Cartoon Violence...
Under a cut because I'm sure not everyone is interested.
As happens in the college student world, I've only found out about this cartoon protest violence over the last 2 days. I'd heard about the embassy bombings but didn't know they were protesting cartoons- I figured they were bombing our allies because they're our alies. Which, to be honest, would make more sense to me than it being over cartoons.
Because I tend to do these things about issues near & dear to me, I proceeded to read & listen to everything I could find on what's happening. Free Speech & Freedom of Expression are extremely important to me as an artist. So I've listened to NPR, read articles, even found the cartoons themselves on a website so I could see just what started it all. Im a believer in looking at a image to see what's happening because descriptions of them never convey the truth of a picture. And I have several thoughts.
First, having freedom of expression does not give you a "get out of jail free" card if you're an asshole. I'm a huge fan of blasphemous humor of any & all beliefs & my own in particular, but these were by & large mean-spirited & offensive. One did make me chuckle- ("Stop! We've run out of virgins")- but for the most part they're just rude, not satire. The newspaper editor shouldn't have run them. He had the right to certainly but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Muslims are right to be offended. However, such is the nature of freedom of expression. People are often offended by something someone else says or believes or draws.
Having said that, these cartoons are not a reason to kill or a cause for violence. I keep hearing people say, "If that were Jesus, Christians would be behaving the same way" No, they wouldn't. At least, not in the West. Because it has happened to Christian symbols. Two very fairly recent examples-Andre's Serrano's Piss Christ & Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary (aka the "Elephant Dung Madonna" from the Sensation Show that got NY Mayor Guilianni in such an uproar). Piss Christ, for those who may not remember the controversy, is a photograph of a crucifix suspended in a jar of urine. I've seen it & it's actually a well-done photgraph. You certainly wouldn't guess what it was if it weren't for the title. As the choice of materials & title suggests, it was intended to shock & offend- the artist was expressing his outrage about how the Catholic Church has dealt with the issue of homosexuality. (Ironically, one of the Arhcbishops who denounced the work as offensive was later indicted for covering up sexual abuse by priests). The "Elephant Dung Madonna" is a very powerful work- Mary looking about her looking scared while she's surrounded by pronography & exegerated sexual organs. The point of the piece is about trying to hold to certain values while in a sexualized society. The dung is a traditional material used by the artists in the African tribe the artist grew up in & he happens to be a very devout Catholic. In both cases, exhibitions were protested & politicians denounced them because many deemed them offensive- although interestingly a large number of the offended never saw the works. (Ironically, most of them would have agreed with the message in the Madonna if they hadn't assumed someone had randomly flung shit at an icon). Not a single art gallery that showed them was burned, nor was anyone killed, although in both cases the works themselves were vandalized. The editor of the Mercyhurst college student newspaper ran a picture of Piss Christ & a cartoon drawing of an angry Jesus titled "Pissed Christ", which had me laughing for days. However, Meryhurst is a Catholic school with rather a lot of nuns who were not pleased. They let the editor know how they felt & the very next week he appologized for his thoughtlessness. No fire, no blood.
There's some interesting mitigating factors here. One is the notion that Muslims never have pictures of Mohammed. That's not actually true of all branches of Islam- less conservative branches have lots of images of Him. Second is the length of time from when the cartoons were published to when the bombings started. A number of fundamentalist Muslims wanted the Danish Prime Minister to punish the editor & the cartoonist. He explained to them that he couldn't do that as they have a free press. So these men took it upon themselves to stir up anger about the cartoons, including by adding images that weren't published in the newspaper at all. These men dilliberatly stoked these particular flames to cause wide-spread violence. Further is the fact that Islamic media very, very frequently makes statements about Jews & Christians that are hate-speech, calls for violence against groups they don't like & the deaths of specific people. Just how justified are they to be so outraged when they're doing the exact same thing-- and worse-- to other groups? Anyone remember when Salomon Rushdie had to go into hiding?
The reaction they're showing to the cartoons is in fact proving everything those cartoons claimed about the Fundamentalist Islamic Community to be entirely correct. Worse, there's no public outcry coming from the Moderate Islamic Community decrying the violence. And that's why I'm starting to think the editor was right to publish the ones they did (& my understanding is that the worst 3 are ones not published by the papers). They aren't funny as satire is meant to be but they revealed a very dark truth about the situation, which is far more important.
I originally held a different view on this- I thought the editor was wrong to publish them. But the more I discover & read, the more I think he may have been right & the others who have published them are also right to do so. Giving in to this violence will not help tesions between the Middle-East & the West, it'll just help to further a double-standard. The violence is wrong.
As happens in the college student world, I've only found out about this cartoon protest violence over the last 2 days. I'd heard about the embassy bombings but didn't know they were protesting cartoons- I figured they were bombing our allies because they're our alies. Which, to be honest, would make more sense to me than it being over cartoons.
Because I tend to do these things about issues near & dear to me, I proceeded to read & listen to everything I could find on what's happening. Free Speech & Freedom of Expression are extremely important to me as an artist. So I've listened to NPR, read articles, even found the cartoons themselves on a website so I could see just what started it all. Im a believer in looking at a image to see what's happening because descriptions of them never convey the truth of a picture. And I have several thoughts.
First, having freedom of expression does not give you a "get out of jail free" card if you're an asshole. I'm a huge fan of blasphemous humor of any & all beliefs & my own in particular, but these were by & large mean-spirited & offensive. One did make me chuckle- ("Stop! We've run out of virgins")- but for the most part they're just rude, not satire. The newspaper editor shouldn't have run them. He had the right to certainly but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Muslims are right to be offended. However, such is the nature of freedom of expression. People are often offended by something someone else says or believes or draws.
Having said that, these cartoons are not a reason to kill or a cause for violence. I keep hearing people say, "If that were Jesus, Christians would be behaving the same way" No, they wouldn't. At least, not in the West. Because it has happened to Christian symbols. Two very fairly recent examples-Andre's Serrano's Piss Christ & Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary (aka the "Elephant Dung Madonna" from the Sensation Show that got NY Mayor Guilianni in such an uproar). Piss Christ, for those who may not remember the controversy, is a photograph of a crucifix suspended in a jar of urine. I've seen it & it's actually a well-done photgraph. You certainly wouldn't guess what it was if it weren't for the title. As the choice of materials & title suggests, it was intended to shock & offend- the artist was expressing his outrage about how the Catholic Church has dealt with the issue of homosexuality. (Ironically, one of the Arhcbishops who denounced the work as offensive was later indicted for covering up sexual abuse by priests). The "Elephant Dung Madonna" is a very powerful work- Mary looking about her looking scared while she's surrounded by pronography & exegerated sexual organs. The point of the piece is about trying to hold to certain values while in a sexualized society. The dung is a traditional material used by the artists in the African tribe the artist grew up in & he happens to be a very devout Catholic. In both cases, exhibitions were protested & politicians denounced them because many deemed them offensive- although interestingly a large number of the offended never saw the works. (Ironically, most of them would have agreed with the message in the Madonna if they hadn't assumed someone had randomly flung shit at an icon). Not a single art gallery that showed them was burned, nor was anyone killed, although in both cases the works themselves were vandalized. The editor of the Mercyhurst college student newspaper ran a picture of Piss Christ & a cartoon drawing of an angry Jesus titled "Pissed Christ", which had me laughing for days. However, Meryhurst is a Catholic school with rather a lot of nuns who were not pleased. They let the editor know how they felt & the very next week he appologized for his thoughtlessness. No fire, no blood.
There's some interesting mitigating factors here. One is the notion that Muslims never have pictures of Mohammed. That's not actually true of all branches of Islam- less conservative branches have lots of images of Him. Second is the length of time from when the cartoons were published to when the bombings started. A number of fundamentalist Muslims wanted the Danish Prime Minister to punish the editor & the cartoonist. He explained to them that he couldn't do that as they have a free press. So these men took it upon themselves to stir up anger about the cartoons, including by adding images that weren't published in the newspaper at all. These men dilliberatly stoked these particular flames to cause wide-spread violence. Further is the fact that Islamic media very, very frequently makes statements about Jews & Christians that are hate-speech, calls for violence against groups they don't like & the deaths of specific people. Just how justified are they to be so outraged when they're doing the exact same thing-- and worse-- to other groups? Anyone remember when Salomon Rushdie had to go into hiding?
The reaction they're showing to the cartoons is in fact proving everything those cartoons claimed about the Fundamentalist Islamic Community to be entirely correct. Worse, there's no public outcry coming from the Moderate Islamic Community decrying the violence. And that's why I'm starting to think the editor was right to publish the ones they did (& my understanding is that the worst 3 are ones not published by the papers). They aren't funny as satire is meant to be but they revealed a very dark truth about the situation, which is far more important.
I originally held a different view on this- I thought the editor was wrong to publish them. But the more I discover & read, the more I think he may have been right & the others who have published them are also right to do so. Giving in to this violence will not help tesions between the Middle-East & the West, it'll just help to further a double-standard. The violence is wrong.