Ain't freedom of speech great?

I decided to pull my rant about Hugo Chavez as I found out I was missing some important information and came off harsher than I should. I'll reevaluate and repost it later. My point about the Art expo here in Athens, birthplace of "democracy" remains, however.

Last Saturday, policemen invaded the "Art Athina" expo and arrested its director, with the excuse that he allowed the showing of a short video that defiled the image of a national symbol, more specifically Greece's national anthem. The creator of the video was also supposed to be arrested, but luckily for her she was in Germany at the time.

If you're Greek you can read more here, and if you're not, I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.

Also, if you're interested in seeing the video in question, you can visit this website, and then click on the gray "art-athina international art fair" button, the first fourty seconds is what you want to see. There is no sound during that time presumably for fear of further lawsuits, but as the subtitles point out, the only thing that was heard was the Greek national anthem. This being the internets, you can probably find it in a matter of seconds if you want to.

At this point, I should confess that I am no fan of what kids these days call "modern art". In most cases I find it pretentious, pointless, and more often than not just plain tedious. This is how I felt about the last piece of art that was legally persecuted here three years ago, a painting of somebody's cock cumming on (or near) a Christian cross, and this is also how I feel about this video.

I'm sure their creators have some explanation on why their creations should be taken seriously, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm more likely to chuckle at them than consider them as a meaningful piece of art, that's just me.

But that is not the point. A mere forty seconds of video, no matter what the content, are not enough to destroy the national pride of anyone, despite what the prosecutors are arguing in this case. Hell, people weren't arrested when they were singing songs praising the military Junta that ruled (and screwed up) Greece from 1967 to 1974. Yet it seemed perfectly fine to make an exception for a video of a girl playing with herself.

If anything, removing the video from the expo would be bad enough, but suing and arresting people over it? That's way too fucking Orwellian for my taste.

Seriously. This is getting scary.