Des Moines Register: Corrie’s voice silenced, again
Basu: Corrie’s voice silenced, again
REKHA BASU
REGISTER COLUMNIST
March 12, 2006
Last Sunday’s best picture Oscar went to a movie that showed how when someone feels undermined or unrecognized, it can lead to a domino effect of prejudice and backlash.
“Crash” was a wake-up call with a disturbing dose of truth. It showed no group is immune, either to being misjudged, or to misjudging and trying to silence another
And it was timely, as first Muslims around the world rioted against Danish newspaper cartoons they found offensive, and then Jewish groups and Israeli diplomats campaigned to have a Palestinian movie, “Paradise Now,” dropped as an Oscar nominee. That tells the story of two friends recruited to be suicide bombers.
Nor can some Christians sit in judgment of other religions’ overreactions. Art exhibits considered offensive to Christianity have met with vigorous calls for sanctions against museums and the sponsoring National Endowment for the Arts.
We’re all for free speech until it’s our group that’s insulted.
But without respecting everyone’s right to share their perspectives, we can’t be much of a democracy.
A disturbing case of self-censorship has cropped up in, of all places, an off-Broadway New York theater, which just “postponed” a play, citing Jewish community concerns about the political climate in the Middle East. Called “My name is Rachel Corrie,” it’s about the 23-year-old American who joined the International Solidarity Movement and was plowed down by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Gaza on March 16, 2003, while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian doctor’s home.
The Israeli Defense Forces said her death was an accident. The Solidarity Movement said it was deliberate. U.S. State Department officials have called the Israeli government investigation not credible, but the United States hasn’t ordered one of its own.
Against this backdrop, British actor Alan Rickman wrote a play telling Corrie’s story through her own words. In London, it won an audience award. But the New York Theater Workshop has pulled out, saying Jewish community leaders polled were concerned about the climate surrounding the Hamas election and Ariel Sharon’s illness. He said the play hadn’t been definitely planned — just considered. But Rickman denounced the decision as “censorship born of fear.”
Corrie’s Iowa-raised parents, and relatives who still live here, were already dismayed by the press’ lack of editorial insistence on an independent government investigation into Corrie’s death. Now they’re shocked to see even a piece of art about her life quashed.
No one has an inherent right to have her story told in a theater. But in a democracy, where the public decides who gets elected and thereby what course of action is taken, groups with competing agendas are in constant battle to win public opinion through whatever vehicle is available. So when public access to one side is restricted even though it’s not hateful, gratuitously inflammatory or outright lies, it unfairly skews the debate. The fact that it’s self-censorship is no less a threat to democracy.
If people don’t like what Corrie had to say, they can get the last word. The best way to answer speech you find disagreeable is to write a rebuttal. Talk about it. Rant, agitate, advertise, lobby, campaign. But no one has ever rid the world of a conflicting point of view by not giving it a hearing.
Quite the opposite. It’s when people’s viewpoints are neglected that things fester and turn violent.
It’s amazing how uniformly we fail to learn that lesson.
