Modern Day Fissures in Art and Beauty

Unpublished


Ugly Betty is a show about an ugly Hispanic woman who ends up working in the New York fashion industry. Yet, in real life, the Ugly Betty star (ironically named America) is a cute and charming Hispanic. Why couldn't she be cute (although she is somewhat charming) in the sitcom? I suspect it is an attempt to tell the average viewer that beauty is only skin deep, and that we have been judging ethnic women by unfair and wrong standards. Yes, she's ugly, but look at how good and beautiful she is in the inside.

But why not have a show of a Beautiful Maria, or some such title? Wasn't Maria good enough, with beauty to top it off, to be the heroine in West Side Story? Maybe television producers are just worried that females playing beautiful Hispanic leads might never get their hero.

Still, ugly Betty didn't stop Ugly Betty from becoming a hit.

Julie Taymor made the Lion King, a glorification of Africa with African songs, African American (and African) actors, and African animals. She also recently directed Across the Universe, using Beatles songs to stage her own anti-establishment movie/musical berating American traditions and culture. Why is Taymor able to make such a grand musical about Africa, but does such a terrible job at directing a movie full of the lovely Beatles melodies? I suspect that Taymor finds more to admire in an alien, distant, culture than she does in her own. Although, she seems to know very little about this alien culture apart from a few clichéd, feel-good examples.

The Tate Modern Gallery has recently sponsored a $600,000 installation which required a 500 ft long fissure in its floor. The Colombian artist, Doris Salcedo, who made the crack in the floor says "it represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred...It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe."

After the installation is removed, there will be a "scar", which the Tate owners are quite happy to keep since it will be a "memorial to the issues [the artist] touches on." The scar is of course to expiate their deadly sin of misrepresentation. Why hang a Rembrandt, when so many in Britain now look nothing like his characters? Salcedo is only highlighting that view.


The Louvre will soon be loaning out some of its great classic paintings to Abu Dhabi. Critics are concerned that religious paintings, and the famous nudes, will be censored. I would think also that other more "benign" paintings will suffer cuts, such as Delacroix’s Marianne, whose strong female figure leads her countrymen to freedom. The Louvre is also expanding its Islamic art section with millions of dollars funding from Saudi Arabia. Their notion of liberty is crossing borders, and they adamantly insist that it means the same thing everywhere.

Modern Western people are searching for answers in all the wrong places. In fact, answers is not what they’re getting, but a conundrum of responses. Ugly Betty’s star, America Ferreira, once went for an audition covering her face in white powder. Her revenge is that she, an unwanted, rejected girl has now turned the television norms upside down.

Taymor’s exaggerated distortion of the masterful Beatles’ songs is at the extreme end from her overzealous wish to create the African Paradise. Her act seems one of expiation – there’s that word again – for the evil West which tries so hard to destroy those heavens on earth. Which is where the Tate fissure becomes the most symbolic act of all: destroying a museum, which houses all those Western symbols, as an act of penance.

But, the French will soon realize how far misrepresentation goes when some of their beloved pieces start to get rejected, or maligned. Of course, none of that kind of censorship will occur in the new Islamic branch of the Louvre.

Marianne sacrificed her life to have her art on her nation’s walls. Now, she might be sacrificed once again by her very countrymen, traitorously and nonchalantly, not to glorify her country but to undermine it. There would be no “Liberty leading the People” where she might end up.

Art and beauty have come a long way. We no longer judge works by a disinterested standard, but by our need for vindication and expiation. Subsequently, art of high calibre is either no longer available, or is being dismissively thrown out. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité might be easy words to export, but difficult realities to implement.