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Soap Box - Morality Has No Place In ArtDateline: 12th June, 2005The inaugural Soap Box debate took place before a large audience at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 10th June.
Soap Box is a new forum intended to tackle the big issues in society and the arts. The idea has been developed by the journalists Patrick Marmion of the Daily Mail and Rachel Halliburton from Time Out.
The motion was that Morality Has No Place In Art and the cast featured an excellent combination of strongly opinionated speakers. The motion follows Oscar Wilde's dictum that "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book; books are well written or badly written".
Proposing the motion was Ian Rickson, Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre, supported by Lucy Winkett, the first woman residentiary canon of St Paul's Cathedral.
Anthony Neilson, the controversial Scottish playwright and director, led the opposition alongside American academic, Richard Noble, lecturer at Goldsmith's College.
The pace was maintained throughout thanks to strong and intelligent chairmanship from Patrick Marmion.
At this point, it is necessary to make apologies to both the speakers and those who addressed questions and comments on the floor as with a subject like this, it is difficult to encapsulate debate without potentially misrepresenting some of the opinions. Further, accurately recording quotes was a challenge.
Following a brief introduction from Rachel Halliburton, who explained the ethos of Soap Box as "A rebellion against woolly and worthy arts discussions", Ian Rickson led off with an explanation of his free-thinking beliefs.
In only three minutes, he made a number of points following his initial statement that "Morality has been a huge encumbering force in theatre history". He cited works such as Ibsen's Ghosts, Bond's Saved and Kane's Blasted, all of which are now classics but each of which caused immense moral outrage when they were originally staged. He emphasised that "The Royal Court has the duty to challenge morality" and expanded this by saying that "Morality rarely permits the new - we must back the artists to explore the forbidden".
He had no doubts about the validity of his view believing that "If we compromise to any degree to the moralists we are on a slippery slope. Morality is almost always defined by the right wing". He closed by emphasising that "Art is about freedom - morality is about control".
The opposition was led by Anthony Neilson, a playwright whose work has been brought to the Royal Court stage by Rickson and who, as he said himself, is not somebody that one might immediately regard as a traditional, strait-laced playwright.
His initial debunking of the motion was on the basis that it was "Quite genuinely absurd" and he went on to question what was meant by morality, thereby getting to the crux of the question and possibly the reason why four individuals with relatively similar viewpoints should have differed.
It is necessary to separate "The morality of the state and the morality of the individual". "State morality leads to propaganda and cowardly hypocrisy" or as he most wittily put it "To say that urine has no place in a swimming-pool has no more sense" than the statement on which this debate was predicated.
Neilson was adamant that "If you remove morality from art then you take away its humanity" and asked a question "Is anybody without morality?" As he concluded, "All we're really talking about is a standard behaviour to which you can aspire".
Next up was a priest whose opinions might surprise many who believe that churches are always stuffy and behind the times. Lucy Winkett is a young lady who speaks well and is happy to support strong opinions with deeply thought-out philosophy.
She was clear that "morality is concerned with how we live and what we do" and implicitly regarded debate about morality and art as inconsequential in a world in which billions of people are below the poverty line and starving. "That is what is really immoral". She had no doubt that "My faith is not threatened by a free press or free artistic expression".
More controversially, she went on to say that "I'm weirdly grateful for the necrophilia of Mark Ravenhill's Some Explicit Polaroids in a theatre rather than a morgue" and concluded that "We are all seekers after truth".
The last speaker was Dr Richard Noble who may not have made friends on the other side when he said that arguments ignoring morality "Remind me of very young children who want to play competitive games but only if they can always win".
His real thesis was based on the question "Can we engage with form but ignore content?"
He had three main points. The first was that "If art is only aesthetic we lose some of the pleasure of engaging with art". It therefore follows that "Much contemporary art only works because it questions contemporary ethical standards".
Next, he debunked artists who forget that much of their work is supported by the state and taxpayers. "Art is good for us - it makes us think about our practices and beliefs".
Finally, he propounded the argument that "Art must be connected to the commitment and truthfulness of artists" and attacked cynical and unethical use of shock tactics, both on the stage and in other art-forms. He concluded "We cannot engage seriously with art without engaging with its moral and ethical values".
There followed some half-hour of lively and sometimes heated debate about the topic. Issues considered included the danger of imposing a moral code, the controversy over Bezhti and Anthony Neilson's "fairly fluid morality"! This led into some very brief final speeches and an audience votes which decided that morality definitively has a place in art by a majority that was probably 4-1.
This first Soap Box project was an ambitious and exciting debate before a large audience, which in 55 minutes considered a major philosophical conundrum without necessarily coming to a definitive answer despite a resounding defeat for the motion.
With only minor changes to the wording, it is likely that there could have been unanimous agreement both amongst panel members and the audience. The differences in opinion were far more those of emphasis and semantics rather than more fundamental moral and ethical dichotomies.
Soap Box will reconvene in September to determine whether Shakespeare has been a millstone round the neck of British theatre - a real challenge in only 55 minutes! Philip Fisher
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