Charlie Hebdo
The news this week was overshadowed horribly by a mass shooting at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly newspaper in France which became famous for profanely depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad in several of its cartoons. I won't say much about the attack itself, which has already been obsessively covered by news publications around the world (and a huge number of political cartoons involving pens and pencils). But I do think that now, more than ever, we have to remain consistent in our position on free speech and the limits of creativity, and not just in unambiguously horrific events such as this one.
Before Charlie Hebdo it had already been an bad few months for artistic freedom. While The Interview ultimately received an online premiere, it's safe to say that the whole ordeal was a failure - it didn't make as much money as it would have done if it was released in cinemas, and it was a show of cowardice on the part of Sony, already in a weak position from the scandal of its internal leaks. While the release of the film may have been a double-edged sword - if the promised attacks of the hackers had been carried out Sony's reputation would be in an even worse state - and while there may have been diplomatic issues at stake, it has created a dangerous precedent that threatening people is effective. Whatever happened to the U.S. doctrine of "We don't negotiate with terrorists"?
Of course, this isn't the only time this has happened. Back in 2006, Matt Stone and Trey Parker were writing an episode for their animated show South Park about the censorship of drawing the prophet Muhammad, inspired by the recent controversy surrounding Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten publishing twelve editorial cartoons depicting the prophet. While working on the two-part story "Cartoon Wars" they ran into interference from Comedy Central and parent company Viacom, who felt that his depiction would incite violence from Muslim extremists. Stone and Parker incorporated the network's interference into the episode, but were still not allowed to show Muhammad, a decision they were outwardly critical of at the time:
That's what we said to them, was, 'This is South Park, and we rip on absolutely everyone in really horrible, terrible ways. And if you're saying that this is the one thing we can't do, besides Tom Cruise, because they're threatening violence, well, then, I guess that's what everyone should do. Then if the Catholics don't want us ripping on Jesus anymore, they should just threaten you with violence, and they'll get their way.' That's why it is such a slippery slope and such a dangerous path to go down. (Trey Parker, 2006)They later received a similar treatment in the development of their 200th anniversary episodes, "200" and "201", where, following death threats from the radical Islamic organisation Revolution Muslim, Comedy Central heavily censored portions of the latter episode, even bleeping out the timely final speech about fear and intimidation. You can now watch an uncensored version on YouTube, but that's not the point - it was, and still is, a disappointing failure
No matter what your opinion on South Park or the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that provoked extremist outrage, both works have the right to publish whatever they want. And while the world is currently united behind the magazine and the friends and families of those who died in the incident, I can't help but feel that this might be used in the future as evidence that the risk of publishing something inflammatory is real, and outweighs the benefits of free speech. As Trey Parker says, it's a slippery slope.
BAFTA Nominations
In lighter news, the nominations for the 2014 BAFTAs were announced on Friday. The yearly tradition of handing out creepy golden face-masks has become quite predictable - the British biopics score highly, with The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game nabbing ten and nine nominations respectively, but this year there's also a good turnout of independent oddball films as well, with Birdman scoring ten nominations and Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel scoring a whopping eleven.
Elsewhere there are some surprises and, of course, omissions. Interestingly, Jake Gyllenhaal has been nominated for his (admittedly brilliant) turn in Nightcrawler, whereas both David Oyelowo and Brendan Gleeson have been omitted, despite the fact that you're likely to bump into them at a pub in Crouch End. But by far the most glaring omission is Timothy Spall's turn as J. M. W. Turner in Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner. In fact, the film has only been nominated for technical categories, which is utterly bizarre - isn't this exactly the kind of outstanding film from an outstanding British director that BAFTA likes to celebrate?
There are some nice surprises, though, namely Under The Skin's nominations for Best British Film and Best Score. It won't win any of them, but it's nice anyway. And Boyhood's been nominated for five things, which is also nice. Nice nice nice. Nice.
Ant-Man
Finally, Marvel released the trailer for Ant-Man on Monday, a film which was already infamous before it left the starting block. After working on it for five years, Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright left production over creative conflicts with the all-powerful Marvel franchise machine. This really pissed everyone off, because Ant-Man was supposed to be the underdog of the comic book blockbuster world, a consciously offbeat and funnier take on the superhero story. And Edgar Wright seemed crucial to that vision, a director famous for his visual flair and dynamic, energetic filmmaking, whose previous experience at adapting the comic book Scott Pilgrim vs. the World went down a storm.
But the show must go on. Wright's been replaced by Peyton Reed (Yes Man) and we've been given our first glimpse of the film itself. And the reaction is a definite "meh". It's a strange trailer, one which is mostly generic superhero backstory, with only a knowing quip from Paul Rudd at the end to even hint that this might be a comedy. It's nothing like the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer, which confidently announced itself to the world as a film which didn't take itself too seriously (the Blue Suede helped too). Granted, having no prior expectations for that film was one of the reasons why it was a success, but even so, this trailer is disappointing.
