Art Education and Issues of Pornography

Abstract

In the Fall 1990 issue of Studies in Art Education we published an article advocating that art educators and students attend to definitions and issues surrounding pornography and erotica in the classroom (Blandy & Congdon, 1990). Writing this article was, in part, motivated by events of the time (such as the controversy surrounding censorship and the National Endowment for the Arts that were stimulating public debate). We were concerned with the ignorance and unreasoned tenor of much of the public dialogue on pornography as well as the continuing hands off policies adopted by school systems regarding this topic. Our advocacy was based on the desire to stimulate discussion, expand awareness in the field, and to inform citizens about the accessibility of so-called pornographic images to children and youth. We acknowledged that definitions of pornography are diverse, contradictory, and debatable. As such, we argued that art educators have a responsibility to prepare students to enter into the dialogue with an informed critical perspective. In the Fall 1994 issue of Studies in Art Education Terry Barrett again brought the field's attention to pornography within his discussion of cultural wars (Barrett, 1994). Our 1990 article was cited by him as contributing to a border skirmish. While it was gratifying to have him bring the field's attention back to our 1990 article, we feel that we were misrepresented in his comments. We were cited for passing judgment on a painting by Ivan Albright, when instead our text indicates that we were analyzing a lesson plan that fails to ask students to think critically about the way in which the woman in Albright's painting is represented or the possibility that Albright might be presenting viewers with a socially critical perspective on the representation of women. Barrett also faulted us for not including 1993 and 1994 references to the work of anti-censorship feminists, clearly literature that was not yet in print when we wrote our article. Nonetheless, we do acknowledge both now and in our 1990 article that anti-censorship feminist perspectives are extremely relevant to any discussion of pornography. (For example, see page Il of our article where we cite Winkler's support of women engaging in erotic fantasy and on page 12 the discussion of Heartney's remarks on good porn.) We also discussed censorship as a part of the larger discussion on pornography, but noted that our concern was with individual choice-making and judgments based on an open, critical mind (p. 7). Preparing students in this way does, of course, contribute to their ability to think critically about the ramifications of censorship. Recent events reconfirm for us the importance of art educators and students dealing with issues of pornography. Consider the report in Time magazine on so-called cyberporn (Elmer-Dewitt, 1995). Citing a study by a research team at Carnegie Mellon University, Time's cover story led readers to believe that the availability of pornographic materials on the internet was widespread. …