Everything old is new again. I was chatting with a female friend of mine about the ‘Me Too’ movement, and I said ‘I think it’s becoming a movement about censorship.’ “Oh yes,” she said, nodding -- ‘it’s the Cavaliers vs the Roundheads all over again.”
I had to go Wikipedia and look up Cavaliers and Roundheads. It turns out that the Roundheads were the Puritan faction that tossed out King Charles I and the Royalist Cavaliers in 1649, and established The Commonwealth of England.
Those also closed down the theatres.
And that’s kind of what’s happening now.
The National Post tells us that comedy clubs are starting to post signs that say that ‘sexism racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, body shaming’ will not not be tolerated on their stages.
So what’s left that’s funny?
But seriously folks, I don’t mean to suggest that racist or homophobic or sexist comedy is the only comedy that’s funny. What I do mean to suggest is that the concerns of ‘social justice warriors,’ and the ‘Me Too’ movement -- as valid as they may be in the social sphere -- are starting to worm their way into the arts.
And art is not the same as social justice.
Because art is not real.
Shakespeare told us (sort of) that artists are all lovers and madman. The fact that Louis C.K. may be an asshole in real life does not make it right for you to limit distribution of his gorgeous, classic, Chekhovian TV shows. And yet this is the kind of thing people are talking about. I went to a queer conference a while back and somebody called for banning drag queens on the basis that their humour is ‘cruel.’ You’re damn right it’s cruel. I don’t know how to tell you this, but cruel is funny. In the wake of the public excoriation of Albert Schultz, Eva-Lynn Jagoe suggested in the Globe and Mail that we should reconsider the worth of Edward Albee’s Pulitzer prize winning play The Goat because ‘we have less sympathy for the man who has transgressive desires.’
Wow.
I guess we’d better start banning work about ‘transgressive’ sexual desire.
It’s time to get rid of Nabokov, and Joyce, and while you’re at it, Shakespeare.
Yes folks, Puritanism is back; only it’s wearing a disguise. Don’t be fooled.
You may be against sexism, racism and homophobia, but that doesn’t mean you have to be against art.
Oh well. The Puritans didn’t rule England for long because they bored everyone to death.
Let’s hope the Puritan season lasts no longer here.