Profane but PC
Court jesters spoke the truth others couldn’t speak, through
humour. When, like politicians, courtiers suffered under a form of political
correctness, fools could deflate the pompous behaviour of kings, as well as
that of the asses who sucked up to them.
It was an enviable, but sometimes dangerous job, with the
occasional possibility of head-loss.
Increasingly, PC is depriving us of the jesters we need in
our society. Newspaper cartoonists are among the few left who can still
exercise their wit; comedians on television and radio are likely to be sued for
saying the wrong thing.
Reading the brief report of the Wizard’s capping week
lecture made me wonder if he doesn’t consider himself a modern-day jester. His suggestions
that life skills should consist of teaching how to control women and women how
to control men, and that the only education we need is to learn to read, write
and count change, might pass for wit.
But adding that wizards and prophets were at the pinnacles
of the world, creating cultures which became reality when people believed in
them, slides away from wit and off into fantasy land.
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| The Wizard receives the Queen's Service Medal for services to the community. |
Rather than performing a lampoon role, the Wizard is in dire
need of being lampooned himself.
And talking of lampooning, I was perturbed by two things
relating to the recent capping revue. Firstly, Rob McCann, the producer, said: ‘Comedy
is about lampooning things. We’ve had many discussions about what we’re allowed
to lampoon because we’re in quite a politically correct age.’
How curious that the students, of all people (including the
capping review, of all shows), should be self-censored by the PC brigade. How effective
this censorship has become that humour, part of the life-blood of society, has
to be careful about what it says. These guys don’t need any royal personage to
cut off their heads; they’ve already done it for themselves.
But that’s only point number one.
The other point has to do with this show’s curious title. The
producers of the Jesus Christ Not Again Capping Show may have meant to
signify, ‘oh, no, not another musical,’ but their intent didn’t come across. The
real effect was of casual profanity, made blatant by being strung on a banner across
the street.
Not only was this an example of a poorly executed message,
the inability to appreciate the effect of their words shows the producers have
little understanding of who the words refer to, and what many people believe
about Him.
The pathetic excuses of the council subcommittee that
allowed this banner to be displayed are something else again. Saying the banner
was not offensive to most people ignores the fact that it was offensive to
some.
Would the subcommittee, or the producers, have allowed the
show’s title to offend ‘some people’ who are gay, or lesbian, or Muslim, or Jewish,
or disabled, or feminist, or Maori? I could sit down and write a dozen titles
that would offend any one of these groups, but I doubt they’d be displayed
across Stuart St.
How curious that political correctness protects all manner
of groups but one.
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The piece, read just on thirty years later, shows how
forceful PC was, and how it easily evolved into the appalling Woke world we
live in today. Christianity can be blasphemed without blinking an eye; Islam,
of course, cannot, nor most of the groups I mention above (except perhaps Jews who
are currently regarded almost with the same distaste at present as they were
during World War II).
See also Confession, on a similar theme.
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