Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On

One of the turning-points in the Viet Nam war was Associated Press photographer Nick Ut’s iconic black-and-white picture of nine-year-old Kim Phuc running away from a bombed-out village. What made the image more powerful was Kim’s shocking nakedness, the result of having her clothes burned off by South Vietnamese napalm-bomb-dropping aeroplanes.

Children in conflict zones usually trigger strong emotions in us. Whether we have offspring of our own or not, we feel a degree of sympathy towards those who are usually unfortunate victims of war. Last summer the world gasped in unison as the body of Syrian Aylan Kurdi was found on a Turkish beach. All of a sudden the refugee crisis felt more real. This child could have been ours. Lying face down, the calmness of the sea betraying the tragedy-punctuated moment, Aylan became a symbol in the never-ending Syrian saga and the refugee crisis at large.

The ensuing outcry and condemnation of both Assad’s strong-man domestic policy and Europe’s intransigence in the face of humanitarian crisis might come in handy in order to explain the reaction to one of satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo’s recent cartoons.

The drawing depicted Aylan Kurdi as an adult (had he survived) chasing two women. The image was the answer to a question in French: “What would little Alan have grown up to be?” Anyone familiar with the events of New Year in Germany and other European cities will have made the connection.

Two issues arise from Charlie Hebdo’s blunt – and some might say, insensitive – approach. The magazine was targeted by extremists a year ago. Members of its staff were killed in cold blood. Rather than toning its content down it has since then stepped it up one or two notches. The other issue is that in using a now deeply-embedded, much-loved and sympathised-with image like the Aylan Kurdi, the publication has drawn criticism from those who stood up for it twelve months ago.

There are people who have quite rightly said that the magazine’s assumption that little Aylan would have inevitably grown up to become a brute plays into the hands of the far-right. There are others who see the cartoon as a self-mocking exercise, rather than targeting Aylan, it is aiming its barrel at us. One minute we feel sorry for a toddler washed up on the beach, the next we are asking refugees to part with their belongings before they come in.

I say that the latter approach is a tad risky. You need subtlety to pull off a trick like that and in my opinion the drawing lacks it. Had Aylan-the-groper been painted inside a speech bubble with a small arrow pointing at a bigot, then the message would have been less murky.

Could the same have happened to Kim Phuc? I doubt it. I cannot imagine a cartoon depicting nine-year-old Kim as a prostitute in adulthood or similar. It could be that 1972, when the photo was taken, was a time when news lacked the immediacy it has now. Perhaps there was less cruelty, even in satirical publications.

I admit to not finding much to laugh about in the current refugee crisis. It could be then that Charlie Hebdo’s attempt to provide a light-hearted touch to the debate should be welcome. The danger is that instead of sending up ignorant bigots, it is giving them a soap box.

When it comes to freedom of speech, I am usually on the side of those who defend it at all costs. But (important “but”), sometimes I would rather we, adults, exercised caution more and focused on the long-term vision instead of the short-term gain. Are a few extra laughs worth someone else’s tears for the next decades?

It is not an easy question to answer and it is ultimately down to the individual to address. But it would be less complicated if sometimes, only sometimes, you just put a speech bubble with a small arrow pointing at a bigot.



© 2016

Next Post: “Urban Diary”, to be published on Wednesday 3^rd February at 6pm (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

On 31^st May 2009, George Tiller, a so-called “late term” abortion doctor, was murdered in the lobby of the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas. As far as I know Dr Tiller had never drawn a cartoon in his life.

On Tuesday 9^th October 2012, 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban in Pakistan for campaigning for the right of young girls and women to an education. Again, I am not aware that Malala had ever dabbled in the art of comic illustrations.

In 2011, Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian right-wing extremist, killed 76 people in Utøya and Oslo. None of his victims, as far as I can tell, were famous for caricaturing images thought to be sacred.

Whatever the staff at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo did, whoever they apparently provoked, whomever they targeted, one thing is clear to me: the cartoons they drew had nothing to do with the massacre that took place in their offices two weeks ago.

French police officer Ahmed Merabet’s blood had still not dried up on the pavement where he was gunned down by the two terrorists when the first analyses on this atrocity began pouring in. I have to admit that even a seasoned cynic like me found it hard to stomach how quick some “pundits” were in pointing the finger at the staff at Charlie Hebdo. They had it coming, seemed to be their (not so subtle) argument. If only they had been more sensitive. If only they had been more thoughtful. If only they had been more mature.

If only...

I have another “if only”. If only we did not live in a patriarchy. Read the examples above again. I highlighted the fact that none of those wounded or murdered at the hands of extremists was a cartoonist or illustrator on purpose. To me, the cold-blooded killing at Charlie Hebdo had very little to do with the depiction of an important religious figure and more to do with what has underpinned society for many centuries. What has ruled governments, controlled economies and shaped mindsets since the breakdown of the primitive communal system: patriarchy.

Charb, murdered by fundamentalists or by the patriarchy?

That we live in a patriarchal socio-economic political system should surprise no one. Even in countries where the prime minister or president is a woman, you can bet your bottom dollar that at times she has had to behave in a "manly" way. If only to reassure those who voted her into power that they are safe in her – feminine – hands.

Unlike previous forms of patriarchy our modern version does not require authority and power to be bequeathed down the male line. Nor do we need a blood-based, direct line of descent. The myriad structures we have created and that support the state take care of that. Banking, the law, finance, politics, religion, media, even education and the arts. They are mostly male-dominated and male-orientated. The result of this is a suffocating male atmosphere in which most conflicts are resolved our way, men’s way.

This is how we get to Charlie Hebdo. This is how two men, two murderers, use a religion to avenge what they think has been blasphemed. Dialogue is out of the question, let alone tolerance or acceptance that in a free, democratic society we are entitled to speak our minds. No, speaking is for “softies”. They’ll gun you down, they will make you pay. They will pose with their AK47s and show the entire world the tough men they claim to be. They might even kill a member of their own religion in the process. What idiots they are! But the world belongs to them and has belonged to them for centuries.

Some of the “pundits” I mentioned before described the recent events in France as a clash of civilisations. That comment to me was too simplistic and unhelpful. Especially because it rehashes the same old canard that Islam is a primitive religion at odds with fair, democratic Europe. To me the real clash is between the kind of society in which we live now, testosterone-fuelled, and the type of polity some of us would like to achieve in the distant future: caring, respectful and humane. What we see now more often than not is acts of aggression based on impulse. You bombed me, I’ll bomb you back. You kill some of my people, I’ll send the fighter jets over. You have politics with which I strongly disagree. I will kill two-thousand villagers. You draw a cartoon of my prophet, I’ll murder you. No moment to consider that the person you are about to shoot is a speccy, geeky guy whose only offensive “weapon” is a pencil. Or maybe that’s the reason why you want to bump him off, because he reminds you of your own humanity. He has a sense of humour and reminds you that you also have one. Who knows? Perhaps deep inside even you, pious fundamentalist, also find Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons funny.

I know that some of you will think that I have gone too far in this post. You will probably think that I have ignored the deprivation that engulfs certain communities in Europe and beyond and how this situation can and does generate resentment against the status quo. Resentment that can well be used by unscrupulous, cold-blooded assassins. I know, I agree with those points. Furthermore, men are perfectly capable of displaying the traits I mentioned before such as acceptance and dialogue. Yet, we – I include myself amongst those men – are in the minority. And like it or not, we all have to fit in somehow, so we might end up doing things that contradict our true nature. That is why my point remains the same. By carrying on with the same, male-run model, we are walking further away from a future in which conversation, negotiation, understanding, feelings (expressing and accepting them) and compromise become the norm. These are not female attributes, but human ones.

What happened on 7/1 in Paris was an attack on freedom of speech. There should be no doubt about that. Moreover, Stéphane Charbonnier and the other sixteen victims were killed by weapons. They were murdered by two fundamentalists who acted – wrongly – in the name of a religion. Above all, what happened more than two weeks ago in France was an assault on our human values. Human values that have sadly found less space in our patriarchal societies in recent times. One solution is to break the cycle. If only to stop future Charlie Hebdos.



© 2015

Next Post: “Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts”, to be published on Wednesday 28^th January at 11:59pm (GMT)