speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Dichotomising Continua, Denying Ambiguity
The Satanic Verses. 37 Each author might have echoed Bret Ellis's
defence of American Psycho.
I would think most Americans learn in junior high to differentiate
between the writer and the character he is writing about. . . .
Bateman is the monster. I am not on the side of that creep. . . .the
murder sequences are so over the top, so baroque in their violence,
it seems hard to take them in a literal context. And there are
dozens more hints that direct the reader toward the realization that
for all the book's surface reality, it is still satirical, semi-comic
and—dare I say it?—playful in a way.
This did nothing to placate his critics, who despatched 13 death
threats, containing photographs with his eyes poked out and an axe
through his head. Los Angeles National Organization of Women
president Tammy Bruce reiterated her commitment to a boycott.
"This is not art. Mr. Ellis is a confused, sick young man with a deep
hatred of women who will do anything for a fast buck." 38 The
viewers who charged Spike Lee with anti-Semitism in the portrayal
of two Jewish nightclub owners in "Mo' Better Blues" were equally
dissatisfied with his retort: "Why is it that there can be no negative
Jewish characters in films . . . [yet] we have black pimps and black
drug dealers?" 39 Such philistinism may explain Antoni Tapies's
refusal to "explain" his 60-foot sock: "I have always felt that works
of art are like delicate flowers: the more you handle them, the more
they are harmed. ... I have made 7,000 works of art. I wonder how
far I would have gone if I had submitted each one to a
referendum." 40
Authorship can profoundly shape reader response. When Doris
Lessing submitted a book manuscript under the pseudonym Jane
Somers her two regular British publishers rejected it. After Michael
Joseph published the book, no Lessing authority would read it and
no serious journal reviewed it. 41 Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol
represent the opposite extreme, casually valorising the worthless by
appending their signatures. 42 The speaker's identity similarly affects
the harmfulness of words. Subordinated peoples neutralise slurs
through banter within the contemned group, as when African Americans
"play the dozens." They deflate insults by appropriating them
as titles, as in the black rap group Niggaz With Attitude or the gay
activists in Queer Nation, who plastered Greenwich Village with
posters crying "Queers Be Ready" to protest the homicide prosecution
of a gay man. Images that would be pornographic become
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