Confessional Art vs. Professional Self-Exploitation

I love me some confessional poetry--thank you Sylvia Plath, Ann Sexton, Adrian Rich, et al. I also find confessional art to be interesting (though like confessional poetry, I'm not endorsing everything ever produced under the aegis of "confessional"). This week we've had a bit of a confessional overload which includes the following three stories:

1. Irresponsible coverage of Irene Vilar's upcoming memoir Impossible Motherhood which details her 15 abortions in 16 years (and later her two full-term and wanted pregnancies that resulted in her daughters, currently 3 & 5). Better coverage HERE.
2. Mackenzie Phillips' memoir High on Arrival that details her rape (by her father) and then a later, Stockholm Syndrome like "consensual" (I don't believe consensual is the right word here, but that's what she uses) sexual relationship that continued for several years until she became pregnant by him and had an abortion and was able to brake the chains of incest. Check out Jezebel's compelling, 10 reasons John Phillips was the worst papa ever for more information.
3. The story that confessional artist Tracy Emin's love-letters she wrote when she was 14 years old will be sold by the man she wrote them to (he was 22 and she was 14 during their "relationship"--as someone who was just on a grand jury and the grand jury refused to indict an adult man who raped by statuary rape a 13 year old girl, believe me it is hard to get people to consider indictment let alone conviction in these cases, if you were wondering why this was allowed to go on at the time--which was nearly 30 years ago at that). Emin has objected to this sale, but as a "confessional artists" many are not taking her complaints seriously. I do.

First of all, all three of these women have been critized for their confessional writing/art. I'll begin with Emin because her story is easiest to defend. As a confessional artist she takes memoir and personal experience seriously and she always frames her personal pieces in the greater political or social context. Selling her love-letters is base exploitation of what was an illegal and sexually abusive relationship to begin with (no 14 year old has the legal nor social capacity to consent for sex with an adult, male 22 year old man). Often times rape victims are defamed on the stand by defense attorneys because if they've consented to sex in the past, they're no longer "rapeable"--particularly sex workers, those who have been sexually assaulted in the past, and women who had been in sexual relationships with their rapists prior to the event of rape. Because she has put out, in an artful and specifically framed manner, issues from her personal life, some (this asshole) thinks that selling her 14 year old letters cannot be a violation, she's put so much out there, therefore can't be violated.

Next: Irene Vilar
Okay, first off the coverage has been horrible regarding this topic. The first link called her an "abortion addict." It is true that Ms. Vilar came to see her multiple abortions as a means of self-mutiliation, compulsive behavior. She comes from a seriously troubled family background with suicide, mental illness, terrorist attacks, and so forth across many generations. She was also married to an abusive, much older spouse when the abortion-as-self-mutiliation occured. Because abortion talk in our culture in general is such a flash-point issue, it is difficult to discuss the nuance of Ms. Vilar's individual circumstances and how this memoir fits into the social reality of abortion. Simply put, it is an extreme! It doesn't really offer much on abortion, as much as on how untreated mental illness, the impulse to self-mutilate, and abuse are interrealated. No where in the coverage did I see anyone mention, why didn't her husband take control of his fertility and try to help his avoid unwanted pregnancies (which afterall, he was most vehementally against having children)? Anyway, its a sad story and its being published.

Next: Mackenzie Phillips
She was on Oprah yesterday (and lets not forget that Oprah was an early champion for talking about sexual abuse opening, prior to Oprah, it was pretty much a universal taboo to discuss child sexual abuse in the media let alone in health-classes or even in our own living rooms). I don't want to go into much detail about the rape/abuse (go watch the clips at Jezebel), but I will say that the coverage seems hung-up on not calling waking up after your father shoots you up with drugs to find him "having sex with you" rape. It is rape. It is incest. Her sisters have confirmed that they knew something was up, her step-mother says she's nuts, her step-brother said that he could believe it but didn't know. The other criticism out there is "why now"--well, victims have their own timetable and sometimes that means that it comes out once they are safe from the perpetrator. In this case, after her father died. Some might say she's doing it for the money, that might be part of the equation, but when celebrities do talk about these things, it allows other victims to come out of the shadows and discuss it with their friends/family/shrinks and I think that that is a good thing. Believe me, incest happens--I work on behalf of abused children--it happens all the time and the power-dynmics of the parent/child relationship make it really difficult for the victims to process how bad/damaging a sexual relationship with a parent really is--to acknowledge that may mean the breakdown of the entire family and the break may end up with the child out on the street.

I think that all three of these cases are dealing with the confessional or the memoir seriously. However, with all of our boundary crossing due to maximized celebrity reality tv, this serious stuff is often eclipsed or marginalized. Paris Hilton's and Kim Kardashian's entire careers rest upon fake-reality, stupid antics, sex-tapes, and personal appearances that are actually carefully orchestrated--more fake than reality. Simply put, they do not work in the same genre, but I wish that when covering stories like the above vs. the trashloids general coverage, the media would catch a clue.

peace