Transcripts
"Breaking through taboos"
Nearly all of the messages we encounter in our day-to-day conversations and exposure to the media fall within the bounds of what society tolerates. Most people sense what most other people will accept, and taboo subjects or materials tend to stay sidelined without much conscious thought. Yet the limits of tolerance in any society are fluid, evolving over time as ideas are shaped and reshaped by creativity, interaction and even technology. And when society does encounter something new - a radical idea expressed verbally or visually, for example - the confrontation between the idea and society's tolerance limits can be a profound event: Will society expand to embrace the new concept? Will the existing boundaries prevail? Will the idea be allowed to make inroads that might pave the way for gradual acceptance by stealth?
Individual events that contribute to the process are duly noted and often attract attention for their role in testing the limits -Tracy Emin's bed and the billboard for Opium perfume are recent examples. The former propelled Emin and her art toward acceptance into the fringe of what society considers mainstream. The latter may become a case of pushing society's boundaries by stealth - the banning of the billboard by advertising watchdogs caused the offending photo to be reproduced in millions of copies of newspapers, reaching a vast audience of people who would never see the billboards and doing it in a way society already accepts: the photo wasn't as radical when seen in the context of other news and advertising photos in the press.
The recent French film 'Baise-Moi' ('Screw Me'), an extreme sort of 'Thelma and Louise' story about two women brought together by alienation from society, shows how acceptance by stealth can occur. The film was rated 'X' for its combination of sex and violence after being shown unrated for several weeks in mainstream French cinemas - an action that caused the film to be abruptly pulled from screens throughout France. The resulting controversy drew new attention to the 1994 book by Virginie Despentes that spawned the film, so much so that a front-page advertisement in Le Monde showed the book with the sole caption 'Read Me.'In a cover story about the film, the Belgian magazine Le Journal du Mardi recalled the book's first appearance as a fart on the French literary scene, something that society had mostly rejected at the time. Now, five years later, the book has been republished with wide distribution and its popularity even caused it to become gift fodder as the core of a packaged 3-book set of Despentes' work.
So the story that was rejected by society seven years ago is now broadly accepted, and the question has shifted to its manner of presentation. In other words, the substance is now accommodated - it's only the form that's at issue. Will this accelerate the return of the film to public showing? It's hard to say, but it has emerged here and there to test the waters - including at the ICA in London, where, interstingly, the recently un-banned Pasolini film 'Salo' played to packed houses.
M.S.
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