Hold Your Fire
Seek the company of people who, when left alone in a room with a tea cosy, will always try it on.
Billy Connolly – actor, comedian & writer.
We live in an era where it is astonishingly easy for pretty much anyone to be ‘cancelled’. Meantime many creative works being are being ‘corrected’ or ‘amended’ for not being compliant with what is considered acceptable.
In the last few months wordsmiths have been under fire including children’s writer Roald Dahl. It’s not his first time either. Descriptor words have been changed to remove any possible offence.
Roald Dahl originally described the Oompa Loompas from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as ‘small men’ but now they’ve been renamed ‘small people’.
Extra bits are also inserted to modify or change what Dhal wrote. In The Witches Dahl described the witches as being bald underneath their wigs. But now there’s an additional new sentence – ‘There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.’
Enid Blyton’s children’s books stand corrected regularly. And several exceptionally popular Australian children’s books have been cited as worthy of being banned. I’m hoping Eloise – from Kaye Thompson’s book series Eloise – doesn’t come under scrutiny.
Eloise is a six year old child who rather enjoys peaches in champagne. In Hilary Knight’s splendid drawing of her chaotic bedroom at New York’s Plaza hotel he’s depicted a large bottle of gin sitting on her bookshelf – next to a hack saw.
Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are being ‘updated’ once again. Sensitivity Consultants have been called in to sort the matter. What is defined as unacceptable is mooted as a universal truth – but how the judgements are made is an unknown.
American writer, the late Philip Roth, is regularly hauled over the coals for being vulgar, crude and misogynistic. Worth noting: Roth’s 2004 novel, The Plot Against America, finally negated the ongoing accusations that Roth was a Jewish anti-Semite. His novel focused on the deep terrors of anti-Semitism in America. And in 2011 President Obama presented Roth with a National Humanities Medal.
Meantime, Rap music lyrics seem to have passed on by largely unnoticed. And HBO’s fantasy epic Game of Thrones appears to have gotten away with all manner of rape, pillage and obscene violence.
Recently the Hollywood movie Babylon slid past uncorrected by sensitivity consultants. As New York critic Leah Greenblatt slyly described the movie, … It’s still three turgid, clattering hours of nudity, depravity, and mislaid alligators, but also, you know, art.
Yet again the late, great Pablo Picasso is in bad odour for his alleged misogynistic attitude to women. His huge abstract mural Guernica – depicting the horrors of the Spanish Civil War – is widely known as a powerful statement about the moral decrepitude and obscenity of war. I find it bizarre that Guernica and Picasso’s many works might be destined for oblivion.
I’ve been reading Billy Connolly’s marvellous 2021 autobiography, Windswept and Interesting. Connolly prides himself on saying exactly what he wants to say. He doesn’t mention ever having been cancelled.
Connelly is unapologetic about what he talked about during his unscripted stage shows. His comedy has always been about characters and life rather than the telling of scripted jokes. Connelly’s advice in the prologue to his autobiography is – ‘You have to genuinely not give a fuck for what any other living human being thinks of you.’
photo: Billy Connolly riding his purple motorbike in Australia’s desert region the mid nineties.