artistic merit. Mr. Sharpe’s portrayal of people, events, scenes and ideas are reasonably well written. He uses parody and allegory, not expertly, but he does use them. His characterization is thin, but it does exist and at times is expressed with a reasonable degree of skill…in my view [the stories] are properly termed transgressive literature."
In a snippy essay in the following day’s Globe and Mail, columnist Margaret Wente expressed her displeasure with this analysis, and with the professors who spoke in Sharpe’s defense. "As every lawyer knows, you can find an expert witness to argue any side of any case, however weird," Wente wrote. "Mr. Sharpe dug up a couple of professors from the cutting edge of post-structuralist, post-colonial, postmodern literary theory. They mounted quite a rousing defense."
Wente goes on to mock Professor James Miller, who lectures in English at the University of Western Ontario; she snidely notes that Miller’s "resume includes such scholarly articles as 'A Queer Reading of Dante’" and lampoons the professor’s contention that "'Kiddiekink Classics’ is the direct literary descendant of "The Inferno." After all, Dante wrote sadistic scenes of flogging, burning, and mutilation–just like Mr. Sharpe!"
But the author most often cited in the same breath as "artists" like John Robin Sharpe is not Dante but Donatien Alphonse Francois, Marquis de Sade. In a fascinating article published when the far-from-fascinating bio-pic Quills came out last year, the Chicago Tribune’s literature desk star Julia Keller considered the infamous Marquis’s variegated reputation: "Sade’s novels, once dismissed as third-rate pornography, increasingly are the focus of scholarly study. And Sade himself, dismissed for a century and a half as a scandalous reprobate embodying the most sordid and repulsive extremes of human behavior, now is regarded in some circles as a hero, a liberator, a warrior for individuality." This was certainly the picture painted in Quills, where Geoffrey Rush’s Marquis was a fun-lovin’ R.P. McMurphy of an inmate, set against Michael Caine’s brutally repressive Nurse Ratched of an asylum keeper.
Why is it, then, that even those of us who would consider the Marquis de Sade (whose notable quotables include gems like "every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates") to be a great artist, while shuddering at the possibility that John Robin Sharpe might be an artist at all? Perhaps because Sade is long dead, as are Dante, Socrates, and any number of other lauded "transgressive authors," while Sharpe represents a current offense not only to literature, but also to real, living, Canadian children.
Which brings us to the two child pornography charges Sharpe was actually convicted on; when they raided his house to get the books, they also found "400 pictures of young boys in sexual poses."
ON THE RECEIVING END
Damien Jacques, theatre critic at Milwaukee’s Journal-Sentinel, had quite a shock coming when he sat down to watch Chomsky-9/11, a new play by that community’s Theatre X. Judging by the title, he knew the play would have to do with America’s great tragedy, and something to do with linguist and radical critic Noam Chomsky. What he didn’t know was that he–Damien Jacques, theatre critic at Milwaukee’s Journal-Sentinel–was also part of the show.
"I was a little surprised when my name was spoken by an actor early in the show," wrote Jacques in a column after seeing the show. "Surprise turned to amazement when a large head-and-shoulders picture of me…was projected on a screen at the rear of the stage. A few minutes before, a photo of the second plane approaching the World Trade Center towers was on that screen, and now the sold-out audience was staring at me–staring at them."
Jacques then confesses his immediate reaction when seeing his photo inserted into an intense piece of political theatre. "My first reaction was that they used a picture of me I like."
Fair enough.