The Discourse of “Dangerous Women”

This past Sunday, performance artists Sarah Jones and Karen Finley and authors A.M. Homes and Daphne Merkin entered a roundtable discussion with Patricia Cohen, editor of the Times Arts and Leisure section, on their careers as "Dangerous Women."

In honor of The New York Times' 150th anniversary, the "Gray Lady" played hostess to a series of "Critic's Choice" events at the CUNY Graduate Center. The forum's title raised eyebrows and drew a crowd set to discover just what made these four successful women "dangerous." While the Sunday evening gathering was heavy on ideas, it was light on discussion of the various art forms and somewhat of a disappointment.

A gamut of definitions was raised in an effort to explain the chosen title. The panelists agreed with Jones' assertion that a so-called dangerous woman has a "voice that's getting enough attention [and] challenging the dominant discourse." A distinguished performer and poet, Jones made headlines this summer when the FCC fined Portland, Oregon's KBOO-FM $7,000 for playing her 1999 piece, "Your Revolution." Meant to magnify the negative depiction of women in the popular music, it continues to be the subject of some controversy as KBOO-FM is appealing the FCC's decision, and Jones is moving forward with a suit against the FCC.

Merkin, a staff writer for The New Yorker, believes that a woman with a brain who discusses her desires and fantasies is viewed as dangerous, especially because her behavior can be confusing to those men who have an antiquated view of how women should act. Merkin, who said she does not necessarily see herself as a dangerous woman, earned that notorious distinction after publishing an essay in 1996 about erotic spanking.

Yet perhaps female artists are dangerous not because they challenge the dominant discourse but because they provoke people to think, said Homes, a novelist and adjunct assistant professor in the Writing Program at Columbia's School of the Arts. She was vilified for her 1995 book, The End of Alice, which examined pedophilia from the mind of a convicted felon and a potential female pedophile who contacts him.

Finley, both a performance and visual artist, was a member of the "NEA Four." She and three other artists fought censorship all the way to the Supreme Court and lost in a 1998 decision that allowed the NEA the right to deny or revoke funding from artists whose works they deem indecent. Finley believes that society, not individual women, produces the danger. "We live in a dangerous society. I work from fear," she said.

As performance artists, Jones and Finley interact with their audience in a unique way. Their pieces, whether of a physical nature or the spoken word, generate immediate interaction between the creator and the spectator. For Jones, the audience's energy or lack thereof can have a huge effect on her performance. As for Finley, during her performance of her father's suicide note, she approached it in such an artistic manner as to deal with the content before the structure. When asked what role her audience plays in the creation of her work, Finley sarcastically remarked on her image, "I'm a narcissist and exhibitionist."

Yet the women stressed that the ignominious "D" that has been forced upon them has not been aimed at something like Comedy Central's The Man Show or the Britney Spears Pepsi commercial. "Who are we allowing to define what's dangerous?" Jones said. As a mother of a 12-year-old, Merkin sees Britney Spears as a different kind of dangerous: a "tragic role model" for today's young women.

Finley said she believes that progress has been made by the NEA in terms of acceptance. Mainstream funding is available from traditional sources like the NEA, now bent on supporting diversity and multiculturalism. Yet the "ugly monster of extreme forms of political correctness keeps rearing its head," according to Homes, which cripples the production of art that naturally "comes from the edges," she said.

"What are we afraid of? [We're] going out of the way to protect ourselves from a perceived threat," she said. "In its current state", Homes continued, "we agree to not deal with anything culturally and to tiptoe around potentially explosive topics like race."

"When restrictions beyond the realm of words and are applied to symbolism, artists end up standing on very shaky ground," added Finley, who feels that part of the First Amendment is dealing with being offended.

"The reality is that people can hate people," Finley said.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the event was that they denounced the attention paid to them as "female artists" and yet, when given the chance to speak about their art forms in a sphere absent of a gender tag, they chose to focus on feminist issues and their own respective "dangerous" ways. At one point, Jones and Merkin were talking about what Jones expected her fiancÈ to do around the house. It is notable that the other Critic's Choice event I attended, which focused on architect Renzo Piano and was moderated by architectural critic Herbert Muschamp, both male, was entirely dedicated to Piano's work.

There is nothing wrong with the discussion that occurred on the stage Sunday evening. It is an important one to have. But a perfect opportunity to break the mold and let the art speak of the struggle was wasted.