Offended yet?

[Sybarite]

First, thank you to Stewart for allowing me to join this part of the boards.

As I sit at my computer, we're a few hours from 2008 and I can hear the TV in another room. The other half is watching Monty Python's Life of Brian – "He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy". Channel 4 are also showing a documentary this evening about how difficult it was to get the film made and about the campaign to stop it being shown, including attempts to prosecute the makers under old UK blasphemy laws (which are still on the statute books).

Yesterday, I visited the Barbican in London to see the exhibition Seduced: art and sex from antiquity to now (this link to the Barbican site gives a little information about the exhibition). It's a fascinating event, with plenty of materials that have been censored and hidden away to prevent people (particularly women, children and the working class) from being corrupted. The things that have been banned have included books as well as works of art, including those by the Marquis de Sade.

In recent years, the UK and the US have seen books burnt – Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses in the UK and Harry Potter books in the US – while the UK has witnessed rioting in Birmingham to stop a play, protests and legal action (continuing) and death threats over the BBC screening of Jerry Springer: the Opera and (along with many other places), protests about some cartoons.

All this raises a number of questions:

• does one have a right to not be offended by something;

• if so, why and what the limits to the censorship that should be imposed on the rest of society to stop offence;

• if not, is there any limit on how much should be allowed;

• why do some people apparently think that any being as big and powerful as a god is really going to be offended by a film such as this? Surely, if humans are made in god's image, then god has a sense of humour too;

• if such a being was bothered, why wouldn't it do something about it itself and why should its followers have to get so antsy on its behalf?

 

[beer good]

Interesting subject. Let's see if we can get a discussion going.

• does one have a right to not be offended by something;

Yes. One has the right to look at something and not be offended by it.

Kidding aside, of course people have the right to be offended. Personally, for instance, I'm offended by a number of things - Britney Spears, the new ending of I Am Legend, any number of morality/censorshit advocates, lying politicians, rude shop assistants, the very existence of chihuahuas, etc etc etc. The question is how much weight society at large should put on one person's claim that they're offended by something. The solution, IMO, is never to ban but to critique and discuss; after all, anything that's worth saying will offend SOMEONE out there - if we made that the criterium for censorship, we'd eventually have to censor just everything (assuming the ones doing the censoring are supposed to be unbiased).

• if so, why and what the limits to the censorship that should be imposed on the rest of society to stop offence;

As little as at all possible, IMO.

• if not, is there any limit on how much should be allowed;

I'd say only that which is directly harmful per se - and that's not much - should ever be censored, and even in that case I'd be wary. To take the obvious "won't someone please think of the children" argument - no, children below a certain age probably should not be exposed to extreme violence, sex, or experimental post-modern novels. However, by explicitly or implicitly banning that content (on moral, religious or whatever grounds) effectively means that adults above that age, for whom it was intended in the first place, will never be exposed to it either. When society as a whole starts facing Peter Pan syndrome and demanding that everything be "family friendly", you've got a problem.

• if such a being was bothered, why wouldn't it do something about it itself and why should its followers have to get so antsy on its behalf?

Playing devil's advocate - how do you know He/She/It didn't do something about it by telling Its followers to get antsy? (Of course, there are people who do argue that, for instance, God sent Hurricane Katrina to punish the US for this or that, or the 2004 tsunami to punish the evil moslems and buddhists...)

 

[Motokid]

All this raises a number of questions:

• does one have a right to not be offended by something;

• if so, why and what the limits to the censorship that should be imposed on the rest of society to stop offence;

• if not, is there any limit on how much should be allowed;

• why do some people apparently think that any being as big and powerful as a god is really going to be offended by a film such as this? Surely, if humans are made in god's image, then god has a sense of humour too;

• if such a being was bothered, why wouldn't it do something about it itself and why should its followers have to get so antsy on its behalf?

For some past discussion on the subject:

click here <--

The history of this forum can be a real blast.