My first reaction to Aaja Nachle being banned because of offensive lyrics was an eyeroll . Because censorship is bad, but we're all so used to it that it's hard to work up righteous anger when I'm writing against it. But people who come here regularly know where I stand on this (link, if you're new) so this post really isn't about free speech and censorship. What it is about is my increasing discomfort with the accounts of the banning that I'd read, and until today I wasn't sure why this was. But then my friend (and possibly soon-to-be-flatmate) SupriyaWhoHoldsMyHeart posted this, and I think I've partly figured it out.
See, what bothers me is that if someone had written down the lyrics of that song and given them to me to read, I would never have known they could possibly be offensive. Nor would most of the people writing indignant articles and blog posts about freedom of expression. Because I (we, I suspect) get to go through life not having casteism thrust upon us - I can be reasonably sure that I will never be looked down upon, treated as inferior or held in contempt based on my class or caste (I might meet with resentment I suppose, but that's another area entirely). I can afford to be ignorant of what is offensive within a caste based system in ways that people who are constantly having their 'inferior' status within that system thrust upon them (in various ways, some more subtle than others) cannot. [Remember during the reservation debates when upper class students honestly declared that the caste system was irrelevant because they had never felt its presence? Yeah]. In fact, the whole thing reminds me rather of this incident, discussed at PunkAssBlog, where someone did something stupid and racist without knowing it was stupid and racist because, yes, he was in a position not to know. Ignorance is a privelege. (As an aside, I'm amazed anyone living in the US could not get the noose thing. I'm in India, and even I know this much.)
And so when posts like this one try to figure out what's wrong with the lyrics in question and decide that hey, they're not really that offensive, it really annoys me. Because do people who are unlikely to face racism or casteism really get to sit there and tell the people who are affected by it what they do and do not have a right to be offended by, what is racist enough to be important and what isn't? And I've seen this happen on this blog and on other blogs where gender is concerned as well (I'm sure it happens just as much with race and class and the like, gender is just a greater proportion of what I read) - where people are constantly coming in and telling one that something isn't really a big deal, that we're making too much of something, allowing ourselves to be too affected by something that is really trivial, and I've even seen this come from men who are generally lovely people and who identify with feminist positions on 'larger' issues. As Sups said, "all these enormously clever, influential people don't seem to understand that racism isn't what a dominant class decides it is. "
And like her, I wonder what would have happened if no one had banned this movie. If the studio, had it received a polite letter, would have apologised and removed the lines, maybe even done so publicly. If those of us who get to ignore casteism usually would ever have found out those lines could be offensive. I doubt it.
But banning movies? Still bad.
8 comments:
Agree with the last sentence. Whether or not the lyrics are offensive is, frankly, irrelevant.
This is how a society inches towards the dystopic world of Fahrenheit 451. Is that worth the risk of giving everyone the benefit of the doubt when it comes to racial offense? Think about it.
Yes, Aishwarya, what's privilege for if not to be put to use in conferring the benefit of the doubt on the truly deserving?
Falstaff - ...but not with the rest of the post? The offensiveness of the lyrics is irrelevant to the question of banning, I agree, but like I said, the post wasn't really about that.
Dragonfly - Eh? I did begin and end the post by saying I was against censorship, you know.
Ros - Heh. Indeed.
aishwarya: I guess I'm not sure what the point of the rest of the post is if it's not in the context of censorship. Yes, people have the 'right' to be offended by whatever they choose; their being offended is just a fact - it neither need nor can be justified. I certainly can't stop them from being offended and I don't know that I want to. As long as that doesn't translate into censorship I don't know what there is to discuss.
But I thought I'd made it clear that this wasn't about censorship when I said so this post really isn't about free speech and censorship at the end of the first paragraph?
As I said, it was more of a discussion of the people who were attempting to invalidate Dalits' right to be upset. Obviously one can't stop people from being offended (or, indeed, stop those who are offended that they're offended from being ofended), but trying to understand what offended them, what prevented people outside the community from understanding this, what combination of circumstances made it possible for these potentially offensive lyrics to be in the song in the first place (since I'm sure neither of us believes they were consciously put in to further a sinister casteist agenda), these are all valid topics of discussion that need not necessarily have anything to do with a discussion on censorship.
Why is it that whenever I reply to you I automatically become twice as longwinded? :)
Aishwarya: Three things.
a) Notice that understanding why someone feels or acts in a certain way doesn't preclude thinking that they're being silly.
b) While you're not posting about free speech and censorship, the people you're criticizing are - so it's a little unfair to take what they're saying out of that context. Put another way, one could make an identical argument in defense of those who dismiss the offensiveness claim - when you live in a country where free speech is constantly threatened, you tend to overreact to anything that seems to attack it, etc. etc.
c) I'm with you in being annoyed by people who say "Oh, that's not offensive". But I find that annoying simply because (as long as state censorship isn't involved) their opinion on whether the lyrics are offensive or not is irrelevant. Even if those who are offended are being intensely silly they're entitled to their silliness. How you respond to someone else being offended shouldn't depend on whether you understand or agree with them.
So to me, the problem with the dismissers isn't, as you suggest, that they're being insensitive and not trying to understand the sentiments of those offended (who, frankly, probably are a bunch of idiots) but that they're assuming that their assessment of offensiveness matters.
a) Agreed. But it might help.
b) If you support free speech, you support free speech. If you need to make the particular speech whose freedom you're supporting appear harmless as part of your argument, you're actually more likely to harm your cause anyway, aren't you?
c) I'd dismiss it as a mere annoyance myself, if it weren't for the fact that most of the people who get heard in in our media are from classes completely removed from the context in which those lyrics might be seen as offensive. And usually so are the people who make the movies, write the lyrics, and so on. And their assessment of offensiveness ends up mattering because other people's assessments of it often don't get heard.
Post a Comment