Last week a school principal in Florida was forced to resign, because a few parents got upset over a photo of Michelangelo’s David in a textbook. The school board claims the principal had failed to properly notify parents in advance of the exposure of their children to a centuries old masterpiece of Renaissance art. That seems like a pretty weak reason to fire a professional educator. However, the state of education in Florida and too many other states (red or blue) is so anti-intellectual/woke/science/history/anything that she was bound to run into problems, no matter how careful she might have been. That goes for anyone in education these days.
One parent described the statue as “pornographic.” I assume these parents consider themselves good Christians, although I doubt they have read their Bible thoroughly or with much understanding beyond a glib Sunday school lesson. David slept with a lot of people. He had six wives, among them Bathsheba, whom David as king forced into marriage after having her husband Uriah killed. It’s notable that God took notice of this and sent his prophet Nathan to scold David that such behavior cost Israel God’s favor. But David is not alone among God’s favorites who violated standards of sex, consent, and prohibitions against murder (or genocide). Anyway, all of this Biblical history was known to Michelangelo when he sculpted his statue honoring the moment David slew Goliath — or really, the moment just before as David sized up the giant Philistine before firing a rock into his forehead. David is naked, because Michelangelo viewed him as a hero and followed the traditions of Classic Greek and Roman sculpture, where heroic figures were naked to display their power and beauty. One might get off on such a thing, but nudity in sculpture or other forms of art is not inherently “pornographic.”
I wish this kind of argument had any persuasive power. Yet as we have seen lately (or for decades, if you’ve been paying attention), the Christian nationalists and their ilk who are riding a high of censorship and purging are not good faith actors. Punishing school officials for a photo in a textbook is part and parcel of a campaign to reassert their cultural and social hegemony over historically oppressed people, whether they be Black, people of color, gay, or interested in art and science their pastor disapproves. It reminds me of the Nazi campaign against “degenerate” art, except that classical forms of representation like the statue of David were the artistic standards Goebbels claimed were the ideal. Art is not really the issue for these people. The school board chair in Tallahassee claims they think the picture of David is “beautiful”, but that parent rights are “supreme.” As for a child’s right to a good education, well….
Discussion ¬