Forbidden Art

Today I was shocked to read that Russia has fined and convicted a couple of artists for "inciting hatred". Their crime was merely to put on an exhibit featuring some controversial artworks, portraying images of Jesus Christ that some people might have found offensive. At this point I feel that I should point out that I have not personally seen the exhibits themselves, but neither did 131 of the 134 of the prosecution witnesses, who seemed perfectly happy to testify against them.

So, it seems that Russia can't shake off the specter of censorship, so prevalent in Soviet days. It is a tragedy that the country does not seem to believe in the basic human right to freedom of expression. One would hope that Oleg Kassin, of the rather ominously named Council of the People (the group that brought the complaint against the artists), was not indicative of the government when saying

"If you like expressing yourself freely, do it at home, invite some close friends".

Presumably, not everybody "likes expressing" themselves "freely", then, and that this is a dangerous lifestyle choice? Quite clearly, freedom to express one's opinions should not be limited, or else it isn't "freedom". To tolerate expression in private is only to tolerate free will.

Of course, the condemnation sprang from the fact that the exhibits were seen as "anti-Christian". Once again, we see the religious extremists criticising the use of the free will they believe their creator gave them. It is terrible an organisation is allowed to go completely uncriticised because it describes itself as a religion. There will no doubt be supporters of the ruling here, perhaps invoking a previous shameful ruling against the artists' work as an example of people not respecting their faith. But why should "faith" be the only thing exempt from satire, or critique?

The sensitivity of religious organisations is beyond that of any other, beyond even what is reasonable. Is there any other figure that could be placed in Mickey Mouse ears and so anger a group that they claim it is "inciting hatred"? The idea is quite clearly ludicrous. The marches against Jerry Springer: The Opera showed that certain people struggled with the concept of "freedom of speech" in this country, but the BBC refused to give in to this. That in Russia that expression is a criminal offence is nothing short of scandalous.

Richard Littlejohn is a ...?

Hello all,

Before I start, this is an IMPORTANT NOTICE (capitals and everything). This blog post contains uncensored language which may offend. This post is inspired by this one from Bloggerheads.

In an era in which Frankie Boyle can publish a book called My Shit Life So Far, and have this book prominently displayed, uncensored, in the windows of High Street Booksellers nationwide, it would be reasonable to assume that we, as a society, are no longer shocked by four-letter-language. To my mind, this is no bad thing, since, as George Carlin put it, there are no "bad words", just bad contexts. To assume that it shows a limited vocabulary would be to assume that Shakespeare, a man who introduced over 1000 words into the English language, suffered from a limited vocabulary. However, there is one word that still has the power to shock and offend most people, and it remains problematic because of its association with women.

It has recently been my pleasure to get to know many members of Exeter University's Gender Equality Society, and I asked two of them where they stood on the word "cunt". (Since this was an informal conversation I shan't name them, but they're welcome to comment either on the blog or to me personally if they feel misrepresented.) Both had no qualms about its use descriptively, both expressed a regret that society has deemed its greatest insult to be so associated with women, but one admitted that there were times when no other insult seemed appropriate.

This is the main problem. There are times when you really need to shock, when no other word seems to quite have the power to convey the disgust you feel at something or someone. A brilliant example would be Richard Littlejohn, the Daily Mail columnist whose apparent lack of any shred of human decency would make him a worthy recipient of the title "cunt". His Wikipedia page nicely sums up his failings as a human being, but his most heinous article, undoubtedly one of the nastiest things I have ever read, was this vile piece (and in case you think that that was a one off many years ago, this post was less than two months ago). His inability to see the person behind the label of "prostitute" marks him as a foul, putrid groveling excuse for a human, and a festering genital wart on the carcass of journalism.

Stewart Lee also took offence at Littlejohn, and conveyed this in a very funny section of his live show, but once again, relied on the power of the word "cunt" to convey his anger. Yet, as the top article puts it,

[A]sk yourself who really wins when you call a notorious woman-hater like Richard Littlejohn a 'cunt'.

The replacement suggested by that piece "cloaca", seems a suitable alternative, and has been used at the b3ta.com image challenge on Littlejohn, but will probably remain an in-joke whilst "cunt" stays known and used in society, which is a great shame. I can't say that I shall never label a person as a "cunt", even though I almost never use it as such anyway, because it really is the only word sometimes with enough power. But if you feel differently, please feel free to leave a comment.

UPDATE, 16:39: Something wrong with the previous template prevented commenting on this, or any other post. This should now have been rectified.

Pie in the Sky

Hello all,



A couple of months ago I posted a tweet on my Twitter page (which I'm shamelessly linking to here), saying,

People want to sack Kay Burley. People are laughing at Adam Boulton. Sky - When you BECOME the news, you're doing it wrong.

This immediately became the most re-tweeted tweet I'd ever posted, implying that other people, like me, were also fed up with Sky "News"'s take on events at that time. More than 1000 people complained to Ofcom about the clash involving Boulton above, and a further 1000-odd complained about Kay Burley's shocking "interview" with a protester:

(Though this did lead to this fantastic moment, in which the protesters made their opinions of Sky News very clear).

This kind of "news" coverage (the inverted commas are getting tedious, so I shall stop, but you get the idea) is quite common in America, where pundits like Bill O'Reilly and the monstrous Glenn Beck have made their names by being bullies dressed up as journalists. There is no attempt to dress the news as anything other than propaganda, and as a result, gaining facts is a tricky business. But in this country, mainstream broadcasters must be impartial, and our news is the better for it.

Some important facts must be added at this point, that may or may not have relevance. Sky News is, ultimately, owned by Rupert Murdoch, at that time a prominent supporter of David Cameron and the Conservative Party, who owns many newspapers who proclaimed their support publicly in the run-up to the General Election. He also owns FOX News, the home of O'Reilly, Beck, and many of the most significant right-wing propagandists currently working in America. His son, James Murdoch, is the direct head of News Corp's dealings in Europe, and is non-executive chairman at BSkyB. He is also the main reason for Murdoch Snr's switch from Brown to Cameron. This information might lead us to assume a bias is likely, BUT it does not make it inevitable.

I was disappointed when Ofcom decided to reject the complaints leveled at Sky News. For me, both of these incidents show clear journalistic bias. David Babbs, the director of the movement behind the protest, seems barely able to speak three words before Burley shouts at his pointlessness and tells him to go home and watch it all on Sky News (nice plug, there, Kay). And at what point did anyone vote for a "Hung Parliament"? The only people claiming you could actively vote for a Hung Parliament were the Conservatives, though I would argue this is more an inability to grasp facts rather than a deliberate link. However, it is, whichever way you look at it, shockingly poor journalism.

Boulton's outbreak is less serious than Kay Burley's crimes, if much funnier. It weakens your integrity as a journalist if you are unable to counter arguments with anything other than shouting (rather like John Sweeney getting angry at the Church of Scientology), and so again can only be seen as bad journalism. His constant point-scoring techniques make him sound more like one of the politicians he interviews than an impartial onlooker. Even if we accept that, as an interviewer, he must take the other side of the argument, it is clear from the footage that he is trying to undermine Alastair Campbell's arguments, rather than challenge or highlight them.

If Ofcom are not going to censure such poor journalism and partial broadcasting, there remains only one solution. As the protesters themselves shouted out on Sky television, "Watch the BBC"!

Pride (In The Name Of Love)

Hello all,

This weekend has seen the annual Pride events held in London. As usual (though in reassuringly small numbers), people took to the internet asking why there is no "Straight Pride" event, in a way that reminds me of the time when I asked my mother why there was a Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day, but no Children's Day. Her reply was that that was every other day of the year, and with LGBT rights this certainly is the case.

The LGBT community is, of course, served badly by the media in most of its forms (popular literature, music, film and television etc.), but there is one area that has consistently underrepresented it, and in my opinion will continue to do so: marketing.

Little seems to have changed since this article was written two years ago. Gay men often seem notable by their absence, and women even less so. Why is this? When Maltesers made the original version of this advert, it featured a gay couple, but it was decided that this limited the market to just gay men. On that logic, of course, no-one in the LGBT community would be able to buy anything. This advert features two pregnant women, but it would be incredible to claim that it would limit the market to just pregnant women, so I do not see how this idea holds. I, despite being a heterosexual male, buy Galaxy chocolate, but not Yorkie bars, and I am sure I am far from the exception.

I don't believe that this situation is likely to improve very soon. Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe showed the difficulties that globalisation has introduced to marketing (6:30 into this video), focusing on the casual racism of the industry, but clearly affecting the representation of LGBT people. The medium must be inherently conservative to appeal to the largest number of people, but its prevalence it propagates the society it is trying to reflect.

Of course, I am aware that it is not the advertisers who are homophobic, racist, misogynistic or anything else. If it turned out that they could make more money featuring homosexual couples in their adverts, they'd start today. It's a nasty system, and one can't help sympathise with Bill Hicks in his classic rant on marketing.

To be a spoil-sport, or not?

Hello all,

Today, I find myself in a very peculiar position. For the past five hours or so I have been watching, almost solidly, sport. As a cricket fan, this in itself is not unprecedented, except for the fact that I can't really claim to like either of the sports I have been watching. The England vs Slovenia football match seemed to be an average game from my limited knowledge of the sport, whereas the current Isner/Mahut game of tennis (that, as it is still going, I have no link for, save to say it is the longest game in Wimbledon history) is as exciting as watching a fish swim excitedly back and forth in an aquarium for about three hours.

And yet, I am still watching it, hypnotised. Why? There are plenty of people who hold as little interest in football as me who become even less interested during major events like the World Cup, people whose opinions I respect and admire. Caitlin, a friend of mine (who you can follow on twitter here) recently started a discussion of her Facebook page by claiming:

When it can be front page news when there's actual real things happening that are being ignored, that's wrong.

and it's pretty hard to argue with that. By all rights, I should be blogging about Obama firing General McChrystal or passing comment on the Budget, but these things are not getting discussed in the same way.

The truth is that sport means a lot to a lot of people. I don't even think it would be too controversial to claim that many people value their sporting team or hero above any religion they may or may not have, and it certainly unites people, as seen, it was pointed out, in the film Invictus. An even more powerful example, perhaps, might have been the Christmas Day football match during World War One. I would argue that this gives it a significance that cannot merely be swept under the carpet, and that having a basic idea of events (but not necessarily an in-depth knowledge) is almost as important as having a grasp on other news stories.

The more problematic issue, and I think the one that I think Caitlin was referring to, was the coverage these events receive. Newspapers are always going to appeal to the broadest possible audience with their front pages, but the television coverage is ubiquitous. Now that the Digital Switchover is rolling out, more and more homes have multiple channels, including many with sports-channel packages, yet today, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV1 have devoted a HUGE amount of time towards covering the sport. Who should be expected to move: sports fans, or non-sports fans. Personally I feel that major sporting events, such as an England football match, do have the right to elbow out a repeat of Bargain Hunt, but since the coverage of the World Cup has put all games played on one of the major television networks (BBC1 or ITV1), which, to my mind, is excessive. However, it is something that I am willing to put up with. Provided it does not interfere with Doctor Who.

Yes, major sport stars are overpaid, their skills vastly overvalued by a society that considers celebrity the ideal (and those two worlds collided in this spectacular non-story). They provide easy hate-figures in a world too full of real villains. But to celebrate one's ignorance of anything, be it sport, politics, or even engineering, is never, to my mind, the right way to go.