HBO shocked the world on April 4 by unveiling a 100-minute documentary honoring the legacy and legislative career of Sen. Jesse Helms.
Delayed April Fool’s. No, instead, they did feature Senator Helms – as a villain to kick off a 100-minute documentary deeply honoring the life and art of Robert Mapplethorpe, the infamous anti-Christian, penis-obsessed purveyor of sadomasochistic black-and-white photography.
This defines the ideological and anti-religious sensibilities of HBO, to celebrate precisely who it is that upsets Christian conservatives (and conservative Christians) most. The idea that this perverted sex maniac – you can’t watch the parade of penis pictures and fisting photos on HBO and argue otherwise – is a significant historical figure is laughable. His greatest achievement is the depth of his perversity.
So it’s only natural that the selectively clipped soundbites of “villainous” Helms at the beginning and the end are the only conservative critiques that appear. Producer-directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato – best known for making the reality show “RuPaul’s Drag Race” for the gay Logo channel – were natural Mapplethorpe promoters. The Washington Post reviewer noted the film focuses on worshipful curators that exemplify the “clinical deification that has visited Mapplethorpe’s life and work” since Helms denounced him.
In an interview with the International Documentary Association, Bailey happily quoted critic Simon Doonan’s description of their production house World of Wonder: "a rank, twisted Bauhaus of perverse creativity, dedicated to celebrating everything which is squalid and marginal…I wish them continued success in their quest to spotlight the beauty that resides in the gutter."
You get the point. They are guilty of several obvious exclusions in this film – so obvious as to be deliberate. First, while they revel in the obscenity trial over a Mapplethorpe exhibit in Cincinnati after he died, they never note or show that two of the photographs exposed small children’s genitals. The pictures were "Jesse McBride," featuring a young boy posing naked on a chair, and "Rosie," showing a 4-year-old girl seated in a dress but no underpants, revealing her private parts. How could the appeal to pedophiles not be addressed?
Mapplethorpe’s Catholic sensibilities are highlighted, but it becomes clear that describing his work as “Catholic” in any way is bizarre, as one expert tried to suggest Catholic rituals are echoed in sadomasochism. Mapplethorpe was as Catholic as Hitler was Jewish.
HBO shows Father George Stack, the subject’s parish priest during his childhood in Queens, suggesting Mapplethorpe was morally conflicted between the angels and the devils. At least that was rebutted in the film by his former lover Jack Fritscher, who revealed “Satan to him was not this evil monster. Satan was like a convivial playmate.” He wrote a letter to Fritscher which ended, “I want to see the devil in us all....that’s my real turn-on.”
HBO also seriously side-stepped away from what caused Helms to berate Mapplethorpe and his perverted images. Why did the National Endowment for the Arts, funded by millions of taxpayers who never shared Mapplethorpe’s exotic views of sexuality, feel the need to subsidize exhibits promoting this pornographer’s work and life? Was it fair to rob Peter to pornify Paul?
Even in the first Bush administration, the NEA was supporting a cultural crusade to insist that Flyover Country needed to fund pornographic art as an educational exercise in broadening the horizons of respectable and “iconic” art. Public opinion didn’t matter. The public must be propagandized into submission to the cultural Left. This was the Helms complaint, and it was a good one. To withhold the context is a form of character assassination.
This whole spectacle – the bias by commission and omission – presents quite a summation of HBO’s shamelessness. Go to HBO’s online app to watch all of Mapplethorpe’s filthiest pictures...stay for their new episodes of “Sesame Street.”
