What’s Wrong with Offending People?
It’s started - the usual moral outrage about something at the Edinburgh Fringe, and it doesn’t officially open till the weekend!
There is an e-petition on the 10 Downing Street website, calling upon the Prime Minister to “condemn this tasteless portrayal of terrorism and its victims” in the form of the show Jihad the Musical. Quite how the mover of the petition knows that it is tasteless is not clear but the show’s producers have been quick to defend themselves: “We have no intention of causing offence or insult with this show,” said producer James Lawler.
Why not? The only way to avoid giving offence to someone is to produce theatre that is so bland that it says nothing - but you’ll then offend others - especially me! - by making theatre boring.
As Nick Hytner said some months ago - no one has the right not to be offended.
But the searching for offence brigade find rich pickings at the Fringe. One show, Prodigal Daughter at C Chambers Street, has fallen foul of the censor morons, as D H Laurence called them, because of its poster. Shockingly the poster shows a cartoonish pencil drawing of a naked woman (coloured a rather unbecoming and very unnatural pink)! I’ve seen it and was horrified to realise that you can actually see a small scribble which represents pubic hair! I mean, I didn’t realise such things existed!
And who is protesting? Well, director Asa Gim Palomera says some of the shops have refused to take the poster but the main ban has come from - wait for it! - C Chambers Street. That’s right: the venue at which the play is being performed.
They do children’s shows, you see, so they think the poster is “inappropriate”. I’ve spent many an hour in C and I can tell you that their walls are so plastered with posters that you have to really focus to make one out from another - and I’ve never seen any children looking at them: they’re far to busy doing childreny things.
If the Edinburgh Fringe is to have any value, it has to have artistic freedom at its heart, and that means in its advertising materials as well as its performances. OK, any advertising much comply with the law, I understand that, but when a central part of the Fringe starts setting itself up as a guardian of morality, that’s a political correction too far!