The famous proscription against falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre is no longer just a matter of preventing a stampede: now, shouting "fire" can be censured for infringing the rights of the firemen, distressing the relatives of people killed in other fires, offending religions for whom fire is a sacred object, and glorifying or celebrating arson. All of which possibilities arise out of the idea that, fundamentally, deep down, to shout "Fire!" is to start one.
Which goes to show that even the most plodding, highbrow prose can sometimes turn miraculously worthwhile. I couldn't have put my finger on the nub of the issue better myself.
The thesis of his article (and it took him ages to get to the point) is that there is this alarming trend amongst lawmakers and culture-hawks towards censoring the arts (writing in particular, he says) on the basis of fear and a fallacy. The fear, or supposed fear, is the one mentioned above: fear of giving offence. The fallacy is the idea that the representation of a reprehensible act is, to a lesser degree, the act itself.
Edgar backs up his claim that the fallacy exists with proof and many examples, including one memorable case where the director of a play called The Romans was taken to court because the play had two male actors miming sexual activity. The basis of the case against the director was not, apparently, the Obscene Publications Act, which presumably applies to pornography and such, but the Sexual Offences Act: the director was arraigned for "procuring an act of gross indecency". Edgar writes:
Its most dangerous legacy was not the well-worn notion that the representation of something encourages people to do it, but the new if related idea that portrayal was of itself an act of abuse.
Edgar also quotes a dozen examples to show the fear of giving offence at work: people who denounce biographers of villains like serial killers and Hitler by saying "too much explaining leads to too much forgiving."
The process inevitably humanises such monsters and invokes understanding, if not forgiveness.
Scary shit.
The article is brilliant while it shows how the cause of censorship is gaining ground with the help of the bogus Fear and the Fallacy. Then Edgar goes and undercuts his own thesis by putting up a weak defence:
Behind all of this is the idea that there are subjects too important, too profound, too dangerous for writing ... to touch. Behind that is an assumption that fiction writing in particular has no positive value, that it is a trivial pursuit, a luxury pastime which if it proves to be dangerous to its consumers should be suppressed for the greater good. ... [But] the telling and hearing of stories (in whatever medium) is not an optional extra or a trivial pursuit. It is central to our being as humans.
It's the classic "Art for Art's sake" defence, something that is inherently weakened relying on "human nature" to support it. There are any number of things that are innately in our nature as human beings, warmongering being not the least of them. We can't indulge all of our inner natures. I could almost argue that civilisation consists of taming the inner workings of our heads to conform to society's rules.
But does that mean I have dug myself (and the arts) into a deeper hole? After all, these are "society's rules" we're talking about. Holocaust-related trauma is not a myth, nor is it irrelevant. The serial killer's victims' families will be forced to relive their horrors when the killer's biography is written; should their anguish be ignored?
Time for getting back to basics. Any yardstick that we use to determine what is acceptable in our society and what is not should be a uniformly applicable yardstick, that much is certain. This being the case, can "offensiveness" and "causing distress to disaster victims" be a useful rule in determining what is publishable and what isn't? Surely not. I guess Holocaust survivors and/or their children had better toughen up a little. The point is, none of these biographies are lying, and the truth shouldn't be covered up. It's true that Hitler was a human being, and it's true that he probably had reasons for doing the things he did. Just because his acts were inhuman, doesn't mean he was. Bringing this guy back into the fold of humanity is scarier than exiling him from it and treating him as a monster... but it is the truth, and if it hurts people to face up to it, it is not the fault of the truth-teller.
I've had just about enough of squeamishness about so-called offensive material. Did you know that in US high-school text books and standardised tests, almost nothing is permissible except boring, beyond-PC bullshit? In The Language Police, Diane Ravitch talks about how the Left is demanding that Aesop's fables mentioned in text-books and tests become more gender balanced, that women not be shown in "stereotypical" roles, that references to past discrimination be carefully shielded. Ravitch cites a mention of slaves and the class system in Ancient Egypt, which was to be re-written to make it sound like everyone was on equal footing or some such thing. The Spanish no longer conquered anyone in Latin America (the various native peoples are just mysteriously no longer in power). A passage for a test about a blind man overcoming the difficulties involved in climbing a mountain was rejected because it implied that being blind was a handicap.
Would-be censors on the Right, apparently, have issues with various ideas appearing. Evolution is controversial, so it is not to appear on standardized tests or be mentioned in non-science textbooks. No fantasy (fear of occult). No mentions of abortion. Editors are instructed to not include in a literature textbook any story in which a child behaves disrespectfully toward an adult, whether or not there is a consequence for this action. Scott Adams just blogged about a Dilbert strip in which he had to edit out a gun held in the hand of a cop, because of course, the violent image of a gun being fired by a cartoon character is the root of gun-violence in America. And, I suppose, everybody who watches Donald Duck step off a cliff becomes suicidal.
WTF???
There comes a point where I become too indignant to keep up a coherent argument. This is it. Not that this case needs any more arguing: my point, I think, is abundantly clear.
Very interesting read.
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