Untitled (UMA! with three planes) by Jim Jeffers, 2009

I walked around Genii Loci (Ghosts of Protection) an exhibition by Jim Jeffers (the guy who runs this site) looking for a piece I knew only to find it not included.  I asked Jim where the “rabbit with the gas mask and the three planes” piece was.  He told me it was hanging in the lobby of the Dean of U-Mass Lowell’s office.  I thought, “Cool” and then on to other matters.  I would not have given the matter another thought except while out with Jim and Jean, I mention to Jean how much I dig the drawing of Uma (their rabbit, the model for the piece), and she asks me if I want to buy it as it is back from U-Mass Lowell.  I’m thinking I don’t have the cash, but then I think, “why is it back?”  So she tells me it only hung for about two weeks before someone in the administration found it “inappropriate.”

“What the fuck?”  I say, “Why? How could this image be ‘inappropriate’?”

Now I understand that maybe the chesty gas-masked ladies might set the imagination off, but a rabbit?  The semiological leap-frogging from rabbit to bunny to playboy playmate might be doable, but who wants to do that?  I think this kind of editing is the symptom of a much larger unspoken secret in Massachusetts.  People here are afraid.  Afraid of seeming unseemly, but ‘gawd’ knows this is only thin veneer.  For it takes a special kind of dirty mind to jump from rabbit to bunny to playmate to bondage scene to the apocalypse!  And it takes a mind so dark and dirty to think the thin layer of prophylactic-like ‘protection’ encasing the purity of essential moral rectitude could be ‘offended’ or compromised by an image of a rabbit in a gas mask that it would defy measure.  People are busy in Massachusetts keeping us ’safe’ from burned-out LED Mooninites and MIT students who are too smart to think the rest of the neighborhood could be so dumb.  Puritans know best what is filthy down below.  Okay, so those of you reading this in the deep south are thinking, “Massachusetts is filled with liberal elites who love abortions and bible burning right?”  No, the brand of liberalness in Massachusetts is grounded in caring for those less fortunate than you.  Which I might point out is not out of line with over wrought protection. After all in Massachusetts you MUST have health insurance or pay a penalty. And again this is not out of step with ‘appropriateness’ and “putting yourself in other people’s shoes.”  My problem with this ideal taken to extreme is “I know what is best for you” arrogance and eventual intolerance.  My response is, “Fuck no, you don’t know me.” and “with that said I think you underestimate the audience in general.”  There are heros who push community standards, Jeffers, sure ain’t one of them.

Perhaps ‘gawd’ blessed greater Boston with a paucity of natural disasters and cursed it with appallingly suck weather, but lighten up will you.  ”Art is the Handmaid of Human Good” (Lowell City Motto) don’t second guess the audience, they are smarter than you think (mostly).