The Obscenity Of A Flower - 100 Years Later

by Nik Frost

Upon completing the latest music video for our quarantine project/band, Dark Side Of Light, we were shocked, but maybe not actually surprised, to see it immediately red flagged by the various big tech companies for the make up design I had created with our team, make up artists Sven Granlund and Yazmin Vinueza.

When you look at the alien we painstakingly brought to life, you are, in a way, forced to make your own determination. What do you see? Do you see a flower? Or do you see something else?

Let me explain: For “Pull My Strings”, I had this idea of embodying an inter-dimensional being who came from a place where the structural framework of its universe could only support floral/plant like beings. I designed its facial characteristics and breathing/sensory apparatus based on the iconic painting, of a flower, "Grey Lines with Black, Blue, and Yellow” (c. 1923) by the controversial, feminist and visionary artist, Georgia O’Keeffe. The creature is not only electric blue, but has yellow, slit like, reptilian eyes and a completely different method of breathing/sensing the world around it. This creature, who’s inhabited parts of my conscious and subconscious mind since I was a child, is shockingly different from us and subsequently reviled but eventually accepted by the various humans it encounters on its Kwai Chang Caine/Kung Fu-esque journey.

Of course, the blunt instrument, the “Artificial Intelligence”, they use to determine what flies and what does not within the 3 or 4 platforms that actually matter in today’s online universe, flagged the video immediately and arbitrarily decided that the make up team had applied “a gigantic vagina” to my face. This semi hilarious, but I guess, reasonable assumption, put our video in a kind of nether world as we were unable to move forward with its release until we’d dialogued with the “powers that be” and explained that the face was in fact based on a famous painting of a flower. Luckily, for the band, and for all of the people who’d worked tirelessly on the music video itself, there are a number of websites and “art friendly” avenues for partnership and some form of dissemination. But the work still needs to “live” or be hosted somewhere. To say that this has been an eye opener on where we currently reside in regards to censorship and what is deemed appropriate or inappropriate, and by whom, is very interesting to say the least. To put it bluntly, robots are deciding whether or not you, the viewer, get to see another human beings hard fought “art battles.” AND, believe me, it ain’t easy making a music video these days. The budgets are so low, they’re practically non-existent. And then, we as artists, are limited to launching the work via the primary platforms of dissemination. The very ones who’ve monopolized modern communication.

I could better understand their concerns if the facial apparatus were being licked, sucked or penetrated in someway. This could be construed as lewd and inappropriate and I would get it, (kind of) but even if I had intended the beings' facial apparatus to actually resemble a vagina, why is this such a huge problem? There are masks which feature phalluses from the jokey to the Inuit everywhere and it is totally accepted. Why is the female form so controversial? Do we think we are protecting women? Is the female anatomy TOO interior, TOO intimate to be featured? Is the female structure SO DANGEROUS, SO SALACIOUS, that even when depicted as a flower, it is STILL deemed obscene?

I believe this was a point of controversy in the 1920’s when O’Keeffe first unveiled her masterpiece, “Grey Lines with Black, Blue, and Yellow”. Hard to believe it’s still an issue 100 years later.