Offending at Internet Speed

We awoke to a headline in the Times of India, “YouTube Angers I&B with Gandhi Video.” With Danish cartoons causing such agitation just about a year ago, our attention was pulled to read further.

The article revealed that the Information & Broadcast ministry was outraged with YouTube and two Indian networks for airing a video by a 29 year old New York-based comedian Gautham Prasad. The video, called “Time to Get Sexy,” is a lame, one man act. With a scull cover, dark round glasses and fake nose to look like Mahatma Gandhi, Prasad is pole dancing, garbed in a cotton thong and dangling pasties. Indian government officials stated the video was an “assault on the dignity of the Father of the Nation.” The apology demanded from the Indian TV stations by the government I&B minister was quick and unqualified. YouTube was another matter. There within lies the new dilemma in our wired, global community.

YouTube is sensitive to such issues. To access the video, YouTube requires one to login with their YouTube credentials and acknowledgment that they will be exposed to material that the YouTube community considers objectionable. The I&B minister threatened to block access to the YouTube website. The video is still available to the global community to amuse or offend.

Offensive “art” is not new. In the early 1500’s, Michelangelo tussled with Vatican officials over exposed genitalia in figures in the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgment. Considered as immoral and obscene, the Vatican initiated the Fig-Leaf Campaign and engaged Daniele da Volterra to strategically paint fig leaves on the master’s fresco.

In the late 1980’s, Andres Serrano’s infamous Piss Christ, a photograph of a crucifix submerged in his urine, provoked wide ire in the US. Threats to end funding for the arts were captured in the congressional record. Almost at the same time, the opening at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Robert Maplethorpe: The Perfect Moment photography exhibit resulted in the indictment of the center’s staff. Maplethorpe’s 1978 bathtub photo was just a warm-up for photos in the exhibit some called obscene and immoral.

Through the centuries, fig-leaf painting, threats to suspend funding, legal intimidation, press room closings, transmitter lockouts and website blocking were tools of the offended. With ubiquitous Internet access, expanding WiFi networks and more versatile mobile phones information, both comforting and offensive, everything will be increasingly available.

Is access to so much information a bad thing? Maybe a murky understanding of our universal right to have access to information and our lagging ability to absorb so much data should be our greater concerns.

How many chanting Muslim zealots in February 2006 brandishing banners threatening murder and beheading of Westerners actually saw the obscene and immoral Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad? As offensive as they may have been to our Islamic brethren, the cartoons unearthed unsettling contradictions in the use of Holy Scriptures about sending fellow global citizens to their eternal rest by bomb-laden “martyrs.” Without the continuous challenge of conflicting ideas, the skills to consume, judge and absorb new information condemns one to yesterday’s news.

With more than two centuries governed by a Bill of Rights that protects “the freedom of speech,” Americans have acquired some skill in juggling competing ideas. There is no protected right to cry “Fire!” in a crowded theater, but a freedom to speak one’s mind has provided a healthy, if at times uncomfortable, tension in the exchange of ideas. Comedian Stephen Colbert openly roasting (some would say ridiculing) our president, who sat less than 10 feet away, is an exercise of that freedom.

Freedom of speech means some of us may be offended with the burning of our national flag by protesters, but we are all compelled, offender and offended, to stand together to defend the right to do so.

So what will become of Gautham Prasad’s “Time to Get Sexy” YouTube video? In a globally-wired world, we do have choices on what information to consume. The YouTube hit rate for “Time to Get Sexy” stands at about 35,000. On the other hand, The YouTube video “World Freehand Circle Drawing Champion” that shows Alexander Overwijk drawing a perfect freehand circle one meter in diameter in less than a second has over 1 million hits. Let’s hope geometry does not offend any race, creed or religion.