Salty Current has a post explaining the nature of Charlie Hebdo’s satire.
In 2011, I recommended a documentary about the paper and their struggles surrounding the publication of anti-Islamist cartoons. What struck me in the film, surprising given the paper’s (often self-promoted) image as not just irreverent but irresponsible, was how thoughtfully the people at Charlie Hebdo approached humor in this case.
Guess what, they didn’t approach it the way, say, Ricky Gervais does, basically saying that (as Salty puts it) “humor should offend.”
The attitude of the editors at Charlie Hebdo, as shown in the film, was quite different.
They recognized the potential for harm to innocent people and went to great lengths to avoid, as far as possible, provoking racist sentiment, trying to ensure that the humor itself was clearly targeted at Islamists and wouldn’t be seen as a characterization of Muslims generally. Rather than using an appeal to free speech as a blanket justification for any statements, they acted to defend everyone’s right to publish – without much support from the government or the rest of the French media – while remaining thoughtful about what they did say. Their publication of these satirical cartoons, they emphasized, formed part of a history of satirizing numerous religions and political tendencies.
The people at Charlie Hebdo have been courageous, refusing to shrink from sharply mocking even the most humorless and violent. But it would be a disservice to present them as heedless provocateurs or martyrs of a freedom of speech devoid of all content and ethical responsibility, or to react to this attack in a careless and stupid manner. As portrayed in the documentary, they represent an approach to humor that is as thoughtful and responsible as it is raucous and hard-hitting. That, I believe, should guide the response to this vicious attack.
I’ll have to see that documentary.
I have never read Charlie Hebdo, so when the topic came up, I went and read both sides of the argument in France, dating from 2013. A lot of it was not very substantive. It boils down to two main points:
1) They wanted to mock Islam, the religion, not Muslims the people, but they were cartoonists, or at any rate, it’s the cartoons which are the main problematic area. They had to express their ideas through drawings, consequently their method involved using people, stereotyped Muslim people (Muhammad, imams, veiled women), as symbols of the religious ideas they wanted to attack. And they showed them doing unpleasant things as pictorial equivalents for the concepts they wanted to criticize. Of course, they had to use the same technique for anyone else they wanted to mock – that is how satirical cartooning works. Without these techniques, Islam may well be immune to satire in cartoon form. So acceptable or not?
2) They reproduced some of the most ugly racist stereotypes of black people in their drawings, clearly as a mockery or attack on those racist ideas. We could describe it as a method of showing in a drawing what the racist thinks, but at the same time, it circulates those memes in society far more effectively than most racists would now dare to do. Acceptable or not?
Agree with SC. There was a bit of that “racist” fly-swatting on twitter yesterday, presumably without much knowledge of the background of the magazine and the general tenor of their cartoons.
The part I left out of that post, but mentioned here, was that they argued that blaspheming Islam was an inclusive gesture. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but it seemed more than a legal strategy: for the lovers of humor, making jokes about the sacred phenomena of Islam meant including Muslims/Islam in the community of the mockable.
I so hope that Sundance can and does reshow it or that the makers can put it on YouTube or something.
Do you want to put it together for a guest post here? A lot of people are misunderstanding this…
I suppose any satire, from Swift to Colbert, could be presented like this, but it doesn’t seem useful, especially when there is evidence (including from the film) beyond what “we” could conceivably conjecture that bears on the intent.
What I don’t get, aside from some of the humor,* is how this intricate, decontextualized discussion of their jokes – which implicitly or explicitly acknowledges their commitment to inclusive blasphemy and opposition to racism – is supposed to bear on the matter.
*But then, I’m not French.**
**But then, the French seemed to get The Double Life of Veronique, so I just don’t know.
Hm. Thank you for asking. I’m not sure what I could add beyond what I’ve already said. And as I said in the other comment thread I don’t have the most up-to-date information (though I’m pretty confident I have the gist right) and no commitment to beatifying anyone. I wish I still had the movie recorded, but a technical glitch erased it.
I think I do understand people’s motives: no one on the Left wants to be seen as supporting the racist Right, especially if it would embolden the reaction; people have been burned before and don’t want to proclaim their solidarity with those who turn out not to have shared our values; and people want to avoid a culture of unquestioningly putting others on a pedestal because they have some of the same enemies.
But it seems to me it’s been taken far too far: we all have to decide where our solidarity boundaries lie, but there can’t be a perfection requirement; and we should take care to be as fair and accurate as possible in our understanding and presentation of these victims and their choices. Especially because they can’t defend themselves.
I’m fairly confident in saying that, regardless of any clumsiness or tactical choices, these people stood bravely both for the right to blaspheme and against racist marginalization. I’m open to contrary evidence, but it would only be added to the pile.
They are kinda sexist, though. Here’s a sampler, to facilitate teal deers.
Also, some of the defenses of Charlie Hebdo invoke an odd dualism, which assumes all observers are perfectly objective and would not be subconsciously influenced by offensive humour. It’s an odd attitude for a skeptic to take, and probably false if the research on disparagement humour is any indication. See also: hipster sexism.
Not exactly this. They wanted to mock fundamentalism in all guises, including Muslim fundamentalism. They took great care not to mock Islam the religion.
This is a tough one. I don’t think you can legitimately make the claim that Charlie Hebdo was a racist publication, but to say as a blanket statement that it was not racist, full stop? That seems extremely unlikely, given what we know about the pervasiveness of racism*.
Sure, but that implies there isn’t a racist Left. Charlie Hebdo’s intent with the particular cartoons that are appearing as examples, while important and significant, isn’t any more magic than anyone else’s. There are several people I know, who are members of one or another of the racial minorities that are associated with the ideas that Charlie Hebdo was targeting, who do feel that the impact of some of these cartoons is racist. (I also know a few people who are clearly over-compensating because I know they do not know enough about not being white or the French cultural context to make a decent judgment on whether any of the cartoons are racist.)
Ultimately, I don’t think it’s useful at this point to either make the claim that Charlie Hebdo was a racist publication or that it wasn’t racist at all. I think both are pretty clearly false. I do think it’s important to remember and celebrate and perpetuate what the victims stood for, even when their execution was flawed.
*And sexism, which I think is a big problem with some of the cartoons I’ve seen, and not in the surface ways that I’ve seen mentioned, but that’s not really relevant to anything important right now. But holy shit, have I seen some terrible apologism about how much more free thinking are the French and so obvious sexism is clearly not sexist.
Yes. He was. I’m appalled to see that racism, transphobia and misogyny defended.
No wonder she left this community.
I didn’t write that title, but honestly if this is how people are going to be arguing, I don’t think a real discussion can be had. People haven’t been making general statements like “No one’s immune from racism.” They’ve been arguing for the past day or so that CH is a racist publication, using a couple of cartoons as alleged illustrations. The clear implication is that they are espousing racist ideas in the manner of Minute and other racist publications, using racist tropes and dog whistles for humor not caring about who’s hurt, or at the very least disregarding whether their content promotes racism. People are just flinging these claims out there and then failing even to acknowledge when the images’ context and intent are revealed to them.
The idea that racism is pervasive and so therefore they’re racist like everyone is just vacuous here. References to people you know who found certain (uncited) images racist are a problem. As was discussed on the other thread, many people are taking the images at face value, without knowing, in one case, that an image was explicitly targeted at a racist rightwing publication. People are interpreting the cartoons and speculating about their effects without knowing relevant facts about their targets, the contemporary political context, the historical context, CH’s history, the local history of visual humor, or their public reputation (the fact that they openly consider themselves to be and present themselves as an antiracist publication doesn’t, of course, mean that they’re purified of any racism, but it’s certainly relevant to the assessment of both racist intent and the local reception of the images).
No, it doesn’t. I’m trying to understand why people are seizing on a couple of putative examples as evidence of CH’s racism, ignoring their intent and the context of the images’ production and reception to cling to weak arguments about possible splash damage and so on. Why people are allowing others to declare that it’s a racist publication and “Je ne suis pas Charlie” and the like while demanding that anyone challenging these claims prove that CH is entirely free of any trace of racism, even unintentional, or let the claims stand. I find this morally and intellectually irresponsible, and I’m trying to understand the reasons people might be doing it. One motivation that I’ve experienced is that we recognize the danger of millions of people being seen as allied with and encouraging the FN and other violent far-Right European parties, so we want to make sure that isn’t the message we’re sending by showing solidarity with CH. But vetting CH shouldn’t mean demanding perfection, or failing to appreciate the complexities and pitfalls of political humor in this context. We’re far from perfect ourselves.
Magic and highly relevant are not the same thing.
I see it as wise and basic fairness to people who were just massacred to try to understand the situation as well as possible before forming judgments.
Ultimately, I think that’s an empty comment. It suggests that there is no definition of racist or possibility of intelligent investigation of the evidence to come to any even tentative conclusion. It fails to remember or perpetuate what they stood for, or even to show any real concern with finding out what they stood for.
***
This thread is about racism. You haven’t seen racism defended here. You’ve seen people who are trying to form a fair and informed impression of other imperfect human beings.
What on earth?
People are just posting their impressions based on nothing but “from what I can gather” to make serious claims about the nature of this publication. I’m very angry about this.
Here’s a comment that might be of interest:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/08/making-excuses-for-violence-while-demonizing-those-who-question-violence/comment-page-1/#comment-899719
Salty @ 6 – yes but a post is seen by more than a comment or a bunch of comments is, plus there’s good info spread over several comments. But I guess I can just put together a collection guest post myself.
Salty Current: thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thoughts about satire could go many ways (not just two sides (like punching up versus down (and other topics))). You’re saying the editors at Charlie Hebdo had a coherent approach to navigate the complexity. I would love to see the documentary to better understand their point of view.
And thank you for writing another guest post expanding on your comment #3 here about inclusion: