Oh For Fuck's Sake

[andrewducker]

Families who lost relatives in the 2005 London bomb attacks are appealing to cinemas not to show a British comedy about four aspiring suicide bombers.
...
Graham Foulkes, who also lost his son in the bombings, said he and other relatives were appealing to cinemas not to show the British-funded film.

He acknowledged that humour had a part when it came to examining serious issues but said for his family, and others like them, the tragedy was still too raw.

Nobody is forcing him to go and see it, and he agrees that humour is a valid approach, but his answer is still to try to get cinemas to boycott it.

*headdesk*

From

Comments

[cybik.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I read an article in which it said that Chris Morris had talked to several of the people injured in the 7/7 bombings about it and had their approval.

[andrewducker]

I'm sure that some of them are fine with it, and some of them are not.

It's already premiered in Bradford, without any problems at all.

It frustrates me that people want things banned because they don't approve of them. To me, the correct response is to not go, and publish a "I'm not going and I wish you wouldn't, and here's why."

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. But many people think that if they don't like something it should be banned so as not to offend /them/ and think that because they are offended, so will other people. Which is, well, arrogant - who are they to be the arbiters of taste and decency? It's a bit like people watching the Turner prize and saying "well, that's not Art" when their whole reasoning boils down to: "I don't think it's pretty."

[andrewducker]

If it's not pretty it's not art! That's just the way it is! My kid could do better art than that stuff! Etc., etc.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Someone really should point Mr Foulkes at Neil Gaiman's essay on free speech in the comic industry, about why one shouldn't support the banning of certain comics, even if one finds them distasteful. Same principles apply here I feel.

If you accept that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said.

...

Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you're going to have to stand up for stuff you don't believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don't, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person's obscenity is another person's art.

Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. The Right To Free Speech should possibly be changed to The Right To Free Unpleasant Speech, because nobody is trying to stop pleasant speech...