Blasphemy and Charlie Hebdo

The complete roundtable on Satire and Charlie Hebdo is here.
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The terror assault which killed twelve people, including many prominent cartoonists, at the offices of Charlie Hebdo occurred two weeks ago now. It has been largely replaced in the news, at least in the Anglophone press, by other atrocities and other controversies. The news cycle is brief and vicious, and old blood, no matter its quantity, soon gives way to new.

Still, the response to the tragedy has at least some lasting lessons for the comics community in general, and for comics scholars in particular. I’d point particularly to a piece by Mark McKinney, a professor at Miami University and co-editor of European Comics Art.

McKinney, in a clearly heartfelt piece, denounced those who responded to the cartoons without sufficient context or understanding. “[W]hen many analysts see the cartoons, they simply lack the artistic, cultural and linguistic frameworks for interpreting them,”he says. He then goes on to argue that the magazine was anti-racist, and to point out that it is a determinedly French, and “even Parisian” magazine. He discusses, in laudatory terms, its commitment to scandalous and offensive imagery. And then, after several paragraphs of general background, he presents his rich, contextualized conclusion.

Through their cartoons, comics and news articles, the journalists of Charlie Hebdo courageously carved out and defended a space for dissent from religious extremism and censorship. Their joyful mockery of religious dogmatism is viewed as insensitive at best, and even blasphemy, by some clerics and their followers, and, as we now know, by terrorist murderers.

The nuanced, scholarly conclusion is, in other words, exactly the same as the broad, knee-jerk, uninformed conclusion reached by large portions of Anglophone social media. The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were free speech martyrs fighting against religious extremism. The only people who disagreed with their cartooning or editorial policies, were, in McKinney’s informed assessment, either “clerics” or their (blind? stupid?) followers, and terrorists.

“Scholarship on comics and cartoons can help us understand the meanings of Charlie Hebdo in important, vital ways that simply skimming over a few cover images from the magazine will never do. To the dead and the wounded, to the grieving survivors of those massacred, we owe at least this: a genuine attempt to understand what the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo did, and why,” McKinney declares in satisfaction. Fair enough; who can disagree with that? But his article is not such a genuine attempt. It analyzes no images. It discusses nothing in depth. Instead, it invokes the name of scholarship not in order to create more understanding, nor to perform a more subtle reading, but merely to lend the imprimatur of the academy to one side of a debate. There is no effort in McKinney’s piece to engage with French or Francophone critics of Charlie Hebdo, nor any effort to discuss the reasons why many French Muslims felt that the magazine targeted them. There is no recognition that there might be, not one context, but multiple contexts. There is no effort to think about the history of caricature and the history of racism, or to think about how intent and reception may diverge. McKinney’s piece is not scholarship. It is polemic.

I don’t have anything against polemic per se. It’s a venerable genre, and, like any aesthetic endeavor, can be done well or poorly. I find it troubling, though, that McKinney attempts to cloak his polemic in the mantle of academic rigor, and portrays those who disagrees with him as either ignorant or ill-intentioned. Poorly defended, entirely banal opinions are presented by McKinney as interesting and true simply because a comics scholar happened to put them forward.

Since McKinney urges context, I should say that the context of his own remarks is clear enough. At least since Frederic Wertham pointed out that comics were often racist, sexist, violent, and kind of crappy, the comics community has been exceedingly sensitive to any criticism that calls into question the moral or social content of cartooning. On top of that, comics have long been seen as childish, largely aesthetically worthless pulp crap; comics scholars have waged a long, difficult campaign to get them recognized as complex artistic expression, worthy of study. McKinney, then, is not really trying to add nuance to the Charlie Hebdo discussions, which is why he adds none. He is instead repeating (under the validating mantle of scholarship) the same arguments that comics has used for decades to defend itself against hostile critics. To wit, comics are complicated and moral, and if you disagree, you’re a Puritan thug and a fool.

The murderers of Charlie Hebdo prove that Puritan thugs (broadly defined) do in fact exist. However, this does not mean (contra McKinney and his supporters, educated and otherwise) that all those speaking out against Puritan thugs are beyond reproach. Nor does it place a seal forever upon the righteousness of comics creators or comics scholars. Is comics scholarship an academic field devoted to the understanding and discussion of comics, bringing a wide range of knowledge and approaches to a complicated, sometimes beautiful, sometimes flawed, sometimes undervalued, and perhaps sometimes overvalued medium? Or is comics scholarship to be devoted to boosterism, advocacy, and sacralization? If Charlie Hebdo’s accomplishment was to fight against all priesthoods, then surely it does them little honor to try to set up a priesthood in their name, handing down stern pronouncements about how their work must be read and understood. You can’t venerate blasphemy by venerating blasphemy. And comics scholarship, whatever its accomplishments and advantages, does itself no favors when it attempts to set itself up as an unquestionable authority in the name of free speech.
 

CH snow

40 thoughts on “Blasphemy and Charlie Hebdo

  1. Pingback: Weekend Reading | Backslash Scott Thoughts

  2. I love that end cartoon. The Charlie Hebdo work “meaning” affaire has created a tremendous amount of noise. What would be useful for aspiring cartoonists etc would be some practical advice on how to critic islam without being offensive OR being “offensive” but not shifting into racism or islamophobia etc … a sort of Richter Scale for Critiquing Islam and critiquing Islamic culture etc.

  3. Artists edit themselves all the time. Most folks think twice about using blackface caricature, because they don’t want to be racist. Is that self-censorship?

    Free speech doesn’t mean that you don’t think about what you’re doing. There isn’t a moral imperative to be careless and offensive.

  4. I haven’t really seen any guidelines proposed addressing this specific issue. All I have seen is a lot of opinion on both sides of the argument which is not really going anywhere at a practical level. Guidelines are simply that a guide. It can be official or it can be unofficial. We could have various guidelines from different sources and then we could at least be able to discuss them and develop them.

    With regard Charlie hebdo there was A survey in France – about 42% said Charlie Hebdo went too far with their cartoons and about 57% said it was acceptable. So I accept that Jacob’s article flagged up a real issue and it IS a real issue. Hence some practical advice would be useful.

    http://time.com/3672921/charlie-hebdo-prophet-muhammad-muslim-cartoon-poll/

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  6. Jacob whines about how he’s now the nexis of medium attention.

    Well, Jacob, in that case you shouldn’t have been such a media trollop. You shoulsdn’t have lied by translating “Touchez pas à nos allocs!” by “Don’t touch our welfare!” (Of course, the naive and ignorant Noah wrote hundeds of totally worthless and stupid words about that speech ballooon. Noah– when you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, it’s best not to talk at all. As Mark Twain observed: “It is better to remain silent and pass for a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”

  7. ? I don’t think I wrote anything about the speech balloon? Not sure what you’re talking about. (Insert string of insults and cursing and denouncing you for daring to speak, etc, etc.)

    The “media trollop” thing seems odd. Jacob and I both assumed that a few hundred, or at most, a few thousand people would see that post; putting something up on HU is hardly the usual way to garner huge amounts of attention. It did this time, obviously, but that’s not something Jacob could have reasonably anticipated.

  8. Joyce:

    “I haven’t really seen any guidelines proposed addressing this specific issue. All I have seen is a lot of opinion on both sides of the argument which is not really going anywhere at a practical level. Guidelines are simply that a guide. It can be official or it can be unofficial. We could have various guidelines from different sources and then we could at least be able to discuss them and develop them.

    With regard Charlie hebdo there was A survey in France – about 42% said Charlie Hebdo went too far with their cartoons and about 57% said it was acceptable. So I accept that Jacob’s article flagged up a real issue and it IS a real issue. Hence some practical advice would be useful.”

    Jacob”s article was a tissue of falsehoods. And you, yourself, note that a strong majority of the French public did NOT think Charlie Hebdo went “too far”.

    “…both sides of the argument…”

    Sure. Ten minutes for the Jews, ten minutes for the Nazis; let’s hear it for impartiality, eh Joyce?

  9. So…42% of the French public are Nazis now? Seriously?

    I believe a majority of the people in the U.S. would probably support the proposition that racism is not a serious problem in the U.S. anymore. That is not empirical evidence that racism has ended.

  10. Noah, you’ve wriiten extensively about the Boko Haram cartoon. You’ve been so off-target it’s become grotesque.

    Noah, that cartoon wasn’t aimed at ilegal African immigrants or at American- type-fantasised ” welfare queens”. IT WAS AIMED AT RICH WHITE FRENCHMEN AND FRENCHWOMEN.

    What is wrong with you?

  11. You’re the one shouting in a comments thread, Alex.

    I’ve seen tons of explanations of that cartoon, including Josselin’s. It still seems carelessly racist to me (I think Janell Hobson’s discussion seems fairly on point, there.) You’re welcome to disagree, of course.

  12. Noah, we’re not talking about racism. We’re talking about censorship and freedom of expression.

    This site dishonored itself with Canfield’s and O’Connors’ posts; it redeemed itself later, with Josselin’s survey.

    You have still not addressed why Canfield lied in his translation (“allocs”=”welfare”), or why you ran with the lie.

    And BTW — your attack on McKinney is entirely ad hominem, and thus can be discounted utterly.

  13. ??? I’m not attacking McKinney ad hominem? I’m saying that his piece fails to do what it claims it’s setting out to do. How does he add nuance or insight to the discussion? He just gives his credentials and ends with assertions.

    I have no doubt that he is in fact qualified to speak, and could have said interesting things if he wanted. He just didn’t, unfortunately.

    Josselin’s translation of that line is “Boko Haram’s sex slaves are angry: ‘don’t you touch our welfare!’ Is he lying as well? Or what?

  14. He is.

    “Allocs” is slang for Allocutions Familiales –“family allowances”.

    The French State gives “allocs” to every household that has a child in it, regardless of nationality, income level, or other criteria.

    It is therefore entirely opposite to American so-called “welfare”, more correctly known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children:

    http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/programs/aid-to-dependent-children-the-legal-history/

    France is a populationist society: it wishes to encourage childbearing. Through a barrage of legislation and regulation it has succeeded: France and Ireland are the only EC countries to see their population grow from births exceeding deaths.

    The government wants to submit couples to a ‘means test” before granting them allocs; practically, what they propose is that couples earning more than 1OO 000 euros a year — 130 000 dollars — should only get half the allocs of a poor couple.

    There was a huge kerfuffle, with rich couples screaming that the 300+ euros-a-month subsidies were a basic human right.

    That”s what the target of the Boko Haram cartoon was.

    Noah: I’m hurt that you never bother to con sult me in all this last month.

  15. Okay, so, that’s super helpful. However, accusing people who don’t translate it the way you do of “lying,” even when they’re native french speakers, even when they largely agree with you — what’s the point of that? It just escalates unpleasantness.

  16. It could be argued that the article itself escalated unpleasantness when it asserted the following description of Charlie Hebdo

    “Its cartoons often represent a certain, virulently racist brand of French xenophobia. While they generously claim to ‘attack everyone equally,’ the cartoons they publish are intentionally anti-Islam, and frequently sexist and homophobic.”

    When something goes viral it is not usually based on a well presented rational, balanced argumentation.

  17. Thz point is promoting honesty and responsibility among translators.

    I’m a bit bummed by your reaction; I wrote an entire HU post on the dangers of bad translation, and on the grave responsibilities of translators:

    https://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/08/found-in-translation/

    Noah:

    […]accusing people who don’t translate it the way you do of “lying” […]

    Noah, this is not a question of “differences of interpretation”. If anyone translates “allocs” as”welfare”, that person is WRONG.

    But if you tell me that that person is a native French speaker, who STILL insists on that falsehood — that’s not a lie? At best, it is very seriously reckless disregard for the truth.

    BTW, Canfield is not a native French speaker.

  18. It’s awfully hard to say why something goes viral. The only other thing we had take off was an entirely uncontroversial piece about the Wire as a Victorian novel.

    Josselin and Jacob both translated it as “welfare”. I’ve seen others do so as well. Josselin and Jacob both speak French, Josselin’s a native French speaker.

  19. Allocutions Familiales –“family allowances” versus “welfare”.

    It seems to me a minor point. I am from Europe so maybe our conception of welfare is not the same as the US conception of welfare. Nonetheless I don’t think this transcription per se determines whether the claim that the cartoon is virulently racist and islamophobic is justified.

  20. Hey, Noah, while I agree with the general assessment that there is not much new in McKinney’s piece, by the end you ratchet up you own polemical language to such an extent that I can barely recognize the object of attack. McKinney mainly wants to remind us that the CH cartoonists and their paper have a long record in leftist politics, an equally long record of being “attacked” (wrong word now) by the clericy, and a central-outsider place in the French comics establishment. Pretty standard stuff, set up as an antidote to what sometimes became pretty sweeping statements about their ideological allegiance with the racist right.

    I do see a bit of comics boosterism (which I hate), and a larger dollop of scholar boosterism (which I am fine with). But to take these sentiments and translate them as demanding (1) that anyone who speaks out against thus is “beyond reproach,” (2) that cartoonists and scholars are granted a “seal [or righteousness] forever,” (3) and that this amounts to an anti-free-speech “sacralization” of “unquestionable authority” — well that takes McKinney’s one or two laudatory phrases (e.g., “courageous”) and inflates them to an idol of unrecognizable proportions. (Canfield’s essay was dedicated to the same trope: “wait till the bodies are cold” = “white male cartoonists should forever be exempt from criticism.”) It looks like your trying to validate your own iconoclasm, standing yourself up against a quasi-religious monster largely of your own making.

    Again, I mostly agree with your general take, but the polemics of your close make me doubt the rest, as I watch you fight melodramatically in your own way for the freedom of speech, strangling the last cartoonist with the entrails of the last comics scholar.

  21. Alex, man, can’t we just agree that Canfield’s essay and reflection, together, are the SHADOW OF NO TOWERS of comics criticism and call it a day?

  22. Like I said, I don’t see polemic as a bad thing in itself.

    McKinney presents those who disagree with him as clerics or terrorists (or at least, I have trouble reading that line in any other way.) And I don’t think it’s okay to elevate scholarship as an authority in the way he does; stating your credentials is not an argument, and it shouldn’t be seen as one.

    We can agree to disagree though.

  23. “Alloc” is often translated by “welfare” because that’s the closest word in English that the French speakers know.
    “Allocation familiales” is actually a grant given to ALL parents [“universal”]. The whole debate recently in France was whether the government would stop handing it to “wealthy” family [because national debt & deficit, mainly].

    Nevertheless, I still think one should not see something as far-etched as a veiled critic against the white priviledged. That’s in my opinion wishful thinking of people liking C-H. I believe it is only a simple “take two pieces of news and mix them up in one cartoon and hilarity ensues” that failed.
    BTW, by French standards, this depiction of black people would not be seen as racist. What depiction is racist – or not – is cultural and linked to a country history [and the “local” history of its minorities]. They are depicted as ugly, but that’s standard depiction of everyone for this cartoonist.

  24. “Allocation familiales” is actually a grant given to ALL parents [“universal”].

    Following on from this and something I have previously mentioned … There has been an assertion bordering on the dogmatic that French muslims are marginalised. I have yet to see anything substantive put forward in support of that assertion.

  25. France is not an Islamic state, France is a secular state. Muslims can wear what they want in private activities. If your view of marginalisation is that western societies don’t allow Sharia law and don’t allow full veil for certain publicly funded activities then your view of marginalisation and my view of marginalisation is different.

  26. Not being allowed to dress in accordance with your religious beliefs in public is in fact discrimination and marginalization. If you were forced to wear a veil in public (presuming you don’t wear a veil), you’d see that as discrimination and Sharia Law and would be upset about it right? Why doesn’t it work the other way? Because you’re not the one targeted? That’s what marginalization is; the marginalized are considered not to have rights the majority needs to respect.

    There’s a pretty big difference between being allowed to cover your head in public and “Sharia Law.” But it’s clear enough why you don’t see Muslims as being marginalized. You think marginalization is a good thing. So do many others, unfortunately.

  27. “You think marginalization is a good thing. So do many others, unfortunately.”

    No I am just unconvinced by your simplistic armchair analysis. Your language is full of dogmatic assertions. But that is just my opinion. Your opinion you present as some sort of fact when it is not.

  28. This is rhetorical overkill : “But it’s clear enough why you don’t see Muslims as being marginalized. You think marginalization is a good thing. So do many others, unfortunately.”

    Anyway, the muslim women who wish so are allowed to wear a veil “in public”. Burkhas are out though, for an hypocritic reason. I have no love for this law, but burkha-wearing muslims always were extremely rare in France.

    The “no-veil” [and generally no ostentious religious” symbol] applies in 2 cases :
    – State servants working in relationship with the public [no problem for say office clerks], most obvious examples being policemen and teachers. It is seen as “violating” the neutrality of the State. This law has been there since 1905, applies to everyone [Jews and kippas, the rare Sikhs and their headgear, Christians and their crosses ; it was also enforced upon nuns who were basically barred out of a lot of services in 1905] This law is barely discussed in France, including by muslim representatives and the French “anti-racism” association, and widely accepted by everyone.
    Such a rule would create a massive outcry in USA or UK obviously, but that’s due to different political tradition. In France, this “rule” is considered inclusive and a guarantee that the State will treat them fairly.
    As a final note on this, the debate is whether private entreprises doing what is called in France a “public service” can enforce the same rule [the Baby Loup kindergarden debate].

    – Boys and girls up to highschool should not wear ostentious religious symbols in a public school. That’s the verrryy contentious one in France, and it is actually quite recent [the law is 2004]. The real target of the law was, everyone knew it, the veil.

    It is important to note that the requests for a law on the veil did not come up-down from some politician, but came down-top from the school authorities and teaching staff. In the 90ies, there was a growing opposition to the veil organized around 4 key arguments [not ranked by relevance, I am just stating what was used in the debate]
    – It represents the inferior status of women in muslim society ; think physical education in particular.
    – Accepting the veil at school undermined the whole “neutrality in public” and created two “visible” communauties in school. France and most French absolutely resent “communautarism”
    – There were claims of peer pressure toward the girl not wearing the veil from other pupils/students
    – Good old slippery slope, in this case asking not to follow biology classes [because reproduction], and not to learn swimming in PE [like all pupils must learn in France].

    Though the educational staff is traditionally in France extremely anti-religious [“les hussards noirs de la République”, as we said], the points above were and are still hotly debated.

    As a conclusion, France is a completely different model from USA [“unitarian”], anchored both in French religious/legal history and in an answer to real “French” problems. I don’t think it is perfect, but it works rather well.
    As a small note, in France children of immigrants succeed better at school than children of “natives” for equal level of education of the parents according to a 2012 study by the Observatoire des Inégalités.

  29. Ah, sorry for the poor English. Obviously, I am French, not native English speaker.

    Forget to say 2 things :
    – There is no “veil” rule for students in university, by that point the “peer pressure” argument is hollow and there is no possible slippery slope since you choose what you study.

    – All political analysis is embedded in the political culture of the one doing it. No one is in an ivory tower when analysing politics. It is best to remember it rather than believe that one can be neutral/fully objective. As an obvious example, I cannot know to which extent my views/opinions on French “unitarism” and of US “multiculturalism” are due to being French and not American – I can only assume I have a biais and try to accept the arguments from the “other side” with an open mind.

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  31. “Female circumcision” [called “excision” and more often “female genital mutilation” in France] is a crime in France, legally comparable to, well, mutilation with permanent consequences [so => jail time]

    This brings us quite far away from the subject, though, so let’s stop there.

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