The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Censorship
Where Left meets Right: on free expression and 'The Sound of Music'
Regrettably, I have been, once again, spending time on that godforsaken platform known as Twitter. My (possibly shoddy) defense is that this scrolling has constituted “research” for a piece I’m writing for a trio of orchestras, set to premiere in Portland this November. Yesterday, I was served a tweet expressing outrage over a photograph of Nazi flags festooning the back wall of a concert hall at the Aspen Music Festival.
antisemitism @aspenmusic explain to me like I’m 5 years old on how this was appropriate?
Surely, I thought, there was an explanation. And lo, a follow-up tweet from the same author explained that this was a concert production of The Sound of Music:
They’re doing the sound of music, but im pretty sure you can do it without the n*** flag? Where did they even get them
(N.B. I’m not linking to the tweets because I’m not interested in shaming this person, but rather using this episode as an instantiation of what I find to be a troubling phenomenon of cudgel-like, pro-censorship attitudes among young people.)
Since the initial tweet was framed, on its surface, as a question in search of an explanation, I responded, asking, in turn, how the display of a swastika in the context of a production of a theater piece set during WWII was problematic. I further suggested that, as the grandson of a German-Jewish refugee who fled the Nazi Regime in 1939, I’m much more concerned about collective amnesia w/r/t the Holocaust; omitting historically accurate iconography from artworks depicting the era doesn’t seem to help.
Moreover—and I can’t believe this needs to be said—proposing to censor these symbols betrays an inability to distinguish between good-faith use in documentary, journalistic, or artistic contexts, on the one hand, and bad-faith attempts to terrorize a group of people, on the other. At the same time, this move toward censorship fails to acknowledge the difference between discomfort and trauma.
There may indeed be instances in which speech/expression might cause psychological harm, but going to a production of The Sound of Music and being traumatized by the presence of a Nazi flag is like going to McDonald’s and being traumatized by the presence of hamburgers. You knew what you were getting into! Finally, I mentioned that the flag serves a major plot point in the show, and that its inclusion, even in a semi-staged concert production (as this seems to have been), is an efficient visual symbol for marking the passage of time as the Nazis took power.
In response to my messages, the author wrote, “I’m sorry you feel this way, best of luck! Xoxo.” Thus, it seemed, they were not actually looking for an explanation, or to engage in an exchange of ideas, but rather to perform outrage.
A few other folks piled on, expressing various flavors of discontent at the Aspen Music Festival. But no one offered any sort of explanation for why the flags ought to be repressed, only a kind of circular logic: people are offended because the use of the swastika is problematic; it js problematic because people are offended by it.
One person chimed in likening the design choices of this production of The Sound of Music to Confederate statues. It pained me to have to point out that Confederate monuments were erected by white supremacists during the Jim Crow era to terrorize Black people. Dismantling those monuments on public lands is at once a material, symbolic, and psychological means of dismantling white supremacy. The inability to distinguish between the uses of these symbols, and furthermore, the inability to leverage any kind of coherent argument as to *why* one would need to omit Nazi flags from a production of The Sound of Music, makes me genuinely concerned about a swath of young folks who purport to be progressive.
As I asked one person who joined the conversation, if we can’t show a swastika on stage, where do we draw the line? Should all WWII-era literature be withdrawn? And do we not end up looking rather like the right-wing school board in Tennessee that banned Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, Maus, which, incidentally, has a swastika on its cover? Or like the right-wing provocateurs who interrupted a Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet?
I don’t know that I would call myself a free speech absolutist, but the presence of a Nazi flag in a production of The Sound of Music is not even remotely a close call. I hope that my readers—and particularly those younger folk who seem to be growing up in an atmosphere that takes a dim view of free expression—will take this as an opportunity to contemplate their assumptions about what it means to live in an open society, one in which art may help us to confront the past, even when doing so may elicit discomfort.
Having recently read « The Devil that Never Dies » by Daniel Goldhagen, I am no longer astounded at this ignorance, nor by the instinct for censorship. Both these things are what antisemitism actually feeds on (as much as animus). You really opened my eyes by commenting that people engaging with you were looking for opportunities to perform outrage. You’ve really touched on something there. Thank you, Gabriel.
Anybody reading your piece should know that it is only by discussing antisemitism seriously and openly that we will, perhaps, begin to combat it. It is the oldest and most prevalent social virus on Earth. I call it a social virus because it is a irrational and murderous ideology based on fear and loathing. It is highly contagious and highly adaptive, more adaptable than any other ideology that has ever existed—full stop. These are facts set forth in Goldhagen’s book. Antisemitism feeds on human ignorance. But (and AND) When people do not or cannot understand conceptually that censorship is an aspect of authoritarianism, they make the problem worse.
I understand that there are lines to be drawn. Use of certain symbols and language is sometimes hate speech. Hate speech can be harmful and should be regulated. There are certain contexts in which hate speech even should and can be censored. But displaying symbols in an historical context is not hate speech in this country.
There is currently a case involving the international art world in which the promotional material for a state-sponsored art exhibition did display antisemitic content found in one of the artworks. The promotional material fell foul of laws prohibiting hate speech. The museum director resigned. Affiliate organizations withdrew funding support on the grounds that there was a severe judgment error, in the beginning on the part of the curator and the entire organization, in accepting the artwork for exhibition. The artist denies the antisemitic content. But most people reviewing the case believe that the artist is lying.
It seems to me that this kind of deep investigation and dialog, the level of dialog you encourage here Gabriel, is really what it takes to push through the thornier issues.
Let’s stay deeply engaged, and let’s stick with our Constitution as a guiding framework to regard knee-jerk censorship as a last-resort solution. Goldhagen believes that free speech may be one of the reasons why antisemitism has historically had more trouble grabbing hold in the US. It’s true that antisemitism is on the rise here, and that is troubling. But it is on the rise at rates lower than the rest of the world.
Instead, to combat antisemitism, we need to use our our hearts, our minds, our pens and our mouths. All four. The work is that hard.
Excellent piece on an underexamined form of censorship. You've covered social media in some of your essays, and this is also a great reminder to me that the medium of Twitter is optimized for an individual's brief assertion and an anonymous mobs' immediate reaction. I appreciate your efforts to carry out an important discussion on a Twitter thread, even if the author is unwilling to critically explore the issue.
Also, I've made a quiet promise to myself to use the word "instantiation" in a conversation by the week's end. Bonus points if the person I'm talking to isn't a software developer.