Satire can be a mighty weapon when humor is used to puncture the pretensions of the privileged, the wrongdoing of the elite.
When directed at the downtrodden, those who struggle to overcome hardship, satire mutates to something less noble. It becomes simple meanness, petty and cruel.
Transcript:
It was a hard time for Christians. The oppression ranged from public executions by fire and sword to the disdain of polite society. The cross was more than a mere symbol of shame. Crucifixion was a form of execution reserved for the most despised of criminals.
Christians had been accused of setting the great fire that consumed large sections of Rome itself. In response, the Emperor Nero had Christians burned to death on crosses to light one of his huge nighttime garden parties. The arson accusation remained credible to Romans for many years, until it was eventually supplanted by a rumor that Nero himself had hired thugs to start the destruction of the city.
It was during this horrific time that some anonymous critic carved a bit of anti-Christian graffiti on a Roman wall. The mocking representation eventually became famous. It is called the Alexamenos graffito. It is the oldest known surviving depiction of Jesus.
The image is now an historical artifact. At the time it was engraved, it was intended to be an insult. The caption, in rough Greek, is an approximation of “Alexamenos worships his God.” The figure in the drawing is hanging from a cross. Superimposed in place of the head of the dying Jesus is the head of a donkey.
During an era that oscillated between deadly persecution and costly social denigration, we don’t know which at the moment of the engraving, it was the heartless mocking of a downtrodden people.
If the drawing had originated a century or two later, after Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, it might have been an act of reckless courage. The tables by then had turned. The insult could have been considered a form of crude satire, if it had possessed the additional virtue of being funny.
Historical context ought to matter as we consider satire.
Shortly after the murders of several staff members of the satiric French magazine Charlie Hebdo, a pastor friend thought about a sermon expressing solidarity with the I-Am-Charlie crowds marching in France. The magazine had been targeted by extremists who murdered in the name of Islam. The crowds welcomed and embraced those Muslims who joined the march against the killings. Special recognition was expressed for the police officer who had been killed defending the magazine and another man who had successfully rescued several patrons of a Jewish market. Both men were practicing Muslims.
My pastor friend asked my opinion. I had seen only a half dozen or so depictions of the Prophet Muhammad from Charlie Hebdo. One was the Prophet stripped, in the nude. In context, accompanied by translations, none of the cartoons seemed purely derogatory. But they joined a few images of Jews in crude caricature. The messages themselves were specific in targeting extremists. Still, that subtlety would be easy for a casual, non-French-speaking observer, like myself, to miss.
I had no idea whether they were at all representative. I was told similar cartoons composed only a very small part of what had been published. A lot may have been lost in translation, but they did not seem at all funny. I wondered if this was actually satire of some puffed up and powerful pretension. Or was it, rather, a denigration of a vulnerable religious minority? I simply could not tell.
Much later, the well reasoned, televised, explanations by the publishers of Charlie Hebdo are convincing, even compelling. Still, I am still not quite there. The images seem rough and undifferentiated.
But I needed to answer my religious friend. As crowds proclaimed “I am Charlie” perhaps this was an opportunity to make a transcendent point. We did not have to be Charlie to offer full throated support for the right of Charlie to publish without fear of violence. I think my friend dropped the idea.
I thought of Charlie Hebdo as I heard about the deaths of heavily armed domestic terrorists in Texas. A couple of apparent fanatics tried to shoot their way into an art contest of sorts. They had fired their weapons at an off-duty police officer who was acting as a security guard. According to reports, the officer was wounded in the ankle, but was able to shoot and kill both intruders.
Noted anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller had sponsored the event. It was a competition to see who could produce the funniest, most degrading image of the Prophet Muhammad.
Pamela Geller is not an unfamiliar name to many Americans. She has been on a relentless campaign against Islam ever since that morning in 2001 when planes loaded with victims were hijacked and flown into buildings loaded with victims. After the shootings, she insisted that she was not, in fact, anti-Muslim. She loved Muslims. She just felt that followers of Islam were inherently savage people.
Painting all members of a recognizable group with the same brush is an ancient human trait. We can find that mark of profound sin much farther back than Nero and his cruel garden parties, farther back than the crude drawing of the dying Jesus with the head of an ass.
It strikes me as reasonable to defend the right of anti-Muslim activists to depict insulting images of the Prophet Muhammad without joining their ranks. They should be defended from censorship. They must be protected from violence.
I support the rights of Pamela Geller.
I cannot bring myself to even think the words: I am Pamela.