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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Family's outcry leads school to pull grisly video |
| 2004-10-24 |
| Outrage from the family of beheaded hostage Eugene ''Jack'' Armstrong prompted Watkins College of Art & Design yesterday to remove a video presentation that includes footage of the beheading from a student exhibit. ''We're so angry right now that we're about ready to jump in a car and come down there,'' said Cyndi Armstrong, the slain engineer's cousin by marriage, from her office in Hillsdale, Mich. ''How dare this school do that! I mean, these people are not artists. This is not art. And then the story you wrote in today's paper about how they're emotionally distressed, or exhausted? Well, we'll discuss 'emotionally exhausted' with them. We've had six weeks of hell. And they've had one day of people saying that what they did is wrong, because it is wrong.'' The school's decision to pull the work, which took first place in the juried art show, came against the wishes of Watkins students Elvan Penny and Scott Phelps. Their 4Å“-minute Fearful Symmetry video includes footage, with audio, of Armstrong's beheading in Iraq late last month. Juxtaposed with images of American popular culture, including TV commercials, the footage is intended, the artists say, to jolt the viewer out of complacency and toward a greater awareness of violence in the world. |
| Posted by:tipper |