Free to offend
Jerry Sadowitz's show looks awful but being offended by what he says is no reason to stop him from saying it
FROM everything I’ve seen over the last week, I think I can say with confidence that I will never pay to watch a Jerry Sadowitz show.
In a typically tasteless performance a few years ago, the Scots American magician and comedian tipped a fellow performer dressed as Superman out of a wheelchair in a “joke” aimed at the late paraplegic actor Christopher Reeve. As he did in his show last week in Edinburgh, he sometimes exposes himself on stage. I can think of better ways to spend an evening.
Mr Sadowitz is the founding father of a group of darker than dark comics such as Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr. They take aim at our prudery and conventions. The aim is to give offence. They get a laugh from breaking taboos. I find it all a little staid. Breaking social norms in search of an embarrassed giggle is the oldest trick in the comedian’s book; think of court jesters in medieval times prodding fun at their monarch. Performers like Mr Sadowitz who mine the limits of our squeamishness leave me cold. Give me Morecambe and Wise any time.
On one level then, I couldn’t be less bothered about Mr Sadowitz’s career prospects. But this week, after the comedian had his show cancelled at the Edinburgh Fringe following complaints over its content, I find myself rallying to his cause. For while Mr Sadowitz may be grotesque, he was silenced by an illiberal ethic in our society, now becoming a dominant ideology, that is far more dangerous than anything he says to a paying audience.
To recap: on Friday night, Mr Sadowitz opened a two-night set in Edinburgh. Its title “Not for Anyone” gave the audience a clue as to the nature of its offensive content. But the following morning, the artistic director Anthony Alderson of the Pleasance, which put on the show, issued a statement. “The Pleasance is a venue that champions freedom of speech and we do not censor comedians’ material”, he began. Despite that, he then pronounced that Mr Sadowitz’s performance the night before had been “not acceptable” and that it therefore was being binned. Clarifying his position a day later, Mr Alderson argued that the act was “extreme in its racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny”. “Numerous” audience members were said to have have walked out after feeling “uncomfortable and unsafe”. He concluded: “In a changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged.”
Firstly, let’s note that even on the stage, there are plenty of limits to what you can say within the law. Even Mr Sadowitz can’t just say anything he likes: indeed, in the late 1980s, he had to withdraw a recording of an Edinburgh show in which he had described Jimmy Savile as a paedophile (an ironic case of non-defamation as it turned out). Neither we nor Mr Sadowitz can use speech to slander people or threaten them or issue death threats. Furthermore, in Scotland, new legislation will soon set out a new offence of “stirring up hatred” against groups deemed vulnerable, including ethnic minorities. The statute book makes the limits very clear.
Did Mr Sadowitz break these limits in his performance on Friday night? The answer to that is no. His act was offensive, that much is obvious. But being offended is not a good enough reason to shut somebody up. It is not a cause for you to ring 999. That is especially the case when, as with Mr Sadowitz, his stated purpose is to be deliberately offensive. Not to labour the point but Mr Sadowitz puts on an act. People voluntarily pay to watch it in an enclosed space. They engage in an act of suspended reality. If you don’t like it, you can leave. If you like it, you can stay. This isn’t about a mad man charging down Princess Street threatening to kill you.
Mr Sadowitz didn’t break the law. Rather, he found himself cancelled because of the shifting mores in our society which are now replacing the law as the determinant for what is deemed acceptable to say. This new culture declares that, when deciding what can be said, peoples’ feelings about words are the most important factor. It rules that, if enough people’s feelings have been hurt, then speech must be constrained. This rising balloon of hurt feelings is only punctured when the perpetrator of the words is either taken off air or dragged forward to retract them.
Perhaps the confused moral logic behind this explains why the Pleasance decided to throw more, equally illogical, reasons for their decision. Mr Sadowitz’s show was at variance with their “values”, the claimed – though given they knew all about Mr Sadowitz’s show beforehand, this can be dismissed as complete bunkum. Then there is that meaningless assertion that the world is changing and what was deemed in bounds last year no longer is. It is pure flannel. My strong suspicion is that the Pleasance is hiding another reason for cancelling Mr Sadowitz which it won’t admit to. The truth is that all public organisations now fear being caught in the offence vortex. They fear a social media pile-on of activists and angry liberals. They are terrified of associated with some controversial opinion and the damage it might do to their reputation. In short, decisions to cancel people and cut down on free speech are often less a decision taken on principle, than on PR: a kind of self-censoring exercise designed to ensure you avoid the pitchforks and maintain your progressive credentials.
We see the same cowardice over JK Rowling. Only this weekend, she received death threats over her defence of women’s’ rights yet has received scant support from many of her fellow artists. They fear being labelled transphobic. And we need no reminding of the lame support offered by many in the liberal establishment to Sir Salman Rushdie whose own defence of free speech currently sees him lying in a hospital bed.
Mr Sadowitz’s show looks awful, but I know what is worse: it’s hypocritical corporate organisations and public bodies fleeing from a defence of free speech, while shouting over their shoulder “it’s because of my values”. Or worse, offering those lame weasel words that a phrase or an action has been deemed “not acceptable” – and must therefore be surpassed. To whom, it is never said.
I couldn’t care less whether Mr Sadowitz never fills another theatre again. And it is entirely for theatres to decide whether to book him or not. But what this affair has exposed is the moral confusion and cowardice at the heart of our liberal progressive culture. It preaches tolerance but stamps down on anything subversive. It claims to uphold freedom of expression while cancelling anything that might upset people. It preaches about its values, when its most conspicuous value is to scarper from anything that might be deemed controversial for fear of being on the ‘wrong’ side of public opinion.
Mr Sadowitz isn’t a particularly attractive martyr. But if people are to be barred from speaking freely, we need better reasons that those which silence him this week.
ENDS
This article appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail, 17th May 2022