Letters to the editor

Dear Editor,

In response to Professor Hank Edmondson:

We read your letter about “Mexotica” in The Colonnade. We have some concerns about what you wrote.
It is so endemic of our culture to focus on the sexual. Sex was only ONE aspect of the “Mexotica” performance. There were many other issues in the work, and it’s too bad people couldn’t move past the sexual content. That’s why it’s called adult content, and the event was labeled as such. Perhaps some of those in the audience were not mature enough and could not handle it, making the sexual content into a much bigger deal than it really was. This is a college, not a middle school. It seems to us that one of the aims of “Mexotica” was to encourage people to think about what really is obscene, for example within current events.
We wholly agree with you that “… just because something stirs debate doesn’t mean it has intrinsic merit that justifies its encouragement and support, especially the hard earned tax and tuition money of students and their families.” Creating a dialogue was a valuable aspect to “Mexotica,” but that was hardly the only aspect of it. This was a rich, complex piece, and actually, has much in common with your Madame Bovary example, because there was so much more to “Mexotica” than shock value. One of the aspects that was most profound and moving to us was the way identity and stereotypes were performed in order to reclaim them and reveal complexities within them. This is not an easy task because identity has been forced into simplistic binary oppositions by the power structures of our society. The problem with these binary oppositions (White/Black, Good/Bad), is of course that one term is privileged over the other. Who wants to be pigeonholed into a fixed identity, anyway? Being able to take control of your own identity has positive implications for all citizens of socially just societies. Viewers may have felt uncomfortable because this work challenged the comfort of certainty, especially those of fixed identities. As educators, we want our students to be able to think critically, which usually entails not being content with simplicity and certainty.
You wrote about the “… disregard (of) the moral and religious sensibilities of our students,…” You are definitely NOT speaking for all students. Many of our students had an amazing and enjoyable educational experience by participating in and viewing “Mexotica.” These students have told us so. We were thrilled for them that they were able to actually take part in this event. This is the kind of educational experience we hope colleges and universities have more of — when students become active creators and not just consumers of the products by the “expert.” We wish that, when we were students, we had more experiences which really spoke to us like “Mexotica.”
We are especially puzzled by one of your closing remarks, “We have put a lot of emphasis on the method of teaching the liberal arts, but less attention on the substance of what is taught.” We are most concerned with content/substance and morals as educators and artists. We want our students to have sound political judgment and a sense of how images work in social realms, not merely aesthetic judgment. This upholds our liberal arts mission to prepare our students to be active and responsible participants in the world. Our approach to making and talking about images falls heavily on the content side. We practice and teach that there is usually a socio-political dimension of meaning in images. We are keenly aware that our morals have been formed by Western Civilization. Our morals are for creating social justice, so this is why we reject the racist and sexist power structures of societies, and the wide gap between the rich and poor. “Mexotica” challenges these regressive structures, so that’s why it is a moral work of art – hardly the “nihilistic” work you make it out to be.
By the way, maybe you should look at some art history textbooks. You will find that Guillermo Gomez-Pena has been canonized there, so your charge that we are rejecting the academic canon is incorrect.
We think it’s interesting that you are suddenly taking an interest in MacArthur Award-winning Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s work and did not choose to see it in the first place. Through gossip and misinformed innuendo, many myths have been created about “Mexotica.” We feel you have the right to form an opinion without having been there, but your opinion must be seen as uninformed as you did not actually see the work and seem to be basing your opinions on those myths.

Sincerely,
Patrick Holbrook
Assistant Professor of Art
With:
Donna Reidland
Assistant Professor of Art
Bill Fisher
Assistant Professor of Art

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 16 2004. Filed under Letters to the Editor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry