13.01.2005

Silent on Springer

Much to the dismay of the easily offended, last weekend saw the BBC broadcast the "blasphemous" and "obscene" Jerry Springer - the opera. Already a big hit on the West End stage, the show features dancing Ku Klux Klan members, songs like 'Chick with a dick' and 'My mom used to be my dad', chorus lines such as, 'So dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians', and a scene where the fictional Springer (aka actor David Soul of Starsky and Hutch fame) is ordered by Satan to take his show to hell, otherwise he will be "tortured and toasted, barbecued and roasted, and fucked up the ass with barbed wire". Well, it's certainly not Mama Mia or Cats. Obviously Jerry Springer stands in a long theatrical tradition - the satires of Sophocles, the bawdy medieval mystery plays, the opéras bouffe of Jacques Offenbach and Charles Gounod, John Gay, etc, come to mind. Like most plays and operas it is, of course, very much of its time. In all likelihood it will soon be forgotten. Nevertheless, that takes nothing away from what history will probably judge as a harmless, and once popular, piece of fun. On the other hand, for its noisy christian critics, there is absolutely no doubt as to what judgement should be passed - Jerry Springer is simply beyond the pale and should never have been shown. We are told by MediaWatch UK, the 'spiritual' successors to Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers and Listeners Association, that on Saturday night we were treated to almost 8,000 swear words - mainly "fuck" and "cunt", though it does have to be borne in mind that this admittedly impressive-sounding figure is arrived at by multiplying the offending words by the number of chorus singers articulating them at any given moment. But most upsetting of all, for these devout yet very attentive critics, is the scene in the second act which depicts Jesus in a sparkling nappy admitting to being "a bit gay". Of course, for the fundamentalists and generally socially intolerant, homosexuality is always an extremely touchy, if not a taboo, subject, deserving only of condemnation or denial (or an awkward combination of the two). However, to have their precious man-god associated in any way whatsoever with homosexuality is blasphemy. Determined to launch a reactionary revolt against 'amoral liberalism', christian rightwingers launched a militant and well organised campaign against Jerry Springer and everything they imagine it stands for. Still, we should not be surprised by the vehemence or the force of the protests. As readily admitted by many of the anti-Jerry Springer campaigners, they have been inspired, and emboldened, by the violent Sikh protests outside the Birmingham Repertory Theatre against Gurpreet Bhatti's play Behzti (Dishonour). When the theatre management pathetically caved in to the protestors and closed Behzti down, it provoked a wave of ecumenical, inter-faith solidarity - multiculturalism, perhaps, though possibly not entirely in the form original conceived of by its founding ideologues. Precedent set, resentful christians, not unsurprisingly, looked to Birmingham and thought, 'If the Sikhs can do it, why can't we?' So the BBC was deluged with around 50,000 prior complaints from 'concerned viewers', mainly in the form of emails (possibly the product of an automated system). Ofcom, the media regulator, received a record 7,000 grumbles, handsomely beating the 1,554 complaints it received when the BBC showed Martin Scorsese's The last temptation of Christ, in which of course the dying Jesus has a homoerotic fantasy. On top of all that, there were protests outside BBC House, and a flurry of threatening phone calls to BBC staff suspected of 'collaborating' with the final broadcasting of Jerry Springer. Indeed, such was the level of hostility that the corporation felt compelled to hire a private security firm to guard the homes of two senior BBC executives, and at one stage there were stories circulating - since denied - that the two had actually gone into hiding over the weekend. Communists are militant defenders of free speech and the right to protest, so naturally we support the democratic right of christian or non-christian groups to make clear their disapproval of Jerry Springer or indeed any other facet of contemporary British life. However, as we are also consistent democrats, we also oppose all attempts at censorship, creeping or otherwise, or any stifling of artistic expression and freedom. Everyone should have the right to offend, whether it is in the realm of the arts or science. From this communist perspective, the orchestrated animus directed against Jerry Springer, and to a large extent the BBC itself, is clearly reactionary. More so when we remember that for many of the godly protesters the BBC represents the 'blasphemy broadcasting company' and thus for them is emblematic of the decadent horrors of modernity and secularism. We need to also stress that these christian campaigners are not just cranks, to be laughed at or ignored. As the Jerry Springer episode amply demonstrates, they have the ability to mobilise and influence a significant layer of society, even if the UK is not the USA. In other words, they can be dangerous, if they and their ideas are not vigorously combated by the working class. There is the example of UK Lifeleague, which has openly talked about its plans to publish on its website the home address and personal phone number of the BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, in order to encourage its supporters to 'doorstep' him. This has sinister parallels with the tactics and strategy deployed for many years by the 'pro-life' fundamentalists in the USA, which has led to the murder of a number of individuals involved in the provision of abortion services. To think that such a thing could not happen in Britain would be foolish in the extreme. It is instructive to look at Christian Voice, the main organiser behind the protests. Formed in 1994 as a response to Tory Edwina Currie's private parliamentary amendment to reduce the age of consent for gay sex to 16, it is now involved in a private prosecution against the BBC for the common law offence of blasphemy under the UK's still existent 17th century laws, which forbid the promotion of "reviling, scurrilous or ludicrous matter relating to god, Jesus Christ, or the bible, or the formularies of the Church of England, as by law established". The last prosecution was in 1976, when Denis Lemon, the editor of Gay News, published a poem portraying Jesus as a sexually active gay man. This so offended Mary Whitehouse and the NVLA that she took out a private prosecution, with the result that Lemon was given a suspended jail sentence (he was even told by the judge that he had come very close to actually serving the sentence). Christian Voice would love to repeat this 'success'. In the words of its director, Stephen Green, Britain is a "nation deep in sin", if not suffocating under a "tidal wave of filth". Therefore, for him, attacks on pieces like Jerry Springer are part of the pressing struggle to reverse "the last 50 years of legislation", which in the UK "has turned us away from the laws of god". This is reflected in the arts, which is "awash with blasphemy, violence and perversion". To defend the "sacred", as Green sees it, the BBC has to be successfully prosecuted for blasphemy - "How can you say that a coprophiliac, nappy-wearing Jesus isn't blasphemous?" Not that Christian Voice is a mere single-issue campaign group. It has what you could call a programmatic vision, which incorporates authoritarian christianity and 'anti-liberal elite' rightwing populism - a mixture which under certain circumstances could quite conceivably take off and find a viable political vehicle. We find on Christian Voice's website a quote from a speech made in 1999 by the then US attorney-general, John Ashcroft, about America's unique status among nations in having a godly and eternal rather than a civic and temporal character. Then we read that Britain has "abolished the death penalty but legalised the murder of children in the womb, enacted no-fault divorce on demand and forced mothers out to work, legalised trading on the lord's day and instituted a national lottery, legalised pornography and homosexual acts and taught evil to our children in school, and given away the queen's sovereignty - owed to almighty god alone - to the EU". Naturally, Christian Voice energetically endeavours "to uphold christianity as the faith of the United Kingdom" - that is, retain the UK's current blasphemy laws. Communists are unequivocal in calling for the immediate scrapping of the blasphemy laws, not, as some perniciously argue, for their 'amendment' or 'rationalisation', let alone their extension to cover all faiths and belief-systems. We stand for uncompromising secularism, which for us, as democrats, demands the strict separation of church and state. Communists are against privileges for any religious faith or cult. We are for the democratic right to practise whatever religion you like and the democratic right to criticise religion - 'offensively' or otherwise. Logically, this means opposition to the government's proposed religious hate laws, which aim to give legal protection to 'the sacred'. Obviously when the right to free expression comes under attack, it is the duty of all socialists to defend and uphold it. It is only too clear that those like Christian Voice and the NVLA would just as soon turn their fire on the working class movement - not least communists - if they thought we were a current threat. That is why it is absolutely disgraceful that the latest issue of Socialist Worker contains not a word on Jerry Springer and the attempt to ban it (September 15). It is not difficult to work out why the Socialist Workers Party prefers to keep mum over the whole affair - just as it has over the protests by reactionary Sikhs against the staging of Behzti in Birmingham. It is yet another example of the SWP allowing its (largely phantom) allies to its right in Respect to set the agenda: namely the Muslim Association of Britain, which favours the suppression of material it considers offensive. In a press release headed "Jerry Springer's blasphemies - not with our licence fee", MAB president Ahmed El-Shaikh is quoted as saying: "With the BBC being a public service provider, muslims view this as a disservice to pay for the denigration of Jesus - peace be upon him - who is one of the greatest prophets to muslims, and is revered by christians as well," (MAB website). While MAB is "not against debating the existence of a creator "¦ this show isn't about that, and we will oppose, and condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the humiliation of religious personalities". In other words, opposition to the screening is expressed by MAB in almost identical terms to the far-right Christian Voice, which also claims hypocritically that it is "not against free speech". So what does the SWP think? Does it, like MAB, believe that the satirical portrayal of religious icons is "beyond the pale"? Or will it stick to what remains of its principles and openly declare for the right of free expression, the right to offend? Don't hold your breath. Eddie Ford