“I can say what I like, it’s a free country” is the refrain
of children and idiots. We’re right to
pride ourselves on our freedom where it exists, but we’re also sage enough to
recognize that there need to be qualifications on that freedom.
Limits on liberty is that? Caveats to our freedom of speech
you say? Yes, look before you gather your placards and start picketing my
desktop publishing software – hear me out. ‘Absolutes’ are a dangerous thing,
the jaeger bomb you know you probably don’t need at the end of a long night of
universal truth. Anarchy, for example, is a beautiful idea, but like many
beautiful ideas: it remains beautiful only as long as we don’t have to watch
the messy breeched delivery into reality, only to then have those infuriating
cack-handed agenda-mongering humans spoiling it all yet again by poorly acting
out their interpretations of it’s whim. Hang on a second Barry, was it anarchy
we were supposed to be doing or kill all the poor people?
One of the main problems with unbridled freedom is that Individual
freedoms can inhibit the freedoms of other individuals – to put it in more
visual terms – my freedom to fire off mortar shells in to unsuspecting crowds
of people may eventually come in to conflict your freedom not to be
horrifically slain by mortar shrapnel or falling debris. Whose freedom is more important? Well I think
most of us would agree that your freedom to live without the tyranny of my
fiery death rain supersedes my freedom to thump giant explosive shells in to
your immediate vicinity. But then again, I have a mortar cannon, so, you know.
You could complain to an independent arbiter but it’s anarchy out there so a)
they’re probably far too busy looting equipment from looting equipment stores
b) they don’t exist.
14 countries have written laws on people denying that the
holocaust happened, I guess the temptation would be to round these people up
and put them on a train in East Germany and… well if you start on that course
–the whole world goes blind doesn’t it? We can’t incite racial or gender hatred
with our words, defame or libel one another, say naughty words before the
watershed or mention Lord Voldemort’s name, lest he rise from the grave once
more and go through an entertaining but predictable campaign of nuisance
against bespectacled adolescents via the medium of defence against the dark
arts teachers. S#!t. I said it. Sorry Daniel. Which neatly directs us towards
self-censorship. I mean you could go round telling people what you think
uninhibited by a nagging sense of decency, but in the long run – life is so
much easier and a lot less stabby if you hold back just a bit and filter your
patter. Can we all agree that for a
happy and longer life, there needs to be some measure of censorship?
For us ex-pats living in Dubai, we often experience
different types of censorship to the ones we are familiar with back home. I fundamentally believe that if you migrate to
a country, then it is categorically and unquestionably your obligation to obey
the laws whether you see the reasoning behind them or not. There are some
things I’m sure we’d like to see changed, but as guests here – it’s really not
our place to start telling people how to run things. We learned these lessons
during the tenure of the British Empire when we turned up on various countries
doorsteps, audibly tutting disapprovingly at methods of production or religious
practises and saying “well I see what you’re doing with your natural resources,
but look just give it here a second you’re making a mess” – as if wrestling
control of a computer mouse off a child that’s been trying to close a browser
window, and you’re worried they’re about to email your banking passwords to
North Korea, accidentally delete the original copy of the universal declaration
of human rights and reformat the hard drive with a picture of a kitten in a
Martini glass under a caption reading ‘shaken not purred’. They’re almost
certainly not going to cause any irreparable damage, and who knows – maybe
they’ll find a better way of closing internet explorer, like banishing it to
cyber oblivion where it can live out eternity with the Microsoft Word animated
paperclip assistant, just like it deserves. The point is what works for some,
doesn’t necessarily work for others.
That being said. Yep, keep heading up Hypocrisy Avenue,
there’s a complete U-Turn ahead. That being said, where’s the fun in censorship
if it doesn’t spark a bit of controversial debate eh? eh? There are common
areas of censorship between the UAE and… ughhh let’s just call them the West
shall we? Europe, The Americas, Australia etc… those lot (who of course have
varying censorship areas in and between themselves) – just with different
emphases. The humour is in observing the differences between what is deemed
acceptable, revelling in individuality as nations.
Having the privilege of being an observer in Dubai, I’ve
noticed that one of the TV channels shows Australian Masterchef. The censors
have blocked out certain words using the pincer tactic of nulling the audio
feed and using the crime watch face pixelator on the thing the audio feed is
describing. The certain words I’m referring to are porcine products. What I
find bizarre about this, is not the continuity wrecking ball of awkward
silence, I’m on board – protect the
sensibilities of your nation’s people – I just find it strange that they show
the segment at all, because if this recipe is haram, you don’t particularly want
people cooking it anyway. But it is pretty funny to watch.
“So Gary what are you going to do with the *awkward silence*?”
“Well Paul, I’ve marinated the *awkward silence* in mango
for about 12 hours, the great thing about *awkward silence* is that it’s a
really fatty meat so it soaks up the juices really well”
We can pretty much follow what’s going on here, the curve
ball occurs when until products of the same origin get involved, as so often do
in cooking
“and what are you doing now Gary?”
“well I’m just dicing the cured Spanish *awkward silence*,
whilst I’ve got a few rashers of *awkward silence* simmering away in the pan,
as soon as the *awkward silence* is done, I’m gonna add the *awkward silence*
to the *awkward silence* and gently dribble the *awkward silence* over the rest
of the *awkward silence* - then voila,
one of the best mango *awkward silence*
*awkward silence* *awkward silence* you’ve ever tasted
You could take the *awkward silence* as a wildcard –
substitute ingredients for whatever you desire
- accidentally create a unique and original masterpiece, but I’m
guessing if that were the case – you’d probably be on the show and then you
wouldn’t have to worry about filling in the blanks. I guess one of the reason these sections are
still shown, is a concession, an appreciation that people from other cultures
might want to watch them. Or perhaps to protect continuity. Either way, it
leads me to my next point – what is equally interesting, is what is let through
the censorship filters. I’ve switched on
the television at 3 PM on a casual Tuesday afternoon here, and they’re showing
a relatively intact horror movie. Maybe it’s one that I’ve seen, maybe I’m
thinking “yeah they showed that bit with the shovel but they can’t possibly, oh
no, wait they are, he’s going to, with the rusty cork-screw”. Say what you
like, I think it’s one of the better episodes of ‘keeping up appearances’.
I lived in France in my early twenties, they had a satellite
TV package through the provider Canal+, which gave you access, on one of the 4
main channels, to explicit hardcore pornography. Yep, 3 PM on a Tuesday – quick
bit of channel hopping and there it is “yeah they showed that bit with the
shovel, but surely they can’t do the rusty cork-screw?”. But they did, and I
watched it several times just to make sure it wasn’t a glitch. We can use this
duality of what is deemed acceptable for public consumption and what is not to
gain a very general broad snapshot of that country. Draw stereotypes about the
way it’s differences manifest in society. How much does a snowflake’s uniquity
enhance it’s beauty? We can come up with a list of many reasons of why we are
here, and not back home – but surely one feature that us ex-pats in Dubai share
– is the attraction to exoticism. Just
as the draw of the forbidden tempts us to circumvent censorship. And you can’t
spell ‘very passionate nationalists’ with the letters V, P and N.
