Correctness has gone too far
By Karen Brooks
November 29, 2006 01:00am
Article from: The Courier-Mail
IN HER opening address at the Brisbane Writers Festival this year, British author Lionel Shriver (winner of the Orange Prize for fiction) made the point that political correctness has become so tired that "it's now correct to despair of political correctness".
We've seen ridiculous examples of the so-called "PC brigade" at work lately. From renaming "fairy" penguins to demanding that cheerleaders "cover up", never mind the dulling-down of Australia's favourite summer sport to the point where it's just not cricket.
Perhaps the most disturbing example of PC at work, however, centres on author John Dale's newest book, Army of the Pure.
Commissioned by leading publisher Scholastic Australia to produce a ripping action-adventure yarn that would have kids (boys particularly), turning the pages with anticipation, Dale more than fulfilled his brief.
The book has been described as "almost flawless".
It's about a group of kids in a soccer club who stumble upon a terrorist plot to blow up the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney's south, and are chased by an extremist group who also happen to be Arabic-speaking.
The tale resonates in a world where nightly TV bulletins and newspapers regularly report on terrorism, religious schisms and global politics.
But now librarians and bookshops have refused to stock the book, so it has been withdrawn. Dale is appalled at the decision, which is based solely on what has been described as the "Muslim issue".
Andrew Berkhut, general manager at Scholastic Australia, said: "The reality is if the gatekeepers won't support it, it can't be published."
Dale's literary agent, Lyn Tranter, has called the decision not to stock the book as "gutless" and described it as "censorship by salesmen".
What on this divided, angry, diverse and wonderful Earth is going on here? Are we so prissy and precious, so "PC" that we can't abide marketing a work of fiction because it dares to imagine bad (and good) characters who are Muslim?
Do I detect an overwhelming odour of hypocrisy here?
We live in a society where on the one hand, political correctness is enshrined as "sensitivity" and hauled out and fashioned to suit any occasion, while on the other, portrayals of Islam, Muslims and anybody from the Middle East are unremittingly stereotypical, narrow, often taken out of context and used to incite hatred.
Rebuffing a work of fiction on the basis of a "Muslim issue" is offensive. It somehow implies that the representations within the book are more than imaginative, and that, yet again, a few characters stand in for all. Ironically, those who protest against the content are doing exactly what they foolishly believe they're preventing: stereotyping and reducing a diverse people to cliches.
But the negative response to Dale's book has even wider implications for all creative artists.
Holding an imaginative mirror up to society and culture has happened since Homer first chanted his verses of gods, war, hubris and homecoming. It's called verisimilitude.
A misuse of political correctness has meant that an author's right to freedom of expression in the creative domain has been quashed.
In The Republic, Plato argued that poets should be banished from his ideal state. He believed that people confused poetic representations with the "truth".
Likewise, Russian author Leo Tolstoy wanted to banish artists who aroused morally questionable feelings. His list of exiles included Sophocles, Shakespeare and Beethoven.
Ironically, it's because of the great artists, writers and thinkers (including Plato and Tolstoy), that we're able to embrace works that challenge us, that dare to speak the unspeakable, portray what should not be shown, and that stand up to the status quo, forcing us to feel, to question "truth" and slowly rethink our positions.
These works don't simply litter the streets of cultural memories; they're the stones and bones of our past. They're the foundation of the future.
Whereas journalism ideally works in binarisms, presenting "both sides of the story", creative artists are not so obliged. We rely on them to plunge us into the lives and psyches of different characters: good, bad and, yes, Muslim too. Without artistic licence, we stifle the creative impulse, curb imaginative expression and invite Orwell's thought police into our communities and, worse, our heads.
Our Government has made "Muslim" an "issue", not a kids' book that imagines adventure, heroism, friendship and loyalty and happens to portray heroic and villainous Muslim characters, among others.
Whether we agree or disagree with the content and characters our artists create is irrelevant: don't let being afraid (disguised as PC sensitivity) generate censorship.
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