The Blowfish Blog

[The Pro Circuit] Taking It Off in Iowa

A strange case on the Iowa-Nebraska border has CNN proclaiming that “Iowa” will soon decide if stripping is an art form. By that, of course, they mean to imply that the Iowa courts will hear a case that could hold at issue whether nude dancing is protected speech under the First Amendment — but, in fact, they’re going to do no such thing.

This conflation of a place, and therefore a place’s population, with its courts is one of the things that annoys me most about journalism in general and sex-related journalism specifically. It’s a kind of anti-travel writing that mainstream news sources engage in, an attempt to paint a given location as monolithic and of a single mind. Clearly Iowans are not of a single mind about nude dancing, as the residents of any state are not of a single mind about such a subject. And the fact that mainstream news is portraying this case as more than it is — the case of a strip club that let in an underage patron and then let her drop trou onstage — is more about the fascination news reporters and readers have for nude dancing and barely-legal sexuality. In this case, the 17-year-old daughter of the local sheriff happens to have sneaked her way into a strip club one night, and then leapt on stage and took her clothes off not once, but twice — not exactly a dream case for free speech advocates.

Shotgun Geniez Sensual Entertainment Theater, aka “the Hamburg Center for the Performing Arts,” is in Hamburg, Iowa, near where the state meets Nebraska and Missouri. Listed at iowastripclubs.com, Shotgun Geniez nonetheless operates under a loophole in Iowa law that says it’s not in fact a strip club, but a performing arts venue (tomato, tomahto). Says Shenandoah, Iowa’s Valley News Today, the law “exempts theaters, concert halls and performing arts venues from some state obscenity laws.”

This makes plenty of sense to me — after all, what if someone wanted to open a gallery, show an Erte, have a poetry reading and scream “Fuck!”? Clearly cutting the arts some slack is a win-win for society, and apparently Iowa (there I go!) thinks the same. That’s right — there in the heartland, somebody thought of the children.

Shotgun Geniez portrays itself as an “arts center,” as opposed to, say, a “strip club,” because the courts seem to hold that those things are different. Shotgun Geniez is not exactly an art gallery poster girl. You can’t really draw too many conclusions from the fact that its website advertises 24 hour truck and RV parking, or that the venue advertises itself on the sides of semi trailers parked on the freeway. Hey, if something isn’t art because truckers love it, then every Literature major wearing a Johnny Cash T-shirt is in for a serious shock. Plus, at Geniez, the presumed lack of dudes with goatees, wire-rimmed glasses and black turtlenecks is of course counterbalanced by, I’m sure, plenty of girls in Bettie Page haircuts carrying riding crops, so that one’s a draw. That by way of welcoming me “To the Garden of Sex at the Fluffy Bunnies Brier Patch,” the Geniez website shows me a series of tempting women with their legs spread — well, that’s a draw, too, given some of the randomness I’ve encountered in San Francisco galleries. Could it be art or trash? Who knows? Or maybe — gasp — both!?!?

I am, of course, joshing, since it’s pretty obvious that your position on this particular case is going to be determined by whether or not you think dancing for purely erotic intent should be legal, not whether you think it might serve the “higher purpose” of art. Those two opinions might intersect, but you’re not going to convince anyone who thinks nude dancing is obscene that it’s nonetheless cool because it’s “art.” And Geniez is far from the first strip club to present itself as a performance art venue — there’s a time-honored tradition of strip clubs and dance halls-theater venues having a fuzzy line, or no line, between them; that tradition stretches back at least to the Barbary Coast era in San Francisco, and arguably further back, to dance halls in England.

The dancing of the unnamed 17-year-old was probably not a high point for the legal rights of fine arts devotees in southwestern Iowa, since if she’d waited a few months ’till her 18th birthday, there would have been no legal problem. That’s despite the fact that the girl was the daughter of the Sheriff. The authorities deny that’s what this is about — and we all know 17-year-olds never sneak into strip clubs, right?

The case is being pushed by the media not because it will offer any meaningful precedent, but because there’s oodles of prurient interest here. Theoretically, the case could hinge on whether nude dancing is protected speech. It won’t, though, because the dancer whose rights may have been violated is 17. The idea that a 17-year-old would have a constitutionally protected right to dance nude is in my estimation an idea that “Iowa” and “The United States,” are utterly unable to comprehend. Regardless, any decision in the case would have to be appealed before it could be evaluated on state constitutional grounds, let alone making its way to the Supreme Court. It probably won’t be.

KNCY Country Music Radio reports that we could have a decision in this case as early as today . . . for all the difference it will make in legal terms, despite the media’s hand-wringing. But as for my summer vacation roadtripping to Hamburg, Iowa to experience The Garden of Sex in the Fluffy Bunnies Brier Patch — that’s hanging by a thread, my friends.

Thomas S. Roche blogs about Goth, God, and Zombies at thomasroche.com.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, 29 July 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.