It all began for me on Instapundit…

IT’S NOT ABORTION, IT’S ART: “Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself ‘as often as possible’ while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages.

At first, I panicked. I e-mailed Dear Leader and suggested she run with this. I still think she should - something tells me her thoughts on a college art student at a prestigious private university using abortions for art would be comical. However, I felt the need to look around…

Ace threw a one-liner in her direction, mocking her for needing to be artificially inseminated for this project. I thought it was strange that, if she was going to go through the effort to get pregnant in the first place, why didn’t she do it the fun and old fashioned way? But, I pressed on…

Yuval Levin was skeptical. I alerted Dear Leader about this, wanting to avoid any embarrassing exaggerations… and it was about this time that a certain term popped into my head…

That term was “Deviancy Amplification Spiral“:

Deviancy amplification spiral (also simply called deviance amplification) is a media hype phenomenon defined by media critics as an increasing cycle of reporting on a category of antisocial behavior or other undesirable events.

Hmm… well, using abortions for art is pretty anti-social. Doing it at an elitist school that most people would never be able to attend, much less afford, well, that’s something else entirely. Wait - she’s blowing $40k/year on being an art major at this place? Fire up the pitchforks, thaw out the peasants, dust off the trees, and call the news wire - we have a veritable deviancy amplification tornado on our hands!

American Digest gets in on the act, giving one of the more in-depth analyses of the individual involved (not saying her name - she doesn’t deserve the attention) that I’ve run across thus far.

In Jennifer’s Head points out that she may not have actually had the abortions - she just might want everyone to think she did… which is still plenty messed up.

Right Wing News threw in a semi-related story (in the same genre, at least) about an artist from Costa Rica that starved a dog for “art”.

Trying to Grok weighs in on both of these “art” pieces. Of course, that means we’re now up to two pieces of “art” that offend any empathic sensibilities any non-psychotic individual might have… which means we have a trend. Great.

Meanwhile, as a sign that the spiral is already beginning to wear itself out, a la Kaus’ Feiler Faster Thesis, we have the Jawa Report, who points out that something is foul in the state of Denmark:

Why am I skeptical of some claims being made against that FLDS polygamy cult in Texas? For the same reason that AllahP is skeptical of the claims being made by a Yale student who’s senior art project, she claims, is made from fetuses she intentionally aborted. AllahP:

It’s too broadly parodic of too many things: the trivialization of abortion, modern art’s fascination with effluvium, amoral academic culture justified as a form of faux-profound “consciousness-raising,” etc etc etc.

Menstrual blood art? Okay, pushing the envelope, but I can buy that. Claiming that you impregnated yourself over and over in order to abort the fetuses for the sake of art? Uh, spidey senses say no.

Here’s my take:

Is this lady undoubtedly an attention whore? You betcha. Did she actually have all of those abortions? I don’t know, nor do I particularly care. Is it ridiculous that someone at Yale actually signed off on her even pretending to do something like this as an “art” project? Of course. Do I think this is a sign of the apocalypse? No - people have been doing stupid shit with “art” for many, many years… about 48 of them, to be exact. Maybe longer, if you include the beatnik movement (damn proto-hippies). Either way, she’s going to be treated just like every other self-indulgent little art whore out there who thinks they have something profound to say - she’s going to get praised by her fellow self-indulgent attention whorish peers, she’s going to get a pat on the back from some of the “liberal” faculty for “taking it to The Man” or something like that, and she’s going to get thoroughly ridiculed by everyone else. In short, she’s just an overgrown two-year-old, shitting her pants and wanting someone to marvel at her odor.

I’d rather not.

UPDATE: I was right! Rachel’s reaction was glorious:

God, what I would give to be locked alone in a room with this psychopath and some numchuks, if she really did do this. What I’d really just have to INSIST she tell me is exactly what impregnating yourself and giving yourself abortions says about the relationship between art and the human body that couldn’t have been said even better - and far more effectively, daringly, and artistically - by killing herself. She could enlist some friends to smear her blood and body parts all over on plastic and project the video of her death onto the walls.

You know, to make a point. To inspire discourse.

Nah - people kill themselves all the time. Besides, this girl wouldn’t be missed either way. She needs attention, damn it. It feeds her, like okra and melba toast, or whatever it is people like her eat. Beans, I bet. Beans and sprouts. Y’know, to send a message to those capitalist fat cat meat eaters with their beef and their pork and their decimation of the Great Buffalo, which is why the Red Man is dead and no more.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ha! (scroll down to the bottom)

UPDATE: Future warlord David Colborne (commenter Oatworm to those in-the-know) has a nice round-up of blogospheric reaction, including the best one-line description of Aliza Shvarts (wonder if that rhymes with farts?):

In short, she’s just an overgrown two-year-old, shitting her pants and wanting someone to marvel at her odor.

David would rather not, and I would rather not, and I think we both feel a little dirty even giving the little psychobrat any attention at all, but people! It is too easy!

That’s right - this blog is now self-referential. Just be careful - if you click on this link, go down to the bottom, and click on the link to this blog from her page, you will be stuck forever in a blog-induced temporal vortex, from which there is no escape. You’ve been warned.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: It was a hoax. She’s still an overgrown toddlerific attention-hungry assbitch of epic proportions, though. Sadly, she got what she wanted - everybody’s paying attention to her - which just proves that, when you’re dealing with children, their desire to get attention, positive or negative, almost always outweighs any faint sense of pride or common sense that might be lurking around in that vacuous space between their ears.

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