Does art exist to make people feel comfortable or included?
If art is expressing a view we don't share or sharing an experience that we haven't experienced ourselves, is that a bad thing?
Did they only make
Mississippi Burning for people who lived in the Deep South during the Civil Rights era? Did people who didn't live there at the time feel hurt and excluded? Was
Philadelphia only for people suffering from AIDS?
If we remove from art everything except that which makes people feel happy and comfortable and included, doesn't that just leave us with pablum? "Hang in there kitty" posters and shopping-mall artists who paint relaxing lakeside landscapes and stuff like that?
I have never seen or read "The
**** Monologues". I understand it's a series of stories that talk about a wide variety of female experiences, from first menstruation to sex to giving birth to
**** to sex work and others as well. Trans women might not have vaginas, but the overwhelming majority of women do, and sharing these thoughts and experiences was considered important and empowering for women. But apparently being important and empowering for women is trumped by the hurt feelings of a tiny minority who feel excluded.
People talking about the cancellation of this production at Eastern Michigan University and other venues have paid lip-service to its historical importance. It was important in its time, but we're working with a changing concept of what it means to be a woman, blah blah etc. But its time was just 20 years ago, and what it means to be a woman hasn't changed a whole lot since 1996.
-k