Ron Fleming, Critical Silence, Mix, 30.4, 2006

My 15 Minutes of Canadian Fame

Does publication in a now-defunct Canadian art magazine count as fame? My name was attached to it, so yes. Yes it does.

Venus on the half shell, SFW-style.

In the spring of 2005, a friend from the blogging group I belonged to offered me a shot at writing the feature article for an issue of the magazine she edited, called Mix. The magazine focused on subjects that concerned artists and art afficianados around the world. (I joke somewhat when I speak of Canadian fame, because the magazine did have limited distribution outside of Canada. I’m just saying: it wasn’t Rolling Stone, but it was the first time someone with genuine writing and editing cred had risked her reputation on my ability to produce something worthy of putting in front of a readership with certain expectations. I’m grateful to this day for her having reached out to me.)

My task was to examine the question of how the events of 9/11 had affected artistic expression. People who remember those events well may also recall the confusing interplay between the sense of both American and Western unity that followed the attacks, and the ensuing pushback that occurred among cultural critics–artists notably among them. The pushback focused mainly on the collateral consequences that tend to accompany dominant and widely held (though not clearly defined) sentiments such as “patriotism.” Some people see such criticism as a form of betrayal, while critics themselves often point to the important role brutal honesty can play in bringing about positive change.

The assignment resonated with me personally, in large part due to a watershed moment in high school that had had an eduring effect on my worldview. (There’s more about this in my long-form bio, in case you’re interested.) My class was full of Cold War kids who lived in a town just up the road from Groton, CT, where approximately 20,000 people earned their livelihoods building one nuclear submarine after another during the heyday of the arms race. Our assignment was to read and discuss certain portions of the Soviet Constitution.

Self-censorship can be a curse in both the best and worst of times.

I remember the surprise and confusion I felt after reading the excerpts. Citizens of the Soviet Union were apparently guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, and of religion, among other things. It was right there in black and white. We knew, of course, that this was not true in practice. And this could only mean one thing: constitutional guarantees are worthless if people cant exercise them. Today the idea doesn’t seem so profound. Everybody knows this, right? But to the Reagan-era high-school version of myself the lesson left an indellible mark that would follow me for the rest of my life. It would drive me toward the study of political and other social sciences, toward teaching, and toward writing. For me, this assignment wasn’t about party politics. It was about exploring the unwritten limits of the written guarantees shared by most citizens of the Western industrialized world.

Below is a PDF of the article as it was published in 2006.