In praise of blasphemy

Last Saturday, BBC2 showed a brilliant piece of musical theatre. Jerry Springer - The Opera was obscene, offensive, blasphemous; and the BBC was absolutely right to broadcast it. Right because the obscenity, offensiveness and blasphemy are used not just to entertain, but to convey a disturbing message about American-style popular television culture and the emotional emptiness of an atomised consumer society in which, as one chorus refrain has it, life means to "eat, excrete and watch TV".

"Oh, how my heart aches for love," the chorus sighs later, and the opera succeeds in making us feel real pathos in the character of a fat, ugly, raucous woman who wants to be a pole dancer. It does this by musical art: just listen to the fat lady sing. In a long dream sequence in hell, the Jerry Springer character is confronted by one of his programme guests who has a monkey-wrench planted in the back of her skull. We gather she has been murdered as a result of her appearance on his show. "You know, Steve," he says to his sidekick, "a person with less broadcasting experience might feel responsible."

But the BBC has acted responsibly. As its director of television, Jana Bennett, explained, the BBC weighed the programme's "artistic merit" against the offence it would plainly cause, and found the merit weighed more. Which it does. The opera is not perfect, of course, and I could make a case that it's ultimately parasitic on the debased American popular culture it satirises. But this is exactly the kind of bold artistic experiment that public service broadcasting should be showing - on BBC2, after children's bedtime, with appropriate health warnings.

The Christians who burned their television licences outside Television Centre were protesting at the wrong address. If they want to demonstrate anywhere, it should be outside the American studio where the real Jerry Springer records the programme that, as the opera notes, has a worldwide audience "bigger than Bob Hope/ and, give or take a few million, bigger than the fucking Pope". There, in the Jerry Springer show itself - as also in our own endlessly tawdry Big Brother, briefly and foolishly graced by Germaine Greer - is the true degradation of humankind.
It's interesting that the vast majority of the nearly 50,000 complaints to the BBC were lodged before the show was broadcast. Those that came after were less numerous, and many viewers called in support. A Christian from Hemel Hempstead wrote approvingly to the Times to thank the opera's authors and the BBC: "Surely public service broadcasting is at its best when it presents to viewers uncompromising questions and challenges them, without any degree of condescension, to find a solution."

So I believe the BBC has just strengthened the case for a generous renewal of its charter. And we must stand up for it against our own nasty little version of the American religious right, called Christian Voice, which found it appropriate to defend Almighty God by posting the private telephone numbers of BBC executives on its website. When abusive phone calls predictably resulted, the director of Christian Voice, Stephen Green, said: "I was a bit naive in thinking perhaps our website would only be visited by Christians." What did he imagine people were going to do when given those numbers: sing hymns down the line?

However, there is one claim made by outraged Christians that deserves closer attention. The same Stephen Green commented: "If this show portrayed Mohammed or Vishnu as homosexual, ridiculous and ineffectual, it would never have seen the light of the day. The BBC would not dare put on a programme rubbishing the Sikh religion..." Now I may be wrong, but I have a sneaking feeling that this complaint contains at least a grain of truth.

For example, I would be very keen to see Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's play Behzti, which Sikh protests - and death threats to the playwright - forced the Birmingham Rep to remove from its programme. If that play is of comparable artistic merit to Jerry Springer - The Opera, and a televisable performance can be arranged, BBC2 should show it too. And, of course, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses should be available in all good bookshops.

You might argue that the established, majority religion can and should take a bit more stick than minority religions, generally brought to this country by more recent migrants. But that is not the classic liberal position and I don't think it's the right one. "The sum of all we drive at," wrote John Locke in his Letter Concerning Toleration, "is that every man may enjoy the same rights that are granted to others. Is it permitted to worship God in the Roman manner? Let it be permitted to do it in the Geneva form also." What Locke claimed for different forms of religious observance must surely hold today for different targets of religious disrespect: if you allow sauce to the Christian goose you must allow sauce to the Muslim gander. Or protect them both equally from sauce.

And there is the choice that faces our increasingly multicultural society. We can try to defend an ever growing number of "cultures", defined by religion, race, ethnic tradition or sexual preference, from public comment they regard as grossly offensive. There's a case for this, but let's be clear what it will mean. The result must inevitably be that we shall have less free speech. Future historians may look back on the last three decades of the 20th century as a high point of freedom of expression, never to be achieved again. There may be a net gain in other public goods - such as civic peace - but there'll be a net loss of liberty.

Alternatively, we can take the view that, precisely because Britain is increasingly multicultural, all variations of religion, all "cultures" - including, of course, atheism, devout Darwinism, etc - should get used to living with a higher degree of public offence. Either you try to protect everyone from offence, or you allow offence equally for all. I'm emphatically of the offence-to-all persuasion.

Of course, there must be limits. That limit comes when offensive comment significantly increases the danger of violence or intimidation towards a given community. It's notoriously difficult to determine when that line is crossed. And there are many different lines: one for the law courts, another for the BBC, yet another for a small magazine or theatre.

But all should have this in common: that they are drawn by a sober assessment of the likelihood of significant harm being done to the offended community as a result, and not by threats from the offended community to do harm toothers (authors, editors, television executives) if the piece is not removed. The point is to prevent intimidation, not to yield to it.

If our goal is to achieve a multi-cultural society that is both free and peaceful, then what we need is not the multiplication of taboos but the expansion of tolerance. The belief in the value of tolerance is not like a belief in Jesus Christ, the prophet Muhammad, Ahura Mazda or, for that matter, the scientific wisdom of Darwin; it's the belief that alone makes it possible for all other beliefs to coexist.

BY Timothy Garton Ash

[Source: Guardian]

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