Fiction International 22: Pornography & Censorship

The body is in pain. The collective body is in agony. As much as the isolated inner cities, as much as U. S. foreign policy, as much as institutionalized voodoo economics, it is the flesh and blood body which is a site of oppression and potential rebellion in the United States. Consider this image recalled by Dennis Barrie, director of the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati. One day in 1990, while the Center was displaying Robert Mapplethorpe's "The Perfect Moment," about forty uniformed police officers walked into the Center and forcibly removed the patrons simply because they were looking at Mapplethorpe's photos. It is that image, Barrie says, "that's going to haunt me for the rest of my life. Because that isn't our country, or it shouldn't be our country."