Everybody Comment On Everybody Draw Mohammed Day Day
loic recently commented that Lars Vilks is a total anti-Islamic douchebag. And I agree. His cartoon is offensive for many reasons:
- Depicting anyone as a mangy street dog is intuitively offensive in any culture. Even dog culture.
- It is at worst a broad and unprovoked attack against a community, and at best a poorly thought out and more poorly communicated message.
- It fails to inspire, amuse, or entertain.
- It is either a poor reflection of the artist's talent, or simply badly drawn art from a bad artist.
- Last and least, it happens to be a visual depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.
Other gratuitously offensive cartoons are offensive for the same reasons. It's intuitively offensive to depict a rape in a holy temple. I'm not entertained by a picture of Moses with a gay lover. It's unclear what sort of comment, if any, someone is trying to make by depicting Hindu Goddess Lakshmi eating a Burger King Texas Whopper. They arguably fit the obscenity standard of Jacobellis v. Ohio by being profane, taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting "without redeeming social importance".
Douchebags should be free to speak their douchebag minds without threat of violence, but not protest. In the past I've protested against free-speechifying anti-Islamic douchebags, because their speech is offensive and objectionable. They should be rebuked, ridiculed, and shunned into obscurity, but you don't attack and you certainly don't try to set the guy's family's house on fire.
The people who attacked Lars Viliks are stupid evil douchebags. They've got the moral high ground and an easy target and they squander the opportunity by becoming violent vigilantes. Something that even more people find not just offensive, but criminal. This oversensitivity and out-of-proportion reaction has, in my case, turned my former sympathy into angry disgust.
My goal with my picture is to skewer the latter by avoiding the pitfalls of the former. Depicting the Prophet Mohammad as a popular and well-loved American painter is not intuitively offensive. I hope its meta-taboo-violation is amusing, aesthetically pleasing, and reflects well on my Photoshop skills. And I hope it makes a reasonably well targeted point: if you're not Muslim, you can draw Mohammed. You can draw Mohammed drawing Mohammed. It's just a cartoon. Nothing's going to happen. By the same token if you're not a Jew you can park your car on Saturday. If someone is attacked for doing this it's OK to protest those attacks by parking your own car on Sunday, drawing a cartoon of Lightning McQueen wearing a yarmuke parked on a giant calendar marked "Saturday", or even draw a yarmukled Lightning McQueen on Sunday inside another car, parking it. But don't attack Saturday parking lot attendants, don't attack the attackers of parking lot attendants, and don't attack people who draw cartoons of people drawing people attacking people parking cars on Sunday.
This cartoon admittedly does a much better job than I did. It's better composed, its message is well focused, and its meta-taboo-violation is more amusing. Ditto for South Park 200/201, which (if you actually watch it rather than reading reporters' descriptions) makes its point by presenting needlessly obscene, unforgivably offensive images against every religion except Islam by not drawing the Prophet Mohammed, in a bear suit or otherwise, and catching hell from oversensitive Muslims anyway, thus proving their point.
Maybe nobody else is amused, but I like to think George Carlin would have been proud.
- Depicting anyone as a mangy street dog is intuitively offensive in any culture. Even dog culture.
- It is at worst a broad and unprovoked attack against a community, and at best a poorly thought out and more poorly communicated message.
- It fails to inspire, amuse, or entertain.
- It is either a poor reflection of the artist's talent, or simply badly drawn art from a bad artist.
- Last and least, it happens to be a visual depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.
Other gratuitously offensive cartoons are offensive for the same reasons. It's intuitively offensive to depict a rape in a holy temple. I'm not entertained by a picture of Moses with a gay lover. It's unclear what sort of comment, if any, someone is trying to make by depicting Hindu Goddess Lakshmi eating a Burger King Texas Whopper. They arguably fit the obscenity standard of Jacobellis v. Ohio by being profane, taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting "without redeeming social importance".
Douchebags should be free to speak their douchebag minds without threat of violence, but not protest. In the past I've protested against free-speechifying anti-Islamic douchebags, because their speech is offensive and objectionable. They should be rebuked, ridiculed, and shunned into obscurity, but you don't attack and you certainly don't try to set the guy's family's house on fire.
The people who attacked Lars Viliks are stupid evil douchebags. They've got the moral high ground and an easy target and they squander the opportunity by becoming violent vigilantes. Something that even more people find not just offensive, but criminal. This oversensitivity and out-of-proportion reaction has, in my case, turned my former sympathy into angry disgust.
My goal with my picture is to skewer the latter by avoiding the pitfalls of the former. Depicting the Prophet Mohammad as a popular and well-loved American painter is not intuitively offensive. I hope its meta-taboo-violation is amusing, aesthetically pleasing, and reflects well on my Photoshop skills. And I hope it makes a reasonably well targeted point: if you're not Muslim, you can draw Mohammed. You can draw Mohammed drawing Mohammed. It's just a cartoon. Nothing's going to happen. By the same token if you're not a Jew you can park your car on Saturday. If someone is attacked for doing this it's OK to protest those attacks by parking your own car on Sunday, drawing a cartoon of Lightning McQueen wearing a yarmuke parked on a giant calendar marked "Saturday", or even draw a yarmukled Lightning McQueen on Sunday inside another car, parking it. But don't attack Saturday parking lot attendants, don't attack the attackers of parking lot attendants, and don't attack people who draw cartoons of people drawing people attacking people parking cars on Sunday.
This cartoon admittedly does a much better job than I did. It's better composed, its message is well focused, and its meta-taboo-violation is more amusing. Ditto for South Park 200/201, which (if you actually watch it rather than reading reporters' descriptions) makes its point by presenting needlessly obscene, unforgivably offensive images against every religion except Islam by not drawing the Prophet Mohammed, in a bear suit or otherwise, and catching hell from oversensitive Muslims anyway, thus proving their point.
Maybe nobody else is amused, but I like to think George Carlin would have been proud.