/cynical/ So sad that nowadays Swedes can't have a say about radical immams. /cynical/ How cool it is to have fun of Jesus but to have fun of Mahommed? How "far" we have "progressed" ;-) In 40 years from having fun about religious leaders to burning heretics like witches.
Wouldn't it be fun to watch movie having fun about Mohammed in Sweden? Or we became some kind of cultural caliphat in the mean time? Joking about Jesus respecting Mohammed? There is a reason for which our era is referred to as "new middle-ages" by some philosophers.
Sad.
By the way there is much more comedy material in Mohammed case too.
As we know since Freud hypocrisy is this what makes the best jokes. I.e. saint God messiah who is a war lord and peadophile in the meantime. Try making movie about that.
Sure, people should be able to poke fun at Mohammed, freedom of speech etc etc. But why would you? Life of Brian was a movie about Christianity, made by those born into Christianity, meant to be watched by fellow Christians. Hence why it provided an opportunity for introspection and self-reflection.
A movie lampooning Mohammed, made by Christians and for the amusement of other Christians, offers no such opportunity for self-reflection or growth. It would be nothing more than 21st century blackface.
The prophet Mohammed in Islam is seen with more reverence than Jesus in Christianity, invoking his name is also very delicate in Islam (you are supposed to say a blessing anytime you do and avoid invoking it lightly, there's a lot of rules around it).
With these religious/cultural differences I can understand how Muslim take greater offence to people making fun of their most prominent prophet as opposed to Christians, but also you have to take into account that because of that, people usually are more provocative with their humour when it comes to Mohammed.
I can't remember having seen any sexually depraved depiction of Jesus in mainstream media whereas I can clearly remember many that depicted Mohammed.
IMO it's not as easy to make fun of Islam/Mohammed because people tend to go for the extreme in term of dark humour but also it's not perceived the same way by the religious communities.
> The prophet Mohammed in Islam is seen with more reverence than Jesus in Christianity, invoking his name is also very delicate in Islam...
Interestingly, the west does not, however, honor similar Jewish reverence towards utterance or the writing of the name of G-d. See, for example, http://www.jewfaq.org/name.htm. I always wondered about the discrepancy.
Well, this video was aired a few weeks ago on public television. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFzl4dEBmJE But you are perhaps right that we refrain from making fun of Muslims, Jews, Gypsies, Africans and other minorities. Reason being that they have been persecuted so it's like kicking downwards. We do make fun of Danes, Norweigans and Finns though. :)
Nowhere in the world can we have a comedy about Mohammed because the comedians want to live (a funny life), too. In a few progressive countries people tried to make fun of Mohammed and they're, for the most part, dead.
(And The Life of Brian doesn't make fun of Jesus in any way, that's what people who haven't seen the film think.)
Whilst they're careful in the action of the film to make it clear Brian isn't Jesus, surely the central premise is that "Jesus is Brian", that his presentation as Son of God is a [comedic] mishap, or misunderstanding.
IMO the idea was not to make fun of Jesus but the followers of Jesus.
This is clearly shown when people start following Brian for no freaking reason and start creating "miracles" just because they want to believe it.
The movie lives side-by-side Jesus and criticizes faith in a satire approach by using Brian and his cult followers.
That's interesting, it's almost as if we watched two different movies. Actually I was expecting a lot of Jesus and I was a bit disappointed by not seeing him much. On the contrary, I saw a lot of "people and times", portrayed in a comical way.
Like the way the original Terminator wasn't about cyborgs from the future because you never (seldom?) see the future? Or Lord of the Flies wasn't about how civilisation readily devolves, it was just about a group of kids?
Are you trying to tell me you don't think it is saying 'people are mistaken and Jesus was just a man'? (Or perhaps 'a very naughty boy'!)
To me it seemed carefully written to maintain deniability and skirt blasphemy regulations.
FWIW it's a film I've enjoyed watching both as an agnostic and as a Christian.
Yes, the film was about the times of Jesus, about groups of people that might have followed him, of people that might have helped to crucify him (for the same reasons - blindly following the crowd), about Romans, about Jews, about Jews hating Romans, about Romans oppressing Jews, about ridiculous laws, but... not really about Jesus. I watched the film again 2 weeks ago, hardly anything about Jesus. I can hardly believe anyone could identify Brian with Jesus, these are two completely different characters.
No, I believe we differ in our perception of the role of Brian, and you seem to hold the position that bishops and other offended people held: that the creators of the movie identified brian with Jesus. I agree that if you wanted. you coudl interpret the film in this way. But it's not necessary. You will watch a completely different film then. You will see a Jesus who was ridiculous, cowardly, a bit stupid. But this makes no sense - Jesus is already in the movie and he is a completely different person.
There are many examples in literature and film where the creators focus on a personage close to a celebrity and make them the main character. But I guess the film is well done if we can both claim our positions and believe the other person is wrong.
I specifically stated, twice, that I didn't believe Brian to be Jesus. I think that's the massive knee-jerk reaction of those who only saw clips at the initial release.
I don't think the writers took a post-modernist approach. Indeed, as I tried to explain, the inclusion of Jesus as a character is IMO a clear attempt to say "see, no blasphemy here" for the purposes of publishing the film. (FWIW I don't consider the film blasphemous without the Jesus scenes, not explicitly at least).
The intention is pretty clearly to say "Jesus is Brian", ie "he's elevated by the crowd to his position as Messiah, rather than that being an intrinsic part of the man known as Jesus".
> I don’t know you or your values, often racists disguise their views as some form of freedom and conflate concepts. I have no strong urge to watch comedies poking fun at other people’s sensitive topics perhaps you should consider why you want to
Well, I for one certainly want to see more comedies poking fun at people's sensitive topics - most of all, my own. If I can't enjoy a well crafted joke about views or subjects I hold dear, I cannot examine them seriously either, at which point I'm just holding on to a dogma. That to me seems far more tragic than feeling offense at the occasional crass or tasteless joke.
Furthermore, on the broader point about comedy and offense, if you hold freedom of speech in any regard at all, you should fight the most for the right to express the views you find most offensive [1]. Anything less is not a defense of freedom of speech, it's simply defending your preference to be pandered to.
[1] Yes, there are obvious caveats with actionable incitement to violence. Those are well covered by existing legislation in every developed country and have nothing to do with offending people.
Actually you can sometimes convince people their ideas are wrong by laughing at their ideas. I'll never forget my Dad's reaction when I bought a magazine about flying saucers.
Whether or not we can change each others views by laughing at them, it shouldn't be forbidden. In fact it's healthy. All religions, and atheists too, have ideas that should be subjected to the scrutiny of laughter.
Don't confuse hatred of people with laughing at ridiculous ideas. I 100% support everyone's right to hold ridiculous ideas (as long as they don't impact the rest of us).
Laugh at the ties people wear to the office, or the suits with tails that people wear to prestigious events; but laugh as well at pompous religious robes.
Laugh at the belief that flying saucers exist, the belief that fairies exist, the belief that god X Y or Z exists, or at the idea that the universe is just a soup of particles and radiation that cares nothing about us.
Any worthwhile idea or belief can withstand laughter, and probably did when it was young. The fact that some people cannot, means it's not reasonable to take the piss out of the shy kid in class. Laughing at a vulnerable person or group of people is wrong. But for ideas - especially for ideas that claim justification in mystical personal experience rather than rationality - laughter can be the best argument.
I'm not sure what it is that you're arguing against, where did I advocate shouting abuse outside a school as a productive way of doing anything? Perhaps you could clarify your argument somewhat.
Civil debates are great, I'm happy to have more of them. At the same time, works like the Life of Brian (and many others over the years) sometimes manage to convey more thought-provoking critique per unit time than any civil debate I've ever seen. Having to tune out a measure of tasteless humor is the price we pay for enjoying these brilliant works because there is no more a way of legislating good humor than there is of enforcing quality journalism, good music or any other creative human endeavour.
Why do you equate comedy production with obnoxious shouting in public? It doesn't even make sense as a strawman. I don't produce comedies because I'm not a filmmaker. I don't shout random insulting things in public because that's just dumb. Neither fact contradicts any of the views and beliefs I've expressed in this thread in any way.
Freedom of speech wasn't granted to us to talk about weather while drinking coffee. Freedom of speech was granted to us to talk about difficult topics quite often when we don't like discussing it in the first place.
This paraphrase of a quote is often attributed to both Churchill and Jefferson.
The whole idea is that people who you are uncomfortable listening to have the right to speech right in your face even when it makes you extremely uncomfortable. The whole current political system is morally bankrupt when some of us are granted this freedom (radical immams) while others aren't (i.e. racists). Because then regular people on the street stop believing and voting for liberal democrats. Liberal democrats criticizing freedom of speech (not granted to racists would seem to make you happy) and democratic process (i.e. electoral college, brexit) -- they start looking like they don't care about their own values (like freedom of speech and democracy). You can't call yourself liberal and then be anti-free speech to this or another group or perceived group. This makes you look as if you don't understand the words you use to describe ideas you believe in it. You are not liberal if you ban freedom of speech to racist. Period, and of story. Look up liberal in dictionary.
This is one of the reasons why people vote Trump or AfD or Social Democrats in Sweden. They recognize mainstream political parties as anti-democratic (ignoring EU referendums) and anti-liberal (opposition to freedom of speech). So if all the political spectrum in anti-liberal and anti-democratic why not to vote for a party that at least isn't hypocritical about it?
No, for the same reason I wouldn't go there and say priests are wrong in the middle-ages. I would be be killed by the mob. Burnt like a witch.
You can't create social environment, like in middle-ages, where discussing certain topis, like racial differences at universities, results in loosing employment, getting "killed by the mob", and then demand I come out. This is crazy! You mr. inquisition are not going to set me up into this trap.
And, yes, I know you would love to see me burnt at the stake because of my love of science and my scientific believe that there are differences between sexes and there are differences between races. But I will not give you the pleasure mr. grand inquisitor.
Human genome has been decoded since 2003. This is science. If your ideology destroys it, then you are inquisition. And we are living in new middle-ages. Not to believe in sex differences? Not to believe in race differences? 16 years after the genome has been decoded? Why? Because you have your ideology like some 600 years ago had their religion? And what do I care?
Wouldn't it be fun to watch movie having fun about Mohammed in Sweden? Or we became some kind of cultural caliphat in the mean time? Joking about Jesus respecting Mohammed? There is a reason for which our era is referred to as "new middle-ages" by some philosophers.
Sad.
By the way there is much more comedy material in Mohammed case too.
As we know since Freud hypocrisy is this what makes the best jokes. I.e. saint God messiah who is a war lord and peadophile in the meantime. Try making movie about that.