Two sides of a coin

The President went on record yesterday as saying that a major motion picture company erred in pulling a movie due to some well-publicized threats made in reaction to its content. The movie (I have not seen it) is apparently a satire in which the central character is assigned to murder the dictator of a foreign power under the guise of conducting an interview. Ever since the trailer hit the airwaves there have been reports of threats, theoretically originating with elements aligned with the dictator against theatres that show the film. Apparently, plausible terroristic threats.

Okay, so that’s the setup.

I admit to some disappointment that the film was pulled and for the very reasons Mr. Obama has identified – we shouldn’t accept this new way of doing business in which our free speech is held captive by the despotic leader of a broken-down country or for that matter, by any whack job with an e-mail account. I get it. This is indeed a very dangerous precedent.

Having said that, we also need to recognize the nature of our duty as citizens of a society in which freedom of speech is held so dear. Free speech only works in an atmosphere of appropriate self-restraint. And with this in mind, I feel the movie should never have been made in the first place. And I don’t say that lightly.

It seems these days that anything can be presented to an audience so long as it is billed as comedy. That’s why we have TV shows and movies that focus on the scatological, the rude, the offensive-as-you-wanna-be-so-long-as-some-yahoo-will-laugh genre.   Think of the most disgusting, offensive, inappropriate, dangerous, downright wrong activity in which human beings engage. Enter it into your favorite search engine and I guarantee someone has not only done the awful thing but has thought it sufficiently clever that they’ve posted it to the net for all to see.

Feel free to be outraged but please do not blame this rising sea of crapola on freedom of speech. Blame it on lack of restraint. And lack of restraint I would argue is the monster in the closet here.

If we are to maintain a free society, we cannot forsake freedom of speech. But we place even that precious principle in jeopardy when we offer the censorship-prone amongst us examples of speech that should never have been uttered. Make no mistake about this: those self-appointed guardians who today want to deny gays the same rights as the rest of us, who don’t believe basic health care for all is the province of the government, and who really believe there’s nothing fishy in a white cop firing twelve shots at an unarmed black teenager will next be telling us what we are allowed to say.

This movie company’s cowardice in pulling this movie will come back to bite us all. But more than that, it was the production of this ill-advised film in the first place that really chaps my hide. Because censorship versus free speech is a foundational argument in this society and this is a ridiculous matter concerning which to frame the discussion. Look, I know writers have a duty to put the ideas out there and even to crowd the edge of the envelope. But at how many levels did theoretically savvy people fail to see that this one was a dumb idea? What idiot green-lighted this disaster? How many individuals ignored the emperor’s exposed backside in preference for going along with the giggling, back-slapping groupthink that produced this mess?

Yes, the ‘leader’ in question is a bullying, rampaging, horrid clown and the world would be better off if he was not in control of a country chock full of toadies with weapons. But really – a comedy about assassinating the jerk? How did you think  he would react? And what sociologically important message conveyed by this film overrode caution?

Damn…

The word is restraint, folks. And for our friends in the movie business – the word has a more important meaning than to describe the leather straps used in slasher movies.

 

Side note: Mary and I just saw The Theory of Everything and it was fantastic! Surely one of the most lovely and complex love stories I’ve seen in a long, long time. Spoiler alert: Don’t go expecting a long-winded explication of Hawking’s scientific achievements. This is a story about two people finding their way, each and together. As I said, lovely. And neither gunplay nor nudity – imagine that! There are some brilliant people still in the industry. Second spoiler alert: The scene with the blackboard - magic!