Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Bombing Cartoonists

Democracy has few perks. In its purest form one of its results was the banishment of any dangerously exceptional person for ten years. Even in modern form it functions based on the assumption of an equality that can never exist in practice, but which is nevertheless forced onto the political reality of democratic states in a way not entirely dissimilar to the ancient practice of ostracism. The opinion of a goon and a savant are made equivalent, and, as the electorate in virtually every country man will ever found has a disturbing tendency to resemble the cast of characters in a zombie movie – a handful of people with brains bickering amongst themselves while being slowly surrounded by an ever-increasing, unstoppable legion of the brainless – the democratic government is a bit goonish (‘A bit goonish’ being the nicest, most euphemistic way of stating this. Slightly more accurate would probably be ‘scrotum-tighteningly goonish’). There are balances against this tendency, and some people in government are perhaps neither execrable human beings nor slack-jawed dupes, but rather an accurate reflection of an educated electorate. I can’t think of one off-hand, but they may exist.

Democracy has other problems as well, but for us to be willing to accept these, the few perks serving as counterbalance must be rather heavy. The heaviest, I feel, is the freedom of expression; it founds the basis of all the others, even the ones I don’t like. It is essentially the public sphere promising not to control how you are allowed to speak, and, as we tend to think in language to a great degree, how you think, no matter how subversive or offensive, with the exception, usually, of substantive cases of libel and treason. Very cool, and should be the fundamental right and guarantee of every democratic state, serving as the guarantor of our ‘equality’ and of our freedom. Naturally enough, it is instead opposed by every group within these democratic states that wants to control the thoughts of the remainder, resulting in a lot of empty controversy (we really do have a wonderful freedom of speech despite the media carnival revolving around video games and whatnot) and a few genuine threats. There are a great many of these groups, each one having a ‘cause’ to mask what they really are: bald attempts at forcing entire populations into constrictive thought boxes. Which one is chosen hardly matters.

Recently, an actual threat presented itself against freedom of speech. This all began with the recent publishing, by a Danish newspaper, of twelve caricatures of Muhammad, whose countenance is never to be depicted according to Muslim law. That the nature of a caricature is to be disrespectful and controversial certainly did not make this infraction any more acceptable. So we have some cartoons of Muhammad, sometimes shown as ridiculous, or violent, or a terrorist, but never particularly funny. In response, Muslims the world over rioted, called for Bin Ladin to attack Denmark, called for the violent deaths of the cartoonist, burned down Danish embassies, and actually in all this hubbub ten people were killed. Which makes it slightly less than one human life for each caricature of the prophet. Oddly enough, this is not the threat mentioned above, but only the catalyst for it, as the caricatures themselves were the catalyst for this violent, enraged response.

We probably remember the incredibly dumb phrase coined towards the end of 2001 as something of a slogan for continuing to live a normal existence in the wake of the 9/11 attacks: ‘If [banal action] stops, then the terrorists have truly won.’ This is a stupid thing to say in many ways, especially since it essentially was created by a committee of phrase-shaping experts in order to stimulate the flagging economy (something about saying ‘stimulate the flagging economy’ is so satisfying in a childish, ‘I said something dirty!’ sort of way), but there is a truth to it: outsiders cannot actually dictate our actions unless we choose to allow them to do so. Meaning angry Muslims cannot force us to deny a newspaper the right to publish some unfunny but religiously controversial unless the powers-that-be in our countries decide that freedom of expression is not worth standing up over. In other words, if our countries’ leaders puss out, then maybe we should begin to worry about freedom of expression. All the arsons and suicide bombers in the world can’t dent or damage an idea if its believers are similarly devoted.

The threat I mentioned above is that many of our leaders, one of whom has been quoted as saying ‘there should be limits to freedom of speech’ because people on the internet don’t like him, really aren’t being the kind of representatives of democracy we’d want them to be. Representatives of the US and the UK have decided to come out against these dumb little cartoons in what can only be interpreted as a misguided attempt to repair relations with the part of the world they’ve been bombing and whose citizens and other residents they’ve been killing. Seems silly to me. Then again, England has a law on the books that prohibits blasphemy against the Christian God and in America today a new simple conservatism that desires to rein in the trend towards increasing freedom to offend is flowering. People who don’t particularly care for this aspect of democracy – which, allow me to remind you, is its fountainhead – really can’t be expected to risk offending people by defending the right of a newspaper to print offensive but harmless – yes, harmless – images.

If the government really doesn’t consider this issue one worth taking a controversial stance over when its history is of making self-servingly controversial stands virtually whenever possible, we’re in for some ugly times. Especially troubling is that it took such a stupid, pointless, meaningless controversy to expose this.

The whole Danish cartoon controversy is a somewhat fascinating study in how stupid and wrong everybody involved in something can be. Wherever you turn your head, people are being idiots, with the possible exception of the leaders (except Jacques Chirac, the cunt) of continental European democratic countries. Let’s take a look:

- The Danish Cartoonists: They apparently chose to make these cartoons as a test of the freedom of speech in the face of Muslims fundies, who have been particularly active in Northern Europe of late (the murder of Theo Van Gogh). This is fine, and, in fact, admirable if considered in these terms. Unfortunately, they did not seem prepared for the consequences. As noted above, the Koran itself specifically prohibits the realistic depiction of any Muslim prophet, with special weight given to the prophet Muhammad (for some reason they ignore and are not offended by realistic depictions of other religious figures recognized as prophets by Islam, such as Jesus and Moses, but that’s neither here nor there). Muslims are not known for a rational response to what they perceive as blasphemy. If you’re going to set out to offend, know what you’re getting in for and be prepared to deal with these consequences. Be Lenny Bruce. Don’t be a group of Danish cartoonists who didn’t realize how serious what they were playing at is.

And, goddammit, be amusing. Crossing lines of taste is an art, one that is degraded if you do it for no reason, or a poor one, or don’t cut deeply when you arrive on the other side. Humor’s essential purpose, aside from being funny, is to find these lines and cross them in an attractive enough way that other people want to come along and new territory may be explored. But to do this well, it has to be FUNNY. If not, everyone is focused on the line, which isn’t destroyed but highlighted by the joke. Strong humor shines a light on false principles so that they may be targeted; weak humor does nothing more than shine a light. We need strong humor in this case, and these cartoons are weak as they come.

- The Muslims: According to some sources a Danish imam named Abu Laban toured the Middle East to dredge up this fervor, bearing far more offensive caricatures of Muhammad, including ones of his as a pedophile, he claimed to have received from undisclosed sources in Denmark. This accounts somewhat for the months-long time lapse between the publishing of the cartoons and the Muslim response. Syria and Iran have since followed suit and appear to be responsible for much of the violent response. There is a long history of demagoguery using fundamentalist religion – it’s in fact the basis of fundamentalist religion and the reason Pat Robertson founded a film school with billions in funding – but it gets no less despicable. Propaganda is sometimes fascinating stuff, but when it fails and provocateurs are smuggled into neighboring countries to create the impression of a widespread Islamic reaction, it’s boring. Moderate Muslims are just shaking their heads, or worried that the fundies are trying to spread a message that they’re not worthy of such things as free speech, or that they’re spreading the idea of Islam as being fundamentally irreconcilable with Western values. Whether or not this is true isn’t within the scope of this article; what’s important is to note that these people and their worries wouldn’t exist if there were some good propaganda out. Instead we just have ruthless demagogues doing what ruthless demagogues do: dress up their thirst for power in the robes of a Serious Issue. But poorly, this time through.

They’re also harping on the fact that Western democracies disallow such things as Holocaust denial and Christian blasphemy, pointing this out as hypocritical. And it is. One should be as free to blaspheme against the Christian God as any other, and certainly be able to deny the Holocaust. No need to legislate and save them the embarrassment.

- Bush and Blair: These people are the leaders of the countries that are supposed to be beacons of democracy. They are not supposed to be criticizing the newspapers for exercising the right to be offensive. Free press is essentially dissident, offensive, and contrary; its job, which it tends to neglect, is to do things like this. The government’s job is to make things like this possible. That both of these people have come out against it is aggravating; how do you go about spreading democracy abroad when you refuse to defend it at home? The answer to this shouldn’t really surprise anybody: there is no concern about democracy; it’s just empty rhetoric they ride like the fundies ride their simple ‘West v. Islam’ binary, and for the same reasons.

So we have crusaders for freedom of speech who don’t seem to be all that committed, angry Muslims who appear to be using this as a political opportunity and not responding out of genuine outrage, and some cowardly ‘leaders’ of the free world riding the pony of democracy while abandoning its fundamental tenants out of fear of offense. All these people stirred up into a potentially dangerous frenzy, and over what? A few cartoons that at depth are no more subversive or risky than what you see every day in the cartoon section of your newspaper; in fact, some of those are genuinely subversive. And as for being offensive? Everything about this debacle is offensive except for the cartoons themselves, which may only be called offensive in the manner in which their total blandness masquerades as something daring.

In closing, a few ideas for genuinely offensive Muhammad cartoons, many of which will probably have to be multi-panel:

- Muhammad the Prophet taking advantage of a Muslim praying to Mecca to rape him anally, showing the original motive for the five bent over prayers a day requirement.
- Muhammad the Prophet raping and then eating a pig, raw, tossing the finished bones at Hasidic Jews, thereby knocking their hats off of their heads.
- Muhammad the Prophet wallowing in pig shit, using it as the site for a romantic rendezvous with a Catholic Priest, a Rabbi, and a Buddhist monk, in succession.
- Muhammad the Prophet trains in a stereotypical Libyan terrorist training center obstacle course, but struggles and falls from the overhead bars, prompting a caption questioning his manhood and devotion to Islam.
- Muhammad the Prophet raping the corpses of Muslim suicide martyrs in Western morgues.
- Muhammad the Prophet giving oral sex to George W. Bush, who comments on the pleasant friction of bearded head.
- Muhammad the Prophet learning to fly a plane in a simulator, telling the teacher that he has no desire to learn how to land.
- An All-Muhammad-The-Prophet burlesque show, somewhere between a Moulin Rouge floor show and a Busby Berkeley musical number featuring many bearded Muhammads in drag dancing into what looks from an overhead shot to be a giant gray-bearded cunt.
- Muhammad the Prophet converting to Reform Judaism and singing the blessing for breaking bread in Hebrew.
- A shaved Muhammad the Prophet, wearing a Savile Row double-breasted gray suit, a flashy tie, spats on his shoes, and glossy sunglasses selling several oil fields to Western interests and proceeding to sodomize a blonde hooker.
- Muhammad the Prophet sits at a Playstation 2, playing the original version of GTA III and flying the plane into Donald Love’s skyscraper over and over again with great glee.

Hopefully some artists among this audience will be inspired to use one of these ideas or a much better, more meaningfully offensive one, and give us some great Muhammad cartoons to use as the banner in defense of free speech. The ones we have at hand won’t cut it, but have unfortunately volunteered themselves to do so. With some of the greatest, or at least most shameless, manipulators in history bearing down on an issue of enough actual importance to get someone like me to write a political article, we can’t leave it all in the hands of these incompetent pretenders.

2 Comments:

At 11:01 am, Blogger Schrodinger's Cat said...

Even though you quite rightly point out that these cartoons possess no comedic value at all, they highlight a complete lack of humour on the part of fundamentalist Muslims. Take it on the chin, old chap, and accept that people will make fun of other people.

I think it comes from a basic feeling that they need to convert 'infidels' to the perceived correct ideology of Islam. Following the demonstrations in London (in which, I might add, many demonstrators carried placards calling for the beheading of those who insult Islam and one young Muslim child of no more than 6 months was adorned with a "I (heart) Al Qaeda" beanie - and Muslims claim that Islam is tolerant) a poll was carried out and, apparently, 4 in 10 British Muslims want Shia Law introduced into Britain. Yes, Shia Law, a law formulated in the 10 Century and which advocates the stoning to death of adulterous women amongst other barbaric laws not suitable for the civilised world.

I'd venture to say that if these Muslims would like to live under Shia Law, then they find themselves a nice Middle Eastern country to call their own. This view has also been expounded by one of the contestants of the UK version of "The Apprentice", Saira Khan, herself a Muslim. She speaks as a British Muslim that has grown up with British culture. She prays to Allah and is otherwise a model Muslim except that she denounced the necessity to wear a Burkha and has sabotaged an arranged marriage amongst other things. She is a Muslim that is forward thinking, modern and accepting of other faiths. Maybe the British governement should employ Saira as its liaison with the Muslim community rather than Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who recently postulated that homosexuality is immoral and that same-sex relationships are damaging the foundations of society. In the same manner as fundamental terrorism, no doubt.

"Sir" Iqbal also preaches that non-Muslims need to be more understanding of Muslim values. What about Muslims understanding the values of the country in which a lot of them chose to live? It is the migrants who have no desire to show this understanding or be integrated into multi-cultural Britain whereas first and second generation Muslims born in this country are those that seem to have their heads screwed on.

In summary, Muslims want (nay, demand) understanding and they get it twice over. It's about time that the radicals started understanding Western culture and that one of the founding tenets of Western society is the right of every single person to say what they want, when they want to and how they want to without censorship from the higher powers.

 
At 7:45 am, Blogger With a Hammer said...

Well, cumboy, the thing is this: we can't control what the Muslims do and we can't get rid of them. On the other hand we can control what we do. This being the case, I'm primarily concerned with how we respond to the stupid displays of violence. We had control over two aspects of this whole debacle - what we offended them with and how we responded to that offense - and, as far as I'm concerned, we bungled both horribly. This despite being aware of exactly what the kneejerk Muslim fundy response to this type of thing is: riots and death threats. This is practically scientifically proven, and yet we seem to remain in a state of unreadiness for the violent Muslim fagdance. If we're going to choose to bring it down, it'd better be worth it, and we'd better have a better response than 'Well, sometimes you really shouldn't be allowed to say something if somebody else might get upset.' Solid bungling on our part.

While I'd rather have an understanding Muslim population in the world, this isn't the case and there's nothing we can achieve by complaining about it. Hopefully there is something we can achieve by trying to root out weakness and stupidity in our own culture.

 

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