I have so far refrained from saying anything about the Charlie Hebdo murders. For starers, I don’t like bandwagons and don’t feel a strong urge to restate the obvious. Naturally, we abhor this kind of violence and stand in solidarity with any creator, who at this moment is considering his/her own position on controversial free expression in the wake of this attack. At the same time, I cannot claim to have had any previous knowledge of the work of these cartoonists and commentators and so cannot honestly claim to be Charlie when I don’t even know Charlie.
The free-speech-a-thon was to be expected. This is the age of the meme, and nothing is easier, or quite possibly less relevant, than changing one’s profile photo and/or sharing an image that affirms one’s position at a moment of crisis, tragedy, or conflict. Of course, the contrasts between that which goes viral and that which is overlooked is always an interesting subject in this regard. A man in Saudi Arabia named Raif Badawi was sentenced to ten years and a thousand lashes for starting a blog that discussed politics and religion. And though this story is actually a more acute example of the right of free expression being repressed, we haven’t seen any memes declaring I am Raif.
I assume the Charlie Hebdo attack scares us more than stories like Badawi’s or journalists jailed or killed in dangerous and radicalized parts of the world. Because all these cartoonists did was go to work in a major European city, where the right of free speech already exists; and then violent thugs silenced them in a brutal and terrifying manner. That will give anyone who writes or creates anything, even in a free and relatively safe society, a moment’s pause. On that subject, this interview by Celia Farber of American ex-pat cartoonist Robert Crumb is worth a read. As one of America’s most unabashed cartoonists, and a resident of France for over 20 years, Crumb found himself in a situation that demanded he say something. So, clicking like and share and all that is fine, but what if you are the cartoonist everyone is turning to for an illustrated response, and you’re now considering your own safety?
I’ve read a number of stories drawing distinctions between Charlie Hebdo’s editors as martyrs to free speech and the content of their speech, which has been described by some as racist, jingoistic, phobic, and offensively facile without satirical value. As I say, I don’t know Charlie, and I have to wonder how many of my fellow Americans who say they are Charlie know him either, but assuming some of these criticisms of the work are valid, I have to ask this: If some nut had gunned down Fred Phelps, would we have bothered to create a meme in his name proclaiming his right to free speech? Probably not. But the truth is that’s when standing by speech really counts — when it offends you. And to our credit, nobody did shoot Phelps, though he could not have been asking for it much more effectively.
One of the more interesting pieces I have read questioning the value of the content of Charlie Hebdo is by Arthur Chu, writing for The Daily Beast, who describes their work as exemplary of “chan culture.” By this, he’s referring to the kind of sophomoric, scatalogical humor one finds on sites like 4Chan. Chu writes:
“When the only thing you’re reverent of is irreverence, when the only thing you hold sacred is the idea that nothing is sacred, well, you eventually get chan culture, you get one long continuous blast of pure offensiveness and taboo-breaking for taboo-breaking’s sake until all taboos are broken and there’s nothing left to say.”
Chu, as does everyone who has written from his perspective, goes to great effort to make clear that he would never suggest these cartoonists brought violence upon themselves; and it is indicative of our reactionary, meme-based times that he must tread so carefully to make that clear. But his central point is worth consideration. In this fleeting (and everything on social media is fleeting) canonization of these cartoonists, do we elevate the work to something it never was? Quoting Chu again:
“. . . the Internet is already busy at work deifying Charlie Hebdo as the new Satanic Verses and Charb as the new Salman Rushdie. People are changing their profile photos to crude, racist caricatures of Middle Easterners in solidarity with the principle of “free speech” and the average person’s Twitter feed is one-half gleefully “irreverent” reposts of offensive cartoons and one-half cloyingly reverent tributes to said cartoons.”
Like I say, I don’t know Charlie. I do know that Chu is right in principle — that merely being shocking for the sake of being shocking is easy and is not necessarily socially relevant satire. I don’t personally believe any icon or idea is beyond ridicule, but that doesn’t mean I cannot make a distinction between social commentary and offending just to be offensive. It also doesn’t mean I would necessarily have Crumb’s courage to draw what he calls “The Hairy Ass of Muhammed” in a new cartoon and wonder whether or not I had instigated my own personal fatwa.
To be honest, the Charlie Hebdo story and the editorials it has spawned serve principally to remind me that speech is dangerous, complicated business and always has been. Perhaps in our globalized, networked, interconnected utopia, speech is becoming more dangerous in places we have long considered safe — like a movie theater running a basically dumb comedy making fun of a dictator. Regardless, it is the seriousness of speech that forms the basis of my own scorn at the pampered, corporate elite who presume to tell us that the right of free expression not only depends on their gadgets now, but worse, that even those who risk their lives to speak don’t deserve to own their words.
