What is bad taste? Definitely avacados and artichokes.... YUCK!
And in that statement is the crux of the question. There are alot of people who LIKE those things! But I could not eat them unless a gun was pointed at my head. So, my yucko is another man's ambrosia. To each their own.
Most any art that is provocative or makes people think will offend somebody. That is the nature of being confronted by things that we would rather not think about.
Let's face it, we are in the business of doing models of people whose major voacation is killing other people! That sucks! It can be argued that the depiction of soldiers itself is obscene. From a moral standpoint, I don't think anybody can argue that war is a good thing. It is, unabashedly, the organized and systematic slaughter of our fellow men. Murder is murder, no matter what kind of "moralistic" justification you wrap it in. "Thou shalt not kill". I think we can all agree with that. Yet, the killing still goes on. Every day.
But this kind of "history" seems to fascinate a lot of us. I think it is like the car wreck on the side of the road. It kinda gives you the willies. Nobody "likes" such things! But sure enough we are, all of us, craning our necks to look at it as we drive past............!
We are all going to be offended by SOME things. But any art that pretends to tell us something that needs to be said is going to make some of us uncomfortable. We cannot maintain "denial" (the universal "comfort zone" for all 'uncomfortable' moral dilemmas) when somebody confronts us with truth. That is the nature of truth.
And if you have anything of value to say, you are going to have to poke your stick into a hornet's nest every now and then.
The choice is this: are you going to be an angry hornet, or the curious bystander fascinated by the whole exercise?
Mike
