Sunday, February 28, 2010
Artists group protests NAC’s use of ‘offensive’ language
The Globe and Mail: "In response to objections from a group of disabled artists, the National Arts Centre has posted an explanation for a reference to “legless cripples” that appears in the NAC’s online promotional material for a just-opened play. But the Radical Disabled Artists Network is still waiting for an apology for language the artists consider offensive."
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9 comments:
The fact that this time of issue is still news worthy is a little bit ridiculous. The fact that a modern day company was not smart enough to foresee issues that might arise from having a show described as about "legless cripples" is almost moronic enough that it warrants jail time. It is one thing to use offensive language within the actual work that is being performed, but to not think before using an exact quote in promotional areas goes beyond a lapse of judgment, it shows that someone switched their brains off.
I really don't see how summing up the play in such a manner will drum up an audience, and if it does, it would probably be the wrong audience. Normally, I am not one for being politically correct, or having much sympathy for those who are offended by words due to their political correctness. When Rahm Emanuel used the term retarded, and Sarah Palin demanded his resignation, all it did was make me hate HER even more. In this situation though, using the term legless cripples so many times over, even if it was quote, just seems to drum up conflict, and not really add much. I think the publicity could have done well without those words.
I always feel disappointed at the response and pretext by organizations. This is a typical reaction to the public, when large organizations raise an issue. They try to protect themselves by resisting public apology.
The mass communication by media has a significant power of affecting the opinions in societies, so that a single person or even certain group of people cannot overrule that effect easily.
Hopefully, I can believe there are more people who have common sense, so they know what is appropriate or not. However, the one in the media industry should be really careful not to offend people who are in the weaker position. Anyway, I think the phrase they used for the advertisement is just thoughtless even as a promotion copy. There must be more attractive phrase to draw the audience to the theatre.
Hmmmm.... really? Why are they even writing about this? It's offensive, we get it. How often is theatre, or the world of art in general, offensive? Where's the line between artistic expression and free speech and the feelings of the audience? It's not a new argument. It's been beaten to death over and over. You can't please everyone, and I guess sometimes that person you didn't please (or all 140 of them) make the news.
Whether or not NAC thinks they did anything wrong or not, when you offend someone you should generally apologize to them. It's fine that NAC thinks it's artistically critical to include this language, but in this day and age of hyper political correctness it would have been wise to state some sort of explanation on its website. This would have avoided the conflict; however, maybe NAC is pleased with the publicity it is getting because of the conflict.
I think this was just stupidity on the company's part. I think that they just didn't think before they used the term "legless cripples" on their site, I highly doubt that they meant to use it to hurt anyones feelings. I agree with Chapel that this has been beaten to death. I think that the company probably realizes that what it did was wrong, and they did change it. Everything is definitely over political now...
This is one of those issues that I simply shake my head at. This could have both been completely avoided and never made an issue of in the first place. Using non-PC language is really not that big of a deal in my opinion--yes, people are going to get offended, just depending on what group you insult you'll get a bigger reaction. As for the company performing the work, not putting the language in quotations and citing it in reference to another of the artist's work was just careless.
This feels like one of those cases where the PR people just sort of figured no one would make a big deal of their tagline, and are backtracking to not get themselves sued down the road.
This is just one of those moments you kind of shake your head at. I feel like if the PR folks had taken the time to either cite or phrase this a little differently, we wouldn't be having this problem, and it's not as if this group has an issue with the play itself, it's just with the promotional material. A little more time and care on somebody's part, perhaps, and some realization that this might offend someone, and maybe we wouldn't be talking about this.
Once again we run into two opposing points of view, one being the theater who wants to maintain artistic integrity while producing the play, the other being the public who are sensitive to inappropriate references to the disabled whether intended or not. My guess is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle - I don't think that anyone in the PR department for the theater would really overlook the backlash, instead I think that they were counting on it. This can transform a play that would have gone nearly unnoticed into a media frenzy for a bit, and while it might not all be positive publicity it's still publicity.
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