"Nobody wants to shoot the village idiot." -- Theodore van Gogh, filmmaker, shot dead at 47.
"If someone puts a bullet through your brain, I'll complain." -- Cole Porter
by Jerome du Bois
[comments are open for awhile]
Popular media blogger Greg Allen of greg.org was so shocked, and so driven to righteous anger, by the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh last week, that he made a funny post about it with a really droll title:
Wait, I Thought Nobody WATCHED Short Films . . .
You see, because the Islamist fundamentalist asshole who shot, stabbed, and slit the throat of Mr. van Gogh -- and then used his knife to stick a five-page letter to the dead man's chest -- must have seen the 11-minute television film Submission, made with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Get it? Because he thought nobody . . . Yeah, I'm laughing, too. Then Allen, without blinking an eye, twists the poisoned knife in the increasingly popular way: van Gogh asked for it.
Seriously, what is up with these people? I can't believe anyone not related to the filmmakers actually watches a short film, much less gets mad enough to kill over one.
[There was that one time when MVRDV got death threats over their short animated film, Pig City... And the guy who got them in that trouble, Pim Fortuyn, did get assassinated himself...]
Of course, if you make a movie with verses from the Koran painted on nude women's bodies, which are visible through a translucent chador, I guess you might piss some of the wrong people off. So is it the offended militant Muslims who are crazy, or the Dutch?
He can't make up his mind. This is a guy who, as a member of the so-called creative class, creates movies, and he can't tell the difference between freedom of expression and ghastly, grisly murder. I'm glad his crew lost the election, because he's a coward who doesn't want to piss off some of "the wrong people." Me, I want to piss them off so bad they'll drown in uric acid.
I've been blogging around, curious to see which art and culture bloggers took note of that bloody event. Answer: not any. Really. Ten pages deep into Google . . . nada. ArtsJournal mentions the murder, but Terry Teachout, Tyler Green, a lot of the cute-name ones, Dan of Iconoduel, don't bother. Some of the liberal blogs were busy blaming the election on the gay-bashers, or otherwise crying in their lattes.
Over on Franklin Einspruch's blog, when I brought up Mr. van Gogh, I got into it with both he and the commenters, as I often do, but this time I noticed some things different. For example, people who always comment, no matter what the subject, were simply silent. They bugged out, laying low. And the ones who commented either would not use Mr. van Gogh's name or seemed hesitant to talk about Islam at all. (DeKooning! Now there's a subject! And, even on the subjects of abortion and misogyny, Mr. Einspruch does not use the word "woman." You can look it up.) A similar desultory unraveling appeared in a previous thread about Derrida and anti-Semitism.
On Election Day I posted "Seven Statements For Muslims," prompted partly by Mr. van Gogh's murder. (Earlier, after Nicholas Berg's beheading, I posted "Islam Is Anathema Now.") The next day, Re-Election Day, Mr. Einspruch sent me an email which read, in part:
. . . observe that the middle of the country voted Bush in over "moral issues and the war in Iraq," according to news accounts. The Islamic world has two great distractions that it uses to keep from dealing with its real problems: demonized versions of America and the Jews. Now America has two great distractions as well: demonized versions of Islam and abortion. We are becoming like them.
Maybe you, man; not me.
Observe, first, the neat symmetry of the false comparison. The first part of the argument is correct -- just read MEMRI for five minutes -- and lays the basis for the claim of legitimacy for the second part, which, in the specific cases I mentioned in my posts on Islam, is false on its face. I don't demonize, I report the facts and the news. Einspruch doesn't bother to challenge a single sentence I've written. And abortion is just a false placeholder; in other comments on his blog he drags out the now-discredited gay-basher vote.
Next observe the insult to American intelligence: distracted, foaming at the mouth with Islamic hatred while marching outside abortion clinics, we're simply too stupid to ponder, balance, weigh, or juggle anything else, such as our "real problems," the list of which Mr. Einspruch in his brooding wisdom will unveil on a day and time of his choosing.
Finally, since when is the war in Iraq separate from a moral issue?
While we're waiting, here's a short list of so-called luminaries who have as yet not weighed in -- had nothing to say -- about Mr. van Gogh's death: Doug Aitken, Alec Baldwin, Matthew Barney, Bjork, David Geffen, Jeaneane Garofalo, Whoopi Goldberg, Goldie Hawn, Sherry Lansing, Penny Marshall, Robert Redford, Rob Reiner, Tim Robbins, Kurt Russell, Julian Schnabel, Steven Speilberg, Oliver Stone, Susan Sarandon, Lars von Trier, and John Waters.
They don't complain.
[The title of this piece comes from a sign held up before Muslims during a recent Dutch protest against Islamic extremism. On the other hand, there's this dhimmitude.]
[Update: Got an email from Franklin Einspruch before I opened the comments, so I've posted it there. I've said it before, I'll say it again: he makes me mad, but he's a mensch.]
Posted by Jerome at November 7, 2004 06:41 AM | TrackBack(For posting, if you like:)
Read your post this afternoon. Always happy to get a fisking from one of the blogosphere's most lethal practitioners of the art.
The "now-discredited-gay-basher vote" had not yet been discredited by my news sources at the time I wrote the piece and the e-mail to which you refer. Now that the whole "we lost to the bible-thumpers" angle on the election isn't finding support in the math, I've learned a little lesson about being media-savvy. Of course, without that basis, a lot of the rest of what I said doesn't wash, and I retract it. Hey, when you're wrong, you're wrong. I still think we need to exercise great vigilance against theocracy - statistics reveal, apparently, that more Americans believe in the virgin birth of Jesus than in evolution - but I freely admit that more Americans voted for Bush because they knew what he was for and agreed with it; they seemed only to know what Kerry was against. The Democrats need to get their act together ideologically and learn to persuade the honest minds of people in the south and middle of the country.
Now, didn't I give you enough real targets so that you didn't have to go after the straw ones? "And, even on the subjects of abortion and misogyny, Mr. Einspruch does not use the word 'woman.' You can look it up." For crying out loud, Jerome, is someone besides women having abortions or being made the victim of misogyny? Women, women, women. They're my favorite half of the planet. Cut me some slack.
Regarding the silence of Artblogistan on the murder of Theodore Van Gogh, I feel a certain amount of obligation to my readers to stay on topic, and my topic is art. So is that of the other bloggers you mention, excepting Greg.org, whose uncertainty about where to affix blame I won't defend. (To say the least.) If no one anywhere was talking about this I might be inclined to say something, but Andrew Sullivan has been all over it, he serves about 200,000 pages per day relative to my 1500, he is properly, thoroughly disgusted, and this kind of thing is his metier. So although it occurs to me to want to post copies of the 2003 Arab Human Development Report on Mr. Van Gogh's attackers with stakes, well, that kind of sentiment is not why people come to Artblog.net, and that's not why I write it.
At this point, the fair question becomes: why write about the elections then? I'm not sure I should have. While my About page states that the blog is not always about art, the social engineering problem inherent to the name "Artblog.net" means that I confuse my readers when I don't talk about art, hence the reason that "people who always comment, no matter what the subject, were simply silent." Most of these people have already told me that they have no interest in seeing me cover non-art topics, and they have the right to remain silent when I do. (Comments hit zero when I did my last juggling post.) So if I want to continue putting out non-art thoughts, I may have to put up a second blog. (Groan.)
Thanks for the dialogue.
Franklin
I'm amazed at how thick your lenses must be for you to read equivalency and lack of anger into my post.
I have Dutch friends who had to go into hiding after receiving death threats because Pim Fortuyn, a nativist right-wing demagogue mentioned their short film in one of his books. Soon after, Fortuyn was gunned down on the street--by some Dutch leftist nutjob.
So who's crazier, the Dutch vegan anarchists or the Dutch/Moroccan militant Islamists? I don't know, and I really don't care. But if they put their minds and their weapons to it, the result is the same: someone else gets killed for what they believe or say.
Frankly, your willful distortions of my posts--and there continue to be multiple posts about Van Gogh, the content and context of which should make it obvious to anyone that, yes, I'm pissed about and opposed to militant fundamentalist terrorism...I can't even believe I need to write that, it's so self-evident--just to polish your own armor of indignation pisses me off, too.
I'd like to hear you explain how your condemnation of a random handful of artists for failing to live up to your personal standard of self-righteousness-fueled condemnation differs from the fatwas that tell the nutjobs with the guns and the daggers where to start.
Do you not see that the specific list of people you're so quick to condemn are possibly only imporant to YOU? I mean, come on, Matthew Barney?? Who could possibly care what he thinks about Islamicist hate crimes in Amsterdam? Or, taking a purely pragmatic view, what possible purpose besides your own would be served by his statement of outrage over a prima facie violation of individual rights?
Posted by: gre.org at November 9, 2004 10:01 AMWhere can I see a clip from this film?
Greg:
Thanks for the nice foaming at the mouth. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts you wouldn't have bothered to email me, and that's why I left the comments open for this post.
I'm not that interested in dialogue after the fact. In the light of knowing that Theo van Gogh died a horrible death on a public street, pleading for mercy, you still thought it was fine to use that facetious title.
So I don't give a damn what you'd like to hear from me. My message wasn't for you. I didn't distort your posts,and I don't have any armor. Wish I did.
JdB
Posted by: Jerome du Bois at November 9, 2004 11:11 AMI'm nobody, not even a real culture blogger but I did think about posting something about Theo Van Gogh's murder. And thought about and thought about and thought about it. But what can I say?
I wish this country would just get back together, just agree to disagree on some things, at least learn to be courteous. People who have tried to reach out, some of them Democrats who voted for Bush, trying to explain why, have been rejected and ridiculed. They've already decided it's about values but some of us voted the way we did in spite of Bush's values not because of them.
I'm glad you opened comments for this. Have you ever thought of requiring registration for comments? That would help with the problem of people leaving hateful comments.
Posted by: Lynn S at November 9, 2004 07:20 PMLynn:
You're not nobody. You don't have to say much. Every voice counts. In the larger blogosphere, this is a serious story. Theo van Gogh was another canary in the mine.
Jdb
Posted by: Jerome du Bois at November 9, 2004 07:53 PMIn answer to Lauren, iFilms is showing it. Courtesy Andrew Sullivan.
Posted by: Franklin at November 11, 2004 09:43 AM