Renaissance Art v. The Culture Wars

Suddenly, in the eyes of certain purveyors of religious righteousness, Michelangelo was a pornographer.

Honestly, some of this you couldn’t even make up.

I thought, way back in 2002, that the sexually-repressed and sanctimoniously-silly had overplayed their religiosity card when W’s Attorney General, John Ashcroft, ordered aides to drape the Spirit of Justice statue at DOJ headquarters. The piece was commissioned in 1933 from sculptor C. Paul Jennewein, and its cast aluminum, bare-breasted depiction of Lady Justice was a bridge too far for Ashcroft and his ultra-conservative cronies. I was pretty sure he was going to go after those naked silhouettes on big-rig’s mud-flaps next.

When Ashcroft resigned to take the well-respected and time-honored tradition of converting one’s public service into great personal wealth as a high-dollar lobbyist, I was relieved that his personal greed exceeded his desire to continue as a less-well compensated moral scold. Dodged a bullet this time, I thought. But as is usually the case where sanctimony meets the ability to lord it over everyone else, this whack-a-mole game wasn’t over.

Fast-forward to Charlie Sykes’ Bulwark last week:

“I regret to tell you that this is not a parody:

A Tallahassee charter school principal has been forced to resign after parents complained about a sixth grade art history lesson, claiming Michelangelo's statue of David, arguably the most famous sculpture in the world, was 'pornographic'. 

Hope Carrasquilla was pushed out of Tallahassee Classical School this week after three parents complained about the curriculum. 

Two said they wished they'd been made aware that kids were being shown images of the sculpture first, and one claimed it was 'pornographic'. 

According to the Tallahassee school, some of the children were “upset,” which seems unlikely.

What actually happened is that three (3) parents, who were evidently unacquainted with depictions of genitalia or classical art, but ever vigilant to the threat of wokeness and pornography, decided to be offended.

So the principal is out, and the tender eyes of the young classicists are protected from the corrupting influences of Renaissance art.”

You may remember a Simpsons episode years ago that had Michelangelo’s David on tour, and you guessed it, some parents were upset. Marge, herself an artist, tried to explain to the townsfolk that the statue was art, not porn. Here, art imitates life, imitating art. For what it’s worth, the Simpsons also had an episode in the Nineties that had a future headline ballyhooing the new American president, Donald Trump. That’s rich, I recall thinking. Donald Trump as president? The Simpsons, unmatched for its satirical genius, proved also to be the Nostradamus of our era. I was consulting NBC in the Eighties and Nineties when The Donald was a hanger-on there. His narcissism was on full display, and the big joke was that the most dangerous place at 30 Rock was between Trump and the TV cameras.

Back to Florida, which is already in progress. Make that regress. I’m sure the governor and his rubber stamp legislature think that banning books, history, and classical art will truly let them crush the woke crowd and own the libs. I guess they haven’t yet considered that universities in other states may not accept applications from students whose education has been limited to what the state of Florida deems appropriate curricula.  

In 2002, a Georgia county stickered existing text books with the words “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.” The state’s own university system told the reactionary Cobb County (also the home of racist former governor, Lester Maddox), that student’s hoping to attend a state university or college would need to take remedial biology before being considered for admission. That hurt their cause, but the death blow came from a federal court that ruled in favor of the citizens fighting the sticker and ban on teaching evolution.

From NBC: “A federal judge … ordered a suburban Atlanta school system to remove stickers from its high school biology textbooks that call evolution ‘a theory, not a fact,’ saying the disclaimers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. ‘By denigrating evolution, the school board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories,’ U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said.”

In other words, there’s nothing new under the sun. Since America’s inception, conservative religionists have tried to keep secular education out in favor religious education. Don’t bother telling them our actual origin story where the Founders are largely deists, not Christians. They’ll tell you it’s a Christian nation, then go on to misquote and downright defile Christ by misusing him to enforce their own puritanical views.

Has Tallahassee become that town from Footloose?

©2023 Jon Sinton