Reverse striptease art piece restored to YouTube
Last Updated: Friday, July 30, 2010 | 4:38 PM ET
CBC News
Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker Susan Mogul has regained a slot on YouTube a week after the video-sharing website took down a performance art piece that showed her dressing.
YouTube had said the video violated decency policies but partially restored the piece to the site after the Los Angeles Times and the Jancar Gallery in Los Angeles took the company task for inconsistent guidelines.
Tom Jancar, owner of the Jancar Gallery and the man who posted a short snippet of Mogul's Dressing Up, said he believes YouTube is practising censorship.
"I was told it was based on complaints, but there was no explanation before it was taken down," he told CBC News. "I was referred to their obscenity policy, which talks about sexuality. There's no sexuality at all in the piece."
There may be no sexuality, but there is nudity, he admitted.
"It's basically a reverse striptease, if you want to call it that," Jancar said. "Susan Mogul appears sitting down in the video and she's totally naked to start with and she's eating corn nuts.
"She is kind of cocky about how her mother had taught her to be frugal and to only buy things that weren't retail. She describes each piece of clothing as she puts them on."
Mogul created the15-minute performance piece as a rather ribald commentary on consumerism.
YouTube has allowed the video back up, but only behind its "adult site," geared for participants 18 and older who agree to sign in.
The L.A. Times took YouTube to task for the inconsistency of its guidelines, saying art projects such as Spencer Tunick's nude shoot and images of Michaelangelo's David are displayed without question.
Jancar said he's not satisfied at having the video on a site where participants must sign in.
But he said he believes performance art pieces such as Mogul's are more at home on YouTube than in art galleries.
Writer and cultural commentator Hal Niedzviecki, author of The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors said it's ridiculous to talk about censorship in relation to YouTube.
"They have the control." he said. "They're a private company and can do what they want."
He pointed out that the lurid and horrible — people in car accidents or being shocked with stun guns — are quite OK on YouTube, while anything with a hint of sexuality won't be accepted.
YouTube has an automated process to screen for pornography and that has been one of its successes, Niedzviecki said.
