University Rector Juanito Camilleri has indicated that he would not have reported an undergraduate to police for publishing an explicit story in a student newspaper had the law been clearer, though he sees no reason to apologise. Now that’s interesting. Here is the rector:
“Whether it is a fictional story or not is beside the point as far as I am concerned. I was not acting from a moral standpoint, nor as a literary critic… I acted with prudence and referred the matter to the police for their consideration because it was not at all clear whether the text, the way it was presented without disclaimer, and the way it was being distributed, even to minors, was in breach of the law or not.”
It’s hard to get this straight. The rector was, by his own admission, acting on legal advice – as he should in such cases. It should be safe to assume that the legal advisor was a little more clear about the import of the law than that and yet he or she still advised a referral to the police. In this particular case (hereafter referred to as the Realtà Case) we had a case that dragged two persons (author and editor) and that involved a police prosecution as well as an AG appeal. At stake, according to many was our “freedom of expression”.
“People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish… but that’s only if it’s done properly.” – Banksy
If it ain’t broke…
What really was at stake was a definition of our laws on obscenity in accordance to the mores of the day. In simpler terms – we have a law intended to protect citizens (especially those who are unable to protect themselves) from obscenity and pornography. The basic assumption in our law is that you can publish and be damned. What you cannot do is publish something that can be deemed to be obscene (I’ll stick to one out of the two). IF there is a suspicion of obscenity you still have exceptional circumstances that would protect the publication from attack: one of these is generally (and vaguely -as Anti-Acta campaigners would have it) is art.
There lies the crux of the matter. In order for this law to work you need to define a piece of work as “art”. Away from the philosophical world of “what is art?” you still need a qualification in order to have a law that works and, ironically, that is not intrusive. The issue with this kind of law is that it is time-sensitive. It needs to be tested time and time again as mores and attitude changes. Let’s exaggerate for the sake of example. Imagine one exception to obscenity is if it was a piece of “music”. I love to use the example of Igor Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring. At it’s premier, the piece of “music” was violently criticised as being anything but. Here’s good old Wikipedia describing the goings on in Paris that night in May 1913:
The première involved one of the most famous classical music riots in history. The intensely rhythmic score and primitive scenario and choreography shocked the audience that was accustomed to the elegant conventions of classical ballet. The evening’s program began with another Stravinsky piece entitled “Les Sylphides.” This was followed by, “The Rite of Spring”. The complex music and violent dance steps depicting fertility rites first drew catcalls and whistles from the crowd. At the start, some members of the audience began to boo loudly. There were loud arguments in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work. These were soon followed by shouts and fistfights in the aisles. The unrest in the audience eventually degenerated into a riot. The Paris police arrived by intermission, but they restored only limited order. Chaos reigned for the remainder of the performance.
To add to the intrigue various historians allege that Stravinsky actually invented the stories of the riots to spice up the reception to his new music but that is not my point. Discussions on art and its nature can be highly controversial and many would agree that the place to discuss this would not be the straightjacket chamber of a law court. The point is though that the rules of society that allow us to coexist need take into consideration the right of an artist to express himself conjointly with the right of weaker members of society not to be harmed. Having an exception to obscenity laws which is based on a legal definition of art carries baggage with it.
So yes, Alex Vella Gera and Mark Camilleri were inconvenienced by the immediate need to “update” the definition of art. The law is not unclear though. It is a necessary law that need not be tampered with. All you need to do is imagine the law prohibiting obscenity without qualifying exceptional circumstances such as art. Can you imagine that? I hear you now yelling “self-censorship” as though it is only now that we discovered such a maravilious concept. Self-censorship is obviously one of the basic implied precepts of most of our freedoms at law. Not just in our law but in basic Human Rights texts. Fighting the law to obtain “better” definitions of what can or cannot be published or produced is counter-productive. It is a naive invitation to the dabblers in law to create faulty legislation by attempting to define the undefineable.
“Policemen and security guards wear hats with a peak that comes down low over their eyes. Apparently this is for psychological reasons. Eyebrows are very expressive and you appear a lot more authoritative if you keep them covered up. The advantage of this is that it makes a lot harder for cops to see anything more than six foot off the ground. Which is why painting rooftops and bridges is so easy.” – banksy
A certificate to rebel?
I am angrier at the local art community than at Juanito Camilleri. They seem to have been waiting for an official certificate for them to be able to write or paint about vaginas, sexual lust and urges. Not all of them mind you. Alex Vella Gera has gone on record more than once that he would have preferred avoiding this mess. Others like Immanuel Mifsud have been quietly publishing thought provoking explicit stories without so much as a whimper. The impression from the “Front Kontra c-Censura” front is that of others who almost abet the nanny state concept. Artists don’t wait for their expression to be legal before expressing it. They express. The logic of it all – even within our supposedly archaic constrained legal order – is that if it’s art then it’s good.
That’s not how some of our artists seem to think. They are caught up in this anti-ism of Big Brother, Censorship Laws, etc and suddenly become all preoccupied about what is legal and what is not. Their primary concern is not art but legal art – and they themselves have wrought an ugly mental cage from which it is hard to get free. What do they want? Do they want a public list of dos and donts? The rules of the land are there to protect the weak. Art should be pushing the boundaries, provoking thought and ideas not waiting for the nihil obstat from society. Sure there’s a few risks involved especially if you get misunderstood but as the Realtà case showed… it’s common sense that magically and historically prevails. More often than not.
“Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.” – Banksy
