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IRVINE WELSH: Are we more offended than ever these days?

I think being offended is like a marker of panic, isn't it?

Are artists and writers running scared?

Is creative risk too risky?

There was death threats sent to the gallery.

If men make something provocative, it's intellectualised,

whereas when women do it, it's like, "What an attention-seeker."

Is artistic licence too easily cancelled?

Who the fuck is Titania McGrath?

TITANIA:Cancel culture is a myth invented by fascists.

If you see anyone disagreeing with this statement,

please send me their name and employment details.

Petition, pile-on, reply, mute, block.

Busy putting the "I" back into identity?

You can't say "fuck", and you can't say "cunt", right?

You fast forward to now, and the comedians are getting a list.

Writing books, stuck in a room with people who don't exist,

I make the occasional cheeky sorties into social media.

In and out, don't look back.

I think, you know, the most creative thing right now

is to fucking get off social media.

What do YOU find offensive?

People have disgusting views, they get away with them.

They have power, they use that power.

In the world of art, isn't it the divine and sacred rule

that anything should go?

LAUGHTER

Artists are definitely self-censoring,

and I think the scale of that problem is much bigger

than people recognise.

After all, if it provokes us into thought, isn't that what art is for?

Writing novels, I've had a long and cherished reputation

for giving literary offence.

Police raided UK book stores to confiscate copies of Filth,

and Trainspotting was removed from the Booker Prize shortlist

after two middle-class female judges objected to it on grounds

they couldn't quite express.

This made me extremely happy.

I think if someone can't express why they are viscerally offended,

it's usually to do with that great taboo of social class.

Now offence is voiced online.

We shout at each other on social media,

holding high the people we love and anxious to denigrate,

rather than discourse with those who don't share our views.

OVERLAPPING VOICES

CHATTER STOPS

How wonderful would a chamber of silence be,

freed from the endless pollution of nonsense

belligerently spewed out between people in ear-splitting,

mind-numbing feedback loops?

But, in reality, silence, no matter how seductive,

is the sound of horror.

This is my idea of fucking hell.

Silence is inertia. It's death.

It means we've given up on the dynamic that progresses humanity...

..genuine dissent.

And when any organism stops going forward, it dies.

Art is a historic marker of social change,

the engine of expression that shifted morality and taste.

In Britain, art has rarely enraged public opinion

more than the explosive Sensation exhibition.

It propelled the Chapman Brothers,

as part of a superstar generation of British artists,

to global infamy.

What is it about Ronald McDonald that makes him

a kind of bigger cunt than the Ku Klux Klan?

JAKE LAUGHS Well...

As a kind of iconic sort of...

Well, they're all iconic cunts, aren't they?

You know, this is like...

Picasso has his Blue Period, we have our Cunt Period.

We both kind of emerged in the '90s, basically,

and seemed a lot more possibilities then.

Would Sensation have the impact now?

Because I'm just thinking about Trainspotting, for example,

I don't think that would be published now.

I don't think anybody would be interested, basically.Yeah.

But I... Yeah... Yeah, I agree.

The way in which that interest flared up in a situation

where the media hadn't fully got to its pace yet,

it couldn't happen now, because the media is so ubiquitous.

I think you even had an 18 certificate in a gallery.Yeah.

You know, we had this idea of,

how can you make a work of art that can't be redeemed?

All these horrible works of art that you see,

of shit being smeared, they can always be recuperated

into some notion of poetics and beauty and whatever.

Like, how do you make a sculpture that can never be recuperated?

That no-one can ever say anything positive about, right?

And we're like, "Well, what about, you know, Fuck Face?"

"Yeah, that seems pretty irredeemable."

"Right, OK, what would that be?"

"Well, make it a child as well, so it's even more irredeemable."

You know, setting up this kind of series of interpretive blunders

for someone to make,

but it's a child, it's a girl,

it's got ten heads, it's got a penis and vaginas.

It can't be reduced to anything human.

It's not a child, it's a mannequin.

But, of course, it gets recuperated, because it becomes an icon

of people's capacity to tolerate even the worst thing.

Have you ever consciously tried to offend as an artist?

Do you see that as your job, or do you see that as just something

that happens as a result of what you're doing,

or what you're engaging with?

The work is funnier than it is offensive.

Like, being offended in front of other people

shows that you have some kind of moral substance to you and stuff.

I always have conversations with journalists who say, you know,

"People are offended by the work." I say, "Are you offended?"

They say, "I'm not offended!"

They're always talking about someone else who's offended.

A deferral to some other idiot

who's being offended, but they're not the idiot.

There's a kind of abstract view, isn't there?

That there is this person out there, this body of people out there,

who are gonna be offended.

It's a kind of British cultural thing.

It goes right back to the Mary Whitehouse thing,

a silent majority of people...

But we all know... we know who those people are,

those people who are, on the outside, offended,

but on the inside, their kind of predilections for, sort of, like,

little boys, and, you know, Catholic Church and stuff.

These are the people who are offended,

but what maybe these are are kind of melodramatic ways

to cover up the more kind of...

the dark underbelly of what they're really actually up to, you know?

It becomes a bit of an index of something a little bit suspicious

when someone's really that offended by something.Yes.

Do you have any limits?

Any time where you've done something and think,

"Fuck, this is over the top"? Erm...

No.

IRVINE LAUGHS

Amazing. Uncanny, isn't it? IRVINE CHUCKLES

And I think it's proved by the fact...

They actually are, aren't they?

You never saw Winston and Adolf in the same room together.Yeah.

It's like a Kodak moment, you know?

These are monuments to immortality.

It's all bronze. The whole thing's bronze.

So you enhance Hitler's artwork, or desecrated the...

I was gonna say, "enhance" is very complimentary!

THEY LAUGH

Yeah, yeah, so we bought a whole bunch of Hitler watercolours,

and we thought, "What would be offensive to Hitler?"

Well, so you look at that and think, "Well, I reckon... rainbows."

You know? So we start painting rainbows on these Hitler things.

But I think...

I remember the funny thing is that Dinos was a little bit more cautious

about doing it. I think he was a bit kind of squeamish.

So we got threats from neo-Nazis and complaints from Jewish quarters

about desecrating things which had been kept as documents,

which I kind of fully understand,

but I can't really think of any time in history where you have neo-Nazis

and Jewish people... In agreement.

In agreement, yeah. Offended by the same thing.

Yeah, yeah. Erm...

That's quite a result, in a way, isn't it?

No, I'm not really sure...

I can't really work out if it's a good or a bad thing, but, you know,

I'm going with the idea that offending neo-Nazis is always good.

Is there a way that art from modern artists now can be as provocative?

Who's really provoked by a work of art?

Unless it falls over on your toe and hurts it.

It's like a softened humanism

seems to have seeped into culture generally,

where the idea of the individual and the identity of the person

has now become predominant, you know,

so that every bit of art and bit of literature you read or see,

it seems to be so kind of preoccupied

by a notion of authenticity.

I think the idea of reducing things to identity is dangerous.

But understandable, understandable. Yeah.

Hi, Kate. How are you doing? I'm good, Irvine. Nice to see you.

Yeah, I've just been to see Jake Chapman in his studio,

and all these little Nazis and Ku Klux Klans and Ronald McDonalds.

Yeah, they're not afraid to go to some dark places,

the Chapman Brothers.

That exhibition, the Sensation show, in '97,

really put them on the map as dark artists.

And, actually, it was 60 years earlier, the Nazis hosted

one of the most successful exhibitions of all time,

and for them, it was an exhibition about what is offensive in art.

For them, modern art was completely offensive,

so they've got Picasso in that exhibition, Kandinsky...

Marc Chagall, yeah? Yeah.

People that we think are great.

And for them, it was appalling. It was all in poor taste.

The artists who were in the Degenerate Exhibition

weren't trying to be offensive. They were just making modern art.

If we fast forward to 1969, Gilbert & George,

the artistic duo, they wanted to be offensive,

but they do it in a very clever way.

They wear these very dapper suits,

they look like the epitome of British gentlemen,

and yet, their self-portrait is called

George The Cunt And Gilbert The Shit.

And it's literally emblazoned on the portrait,

so, of course, it had to be censored.

So they were getting away with it because of their appearance.

In 1989, Dread Scott, a young artist,

still a student of the Art Institute of Chicago,

he makes a work which becomes national news.

He takes a flag, he asks the question,

what is the proper way to display the US flag?

Some people stood on the flag to write in the guestbook,

and the very act of doing that was so unpatriotic

that the Art Institute received bomb threats,

and he received death threats.

And to this day, you can't display this work,

although it is such an important, powerful work of conceptual art.

But it has no home because it's just so incendiary.

It's the most offensive thing to people.

Just like Dread Scott's flag that can't be exhibited,

there's a painting, which was painted in 1866 by Gustave Courbet,

it's called the Origine Du Monde. Very poetic title.

It was seen as fine when it was painted, a love token,

and now it's causing problems.

In 2011, Facebook was taken to court by a Facebook user,

whose account was deleted for using that image as their profile picture.

Didn't a writer in France use it as his dust jacket?

Yeah, and then the police stormed the book shop.

It's just a vagina!

Someone who knows all about the sort of loaded power

of women's bodies, how people feel that they should behave and look

and be seen in certain ways only is a young British artist, Sarah Maple.

She comes from a Muslim background,

so her imagery is even more provocative and taboo

because of this religious context.

She certainly uses offensiveness, but she does it in, I think,

a very elegant way.

Can new art still cut through, provoke thought,

or is its existence and meaning doomed to be lost

in the overcrowded landscape of offence and opinion?

Sarah, your art suggests that you're not frightened to take risks,

and this was your first exhibit of painting, Haram.

I'm from a mixed heritage background,

so my mum was Muslim and raised me as a Muslim,

and my dad isn't.

In Islam, like, pigs are the most, you know, haram thing.

And it's funny, because people can break loads of other rules,

like drinking, all the other things,

but eating pork is, like, the one thing that you don't do.

So, for me, it was, like, the symbolism of that.

I can't say I went into it, saying,

"Oh, I don't think it's gonna offend anyone."

I knew that it was a provocative thing.

I sort of put it out there to kind of see what would happen,

what the reaction would be.

And what was the reaction?

It was in the exhibition, and it sort of had no reaction.

It was only when somebody wrote about it in The Times, I think,

and almost kind of hyped it up, like, "There's this painting,

"and there's a woman in a hijab holding a pig,

"and it's gonna be so offensive to Muslims," and all this stuff.

And then, it was only that that triggered it

and people started talking about it,

and then there was a brick thrown through the gallery window,

and there was death threats sent to the gallery.

It was quite a tough time, actually. It was quite a traumatic experience.

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, thinking,

"Is this worth it? I'm putting myself on the line here for art."

SHE LAUGHS

Erm... yes, I do, sometimes, yeah! THEY LAUGH

Do you feel that it's the job of art to provoke in that way?

Not all artists are interested in that.

Not all artists care to make a statement or whatever,

but, for me, art is about talking about what's going on,

identity politics, everything happening in the world.

For me, I want to respond to that, and I want to poke away at things.

Some of the injustices and stuff that's going on are so blatant,

and we are so used to living around them,

and living around sexism and things like that,

that sometimes you just have to point it out,

and then it's, people more shocked that you've pointed out something

that's really obvious.

Are people reacting against this because it's, you know,

offensive art in itself?

Or is it because a woman has the kind of audacity

to do something like this?

I feel like with men, if they make something provocative,

it's intellectualised, whereas when women do it, it's like,

"What an attention-seeker." That's the reaction that it feels like.

So then I get more annoyed, so then I'm doing it, poking it more.Right.

Because people are saying, "How dare you?" to me,

and I'll say, "How dare you?" back, basically.Yeah.

That is my... It is really annoying.

Just a side point, it is really annoying.

I see it happen to women artists all the time.

They make this amazing work, and then it's just like,

"Oh, they're just attention-seeking."

That's the one thing.

Is provocation addictive?

It is, because I think there's part of me that likes going...

Like, poking at people and seeing how they come back.

I think there's part of me that wants to annoy people,

because the thing I'm annoying them about is something

that's annoying about them, you know?

Do you think provocation's addictive?

Not at all, no, no. No? Really?!

Yeah, I think it is.

I mean, I wrote one book, Marabou Stork Nightmares,

and there was a kind of a very graphic and horrible rape scene,

but it was important to the protagonist and antagonist,

because that determined their behaviour,

the two people's behaviour right through the whole book.

I also wrote a dog torture scene.

I had one letter saying that this rape scene was horrendous

and over the top, and I had...

you know, I still get them today, about 20 years later,

all these letters about this dog torture scene.

So, of course, I wrote a dog torture scene

in every other book for the next five or six books.

A signature move, basically, you know?

I think a lot of that was I've kind of hit a rich theme,

a cheap and easy way to get attention,

so I'd come up with a more grotesque dog torture scene.Mm.

And I actually like dogs as well, so it was quite hard to write.

Sometimes I think,

"If you're offended, what is wrong with being offended?

"If you're upset, why can't you just be offended and upset a bit?"

If I'm challenging someone's view on feminism or something...

..why are people so worried to be challenged?

I mean, what is people's problem? You know?

THEY LAUGH

I sometimes wonder if people saying they're offended is a way

of controlling other people. Yeah.

So, "I'm offended, so you should be quiet now."

With some of the work that's had difficult feedback,

I think maybe I've hidden those away more.

Like, for example,

this one has been sitting in storage for about five years or something.

Right. It's been...

Like, cos I know that it's an awkward one,

so I think, maybe subconsciously, I don't show the one with the pig

and stuff, because you're not really consciously thinking about that,

but maybe you do end up censoring yourself in some way.

This is the one that I find most challenging, for some reason.

I don't even know why, but I do.

It's called Untitled With Skirts Up,

and it's about that whole thing of when you're a little girl,

you're sexualised, and you wanna grow up,

and then when you're a grown woman, you have to be younger.

It's a challenge for all women, I think.

I felt kind of, um...

..uneasy and puzzled.

Is it a kind of sexist patriarchy on my part, you know?

That's really fascinating. It makes me think...

When you were talking there, I thought,

"What can I do next that's similar? That's going to..."

Mind starting whirring, then! "What can I do?"

So, finally, what is this piece about?

This is an installation where you can not be offended any more,

and you can not be stressed about anything you're seeing.

You go in here, and you're just transported into

a nice, safe, cosy space.

RELAXING MUSIC PLAYS

Right, safe space. Where's mine?

Easy. Let's get back to the pub.

Not the chain corporation, the proper boozer,

a place where we can talk face-to-face

with a little tolerance and respect.

We used to argue and debate in pubs, not online.

It's not a faceless troll sitting opposite you,

it's another human being.

Fancy that, a comedian, fresh from the front line.

Art offended the over-sensitive in the 20th century,

but now comedy is the battleground.

A right-wing comedian? What?!

That's fuckin' out there.

A comedian that votes Tory in itself just sounds...

It sounds like a joke, don't it?

Like, even though we know that it's not, right?

You know, there's the people that admit it and the people...

And there's the people...

There'd be no Tories at all if you had to admit it.

And that's what's strange at the moment,

is someone like me is able to seem, to some people, edgy,

when, actually, I think, in truth,

I've got views in line with a hell of a lot of the country.

And, look, I respect whatever your politics are.

Let's be honest, British democracy is often about a choice

between least shit of two options. LAUGHTER

Like, you're gonna get waterboarded,

but you get a choice between sparkling or still.

That is essentially... That's it. LAUGHTER

I think, amongst working-class people,

people on the political right,

there's a kind of left-ish kind of...

you know, I don't really agree with these terms,

but there's a sort of middle-class cultural police force.Mm.

So, who are these people, where do they come from,

and how do they exert that power?

I think that, sometimes, a lot of the things

that you're not allowed to say are born of risk aversion, right?

So, suddenly a subject becomes a little bit taboo,

producers, production companies and channels just think,

"You know what? Let's just swerve that," right?

Fine, you can swerve it.

Eventually, what you end up with is a narrow band of subjects,

where the comedian is either...

It's the usual attack on the Tories, etc,

or they're talking about their own neuroses and stuff like that,

whereas I'd rather not narrow the scope like that.

But, you know, comedy clubs are probably still, I think,

one of the most uncensored places that you can go.

Give me a cheer if you voted Leave. LOUD CHEER

Remain. SOME CHEERING

That sounded like a slight majority for Leave.

I think we'll stick with it. LAUGHTER

We should be more positive about being offended, do you think?

Well, it's an emotion, isn't it?

The idea that comedians should shy away from it is a bit weird,

because, like, there was that old rule with comedians,

if you were doing a corporate, they would say,

"You can't say the following words.

"You can't say 'fuck', and you can't say 'cunt'."

Fast forward to now, and the comedians are getting a list,

you know what I mean? "Don't say..."

And, to be honest, they probably say, "Yeah, go with the swear words,

"but here's another list of identity-based things

"that you should avoid."

There is gonna be a civil war between young people and old people,

and... it'll be a very weird-looking war, I'll give you that.

LAUGHTER

Cos young people like to get up very late, don't they?

And old people like to go to bed very early, so, like,

war will only be possible between the hours of two and four

in the afternoon. LAUGHTER

Is social media part of the problem?

To me, it's undemocratic, social media.

That's my biggest issue with it.

It has this power that's disproportionate.

It's not earned, in a lot of cases. It's seen through a reductive prism.

And then, for working-class people, normal people living their lives,

these debates that have been hothoused online,

whether it's about trans or about statues or whatever,

then they come out fully-formed,

and people are supposed to get on board with that.

Whereas, once upon a time, you know, progression,

social progression on things, like homosexuality, was had...

We were all in on the debate, at least.

You know, personally, someone identifies as a woman,

that's how I'll address them.

I think the individual should be at rights to do that.

But now 5% of people are thrashing it out online,

and then, suddenly, after four days of that,

at the point it comes to the general public

is where you're hearing things like,

you know, "Men can have periods, men can have babies." And that...

It's such a quantum leap in terms of the debate

that it takes a while to catch up.

And that sort of disconnect allows people to just say,

"Well, you know, I just don't feel part of the discourse any more."

Is that not an argument for a more educated populace,

so that people can actually join in the debate at a meaningful level?

I honestly think that people have just gotta grow a pair

when it comes to social media. I think they've gotta accept

that sometimes you will be the target of it,

but you've got to take a longer view

of how you shape opinions and affect social progress.

Not just a group of angry people came to a conclusion

and then demonised everyone they didn't agree with,

so let's quickly change something. You've gotta persuade people.

Twitter is a board game.

The objective is to gain as many followers as possible

and delude yourself

by pretending that this makes you important or relevant.

It's not a forum for debate.

"Famous straight white male mockingly devours

"an innocent chicken after dismembering

"its barely-cold carcass.

"This is why veganism must be made compulsory. #TrainspottingIsShit."

HE LAUGHS

But master this game, subvert it for your own means,

mock it with a message.

Make your point your way.

"There's no fucking meat in chicken."

Who the fuck is Titania McGrath?

OVERLAPPING CHATTER

Titania McGrath isn't real.

This social justice warrior is fictional,

the satirical creation of comedian Andrew Doyle.

She began as Twitter weaponised,

now manifesting on real-world comedy stages loaded up with woke jokes.

ANDREW DOYLE:I think people who are enamoured by the woke culture

are essentially utopian,

and they believe that if we can just control

everything that people say and everything that they think,

then everything would be perfect and there would be no racism,

no homophobia, and we'd live in this wonderful utopian society.

But it's not true. That's the thing that they won't accept.

So who is Titania? What's she about?

So, Titania is a social justice activist.

She's very young and very privileged economically,

but she likes to tell everyone how oppressed she is,

and she likes to go online and find things to be offended about, right?

So she goes out there, she'll pick fights,

and she'll say that whatever you could do, she could find offensive.

Whatever you could say.

Usually, she's offended on people's behalves.

I really think that if white people want to understand their privilege,

they really need to try identifying as Black every once in awhile.

LAUGHTER

I've been identifying as Black since February, and honestly,

the prejudice I have experienced is just horrific.

LAUGHTER

Is there a real Titania, or is it a composite?

There's a million of them. There's so many of them.

She's a certain type.

I think you will have recognised the type of person who finds offence

where there's nothing intended to be offensive at all,

and she'll just go for it.

It's a broader comment about the way that the social justice movement

is actually the enemy of social justice,

even though it calls itself "the social justice movement".

Who's in this gay community, right?

I'm in it, Martina Navratilova's in it...

LAUGHTER Ricky Martin.

Gok Wan. Is that a community? LAUGHTER

Is it? Or is that a travelling fucking freak show?

How has the comedy circuit changed

since you started getting involved in it?

Hugely, I think.

When I started stand-up, it was always a given that

in a stand-up comedy club, there is the risk of being offended.

Everyone knew that, audiences knew that, acts knew that.

The last Edinburgh show I did a couple of years ago,

a woman stood up, interrupted the show,

because I'd made a joke about Theresa May.

And she said I was being misogynistic.

Now, it was a joke that attacked her looks.

I said that she was looking haggard.

I said that she was starting to look like an NHS poster

warning about the dangers of dehydration.

And whereas, in the past, I think audiences would get

that there's a difference, there's a theatricality to stand-up,

that you don't take what that person is saying literally

and you don't assume that the comic behind the persona

believes everything they're saying,

but now they assume it's just literal declarations of the truth.

Well, I tell you, looking for authenticity from a comedian

is the last place you should go. Yeah.

Comedians lie all the time because jokes aren't literal...

Try novelists, like... Novelists, yeah, right!

Everything you type is a lie.

People give you latitude on certain things and not on others.Right.

If you write about killing somebody, they assume you've not done that.

But as soon as you write about sex, for example, that's it,

"This is your sex life." It's kind of splayed out.Yeah.

People get that with novels, though, and they get it with plays,

but they don't interrupt Macbeth because they're upset

by the infanticide. Because they get that it's not real.

But with a joke, they'll stand up in a comedy club and shout out,

"That's unacceptable, that's offensive."

As comedians and satirists,

we have to joke about the stuff that's going on.

We sort of have a responsibility to.

Have people have got the right to be offended?

Is it not a kind of human right that we have?Yeah, yeah.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being offended.Yeah.

I get offended all the time. It's fine. But I...

What do you do about...?

I distance myself from the thing that offends me, right?

That's, I think, something we've lost,

just because you're offended,

that doesn't mean that you have the right to change the whole world

to cater to your own particular sensibilities.

What you do is you deal with that offence yourself and move on.

The system is really simple.

Everyone should be allowed to say whatever they want,

people should be allowed to criticise or ridicule

or whatever in response, and once you are criticised,

you are free to take that criticism on board or simply ignore it.

That's the system, and that's the system that works.

You're kind of advocating liberal values, basically, yeah.

Liberal values, freedom of speech, individual freedom,

freedom of the press...

It's a myth that there are people out there saying free speech means

consequence-free speech. I don't know anyone who believes that.

What's the responsibility of artists in an environment like this, then?

To take risks, I think.

Artists are becoming more and more risk-averse, understandably,

because in order to have any kind of commercial success on television

or radio or cinema or whatever,

because it's so dominated by the social justice ideology,

you have to not only create interesting art,

you have to have the right opinions,

and that means that people are withholding their opinions.

Artists are definitely self-censoring,

and I think the scale of that problem is much bigger

than people recognise.

When I was growing up, all the right-wing tabloids,

like The Daily Mail or The Sun, they'd be the ones saying,

"Oh, David Cronenberg's Crash must be banned,"

"Trainspotting glamorises drug use," or whatever,

and now that's coming from The Guardian or The New Statesman,

the sort of activist, supposedly left-wing publications.

I kind of see it in terms of social class, basically.

You know, you have this one class of people

who have the dominant economic power,

but they also have the dominant cultural power.

And, in some ways, it's a way of taking economics,

of taking class out of the mix.

It would be all very well if the social justice activists

were devoting as much energy to economic inequality

as they were to identity issues, but they're not.

It's this idea that we can't have an adult discussion about this.

"You're either with us or against us."

It's very polarised, binary thinking.

Everyone agrees that Black lives matter.

I don't know anyone in the world who doesn't believe that,

but I had an actor friend of mine phone me up

and said her agent had been on the phone,

asking her why she hadn't posted in favour of Black Lives Matter

on her Twitter feed, and saying that that is compulsory,

and, "If you don't post that, we'll have to drop you from the agency."

So what that means is, it's not just about the things you say

that are misinterpreted, or mistaken things you say,

it's about whether you're perceived to be saying

the right things as well. A kind of compelled speech.

That's a step into authoritarianism.

That's what that is, and we should be able to recognise

the seeds of authoritarianism when they appear,

and that's a very good example.

# Live fast, die young Bad girls do it well

# Live fast, die young Bad girls do it well... #

Does cancel culture ever forgive?

Is it a red card or a lifetime ban?

# Get back

# Get down... #

In 2016, MIA, a politically-outspoken Tamil refugee

turned bomb-sampling global pop star,

who'd shared the stage at the Super Bowl with Madonna,

was cancelled for a remark about Black Lives Matter.

The only representation of South Asian culture

in the global music scene found her comments on racism in America

judged worldwide in a trial by social media.

# I fly like paper Get high like planes

# If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name

# If you come around here I make 'em all day

# I get one down in a second If you wait

# Sometimes, I think Sitting on trains... #

Ever since we decided to make this film,

things have just been going so quickly.

You know, there's been Black Lives Matter,

there's been Joanne Rowling's trans thing,

the Harper's letter and all this kind of stuff.

This has just happened in the last few weeks, basically.

I'm actually very confused

about how fast those things happen on social media.

It's, like, becoming this button-operated activism,

and then the cancel culture, how that works,

and then how some of these movements are so much bigger and wider

and global than some other ones,

you know, which have a higher death toll.

So I don't know how we pick and choose what the important ones are.

# Yeah, guns blow doors To the system

# Yeah, fuck 'em when we say We're not with them

# We're solid And we don't need to kick them

# This is North, South East and Western... #

How has that political stance you have, or your beliefs,

how has that informed your music and your creativity?

I wouldn't have done anything if I couldn't bring the politics with me.

# Your privilege What's up with that?

# Broke people What's up with that...? #

I would try to make my opinions on the Tamil struggle

very understandable for the West,

but I knew that that's not something that is a common thing here.Right.

Because the social media is controlled by America,

or West, I would say,

the important political struggles of the West creates a bigger sound,

and everything looks like it's a global problem, you know?

But it's not. Yeah. It's not, though, is it?

Yeah, so this tiny little struggle over here,

where the Tamils are fighting over their identity or land, you know,

it might have a massive impact,

but the media of what happened with JK Rowling takes up way more space.

And it influences young people in a bigger way.

And everybody, when they say they're political, and they're an activist,

have, like, these go-to subject matters, you know?

And there's about five of them that are just, like, "the hit",

and if you step out of that, it's a problem.

This is a class thing.

Like, 20 people own the world.

Who are you gonna fight? You're gonna fight each other?

It makes no fuckin' sense. Go and fight those 20 people.

The whole identity politics thing has kind of been given

that kind of licence, because it's a bourgeois thing.

It's taking class out of the equation.

It's taking economic inequalities out of the equation.

Yes, and I think this is why I came to talk to you,

because your work is about that.

Like, you're not talking about whether drugs are good or bad,

you're talking about why people are put in a position

where they're exposed to that shit, you know?

Where that becomes normal.

Like, where you would sell your soul for 50 quid, you know?

Kids are put in these places and these spaces all the time.

What do you think that the responsibility

of an artist to the community is in these times?

I think, you know, the most creative thing right now

is to fucking get off social media.

You know, cos you're not gonna please two billion people

with your opinion. You're never gonna win.

Artists only work for corporations now.

Creatives only sell the agenda.

As artists, yeah. We all work for them,

cos we're constantly giving our energy and time.

It's like, "I'm a Tamil refugee. Here it is on an Instagram post!"

And it's, like, such a weird thing.

It is. It's quite crazy, isn't it?

And I was like, "Wow, we've reduced culture to a point where

"I could do that in one post, so what the fuck is the point of it?"

You know?Yeah. Like, it's not even challenging.

As an artist...

..like, what do we want for humanity?

My literary visions of humanity may not be to everyone's taste,

but they are rooted in my truths,

and that may be uncomfortable for some.

Would my past work survive sanitising

to avoid offending anyone?

"She's never seen past a desk withoot a real polisman

"chaperoning her everywhere!"

And "fucking" has got to go.

"Then she writes this fuckin' stupid policy document saying,

" 'Be kind to coons and poofs and silly wee lassies like me.' "

Ah, get rid of this "fucking" here.

"People of colour",

"gay people" and "woman".

"And everybody gets the fuckin' hots."

Get rid of the "fucking". "Everybody gets the hots."

"Then they get this posh wee Chinky bird."

"Young Chinese woman".

"Posh", you can't really have that, can you? Cos that's...

"Privately-educated".

It's pretty fucking shite, really, isn't it?

I don't see the kind of anger and misogynistic and racist rage

that that character has.

Am I being oversensitive?

Could fiction be next in the crosshairs for a cultural audit?

Nadifa Mohamed is the one author I'd regard as high council.

She'd tell me her truth.

I used to be a librarian. Yeah?Yeah.

Whereabouts? South-west London.

A proper library? A council library?

Yeah, yeah, from the age of 17 to when my first book came out.

Right, so you were kind of like a career librarian?

I was a career librarian.

Culture is changing. It's often necessity.

You know, the world is becoming a more inclusive place.

One of the things that I've been kind of struggling a bit with,

making this documentary, is that someone like myself,

who's sort of old, white, straight, male,

how do we stand aside and do this in a way that's kind of...

Meaningful...meaningful, and without self-censoring,

and without creating a culture of censorship and recrimination?

Yes. For me, I don't think it's a matter

of people stepping aside, necessarily.

I think we're all writers, all creatives,

and our responsibility is to tell the stories that we want to tell.

But I think what people are asking for is a closer care given

to what people write and say,

whether that's by just factoring in

characters that they've never thought about before,

or if they are discussing gender, race, sexuality,

doing it in a way that's informed, nuanced, a bit more sophisticated

than some of the representations we've had in the past.

I've written characters from different backgrounds,

different social classes, different ethnicities than myself,

and I've always felt kind of, in some ways,

that I'm muscling in on someone else's territory

who can tell this story better than me.

It's a big debate, and my feeling is, actually,

it's more important to try and imagine yourself

in someone else's skin than to wash your hands

of any responsibility to think about people from a different background.

So, I write as men, I write as, you know, white characters,

various things, and may be successful, might not be successful,

but the attempt, I think, is a sincere one.

I did a little exercise, trying to make Filth into a kind of...

I don't know what you'd call it, politically-correct or acceptable,

and the character just vanished, basically.

Of course, and I've read Filth, and I love Filth,

and the nastiness of that main character

is a huge part of what makes the novel so strong,

and the fact that you haven't filtered out his racist, sexist,

grotesque kind of attitudes.

And I think it's important to represent that

an ordinary detective, policeman can express those views

with zero comeback or a consequence, and that, to me,

is a very truthful and important representation of someone

who should be in literature,

a character that should be represented.

Do you think that, for a character like that,

there has to be consequences?

No, because in reality, there aren't.

THEY LAUGH

See every time a woman drops her trousers? Promotion.

Every time a man drops theirs, disciplinary action.

Where's the equality in that?

The reality is that people have disgusting views,

they get away with them, they have power,

they use that power, and fiction, I think,

is actually often quite scared of representing that.

In some ways, we can really grow through pain and hurt, can't we?

We have to have a little bit of that going on.

This is where it gets very delicate, because I agree with that,

but some people are being hurt more than others.Right.

And some people are being ignored more than others.Right.

So, very, very little fiction kicks upwards, but lots of it kicks down,

and society kicks down.

So we have to be very, very careful about thinking that the right way

of thinking, whatever that right way of thinking is, will win out.

That's not the case, not what history has shown us.

Do you believe in cancel culture?

No. Why not?

I think it kind of leads to a pack mentality, a sort of hunting down,

sort of bullying, harassing mentality.

I think that anything that you want to cancel should be challenged.

It should be challenged, it should be discredited.

It shouldn't be obliterated.

It can sometimes be the voice of the unheard,

this desire to take someone down who's powerful

and has been powerful for a long time.

Yeah, I mean, I think so too, but I think you kind of...

The problem with those things

is that there is no off button, basically.Yes.

Once you permit that to become part of the culture...Yeah.

..it just becomes like a kind of insidious poison

that goes right across...

And there's no accepted measure of proportionality.Yeah.

Witch-hunting isn't an exact science!

Never has been.

I teach in a university, and people are often complaining about

this kind of woke campus culture, but it's really interesting

that they pinpoint universities,

which have very little societal power, and students,

who have even less societal power.

And they're accused of having this kind of outlandish power to cancel

very, very powerful people.

And I do respect students and young people for being able to say,

"We've had enough. We don't want to hear you.

"We don't want to hear this. We want something else."

That they can dictate the terms.

Bit unhappy about the word "dictate",

but I kind of let the rest go! THEY LAUGH

Erm, what would you prefer to "dictate"?

They can "influence" the terms!

Influence the terms. Influence... Yeah.

When we offend, whether by accident or design,

how do we redeem ourself? How are we forgiven?

Yeah. Is there a place for that?

I think there's definitely a place for that.

There's definitely a place for people to acknowledge the harm

that they've done, to... redeem it, to learn more.

I think that's important. It's important for all of us.

How does a writer apologise for a novel that they've written?

I don't know. I don't think you can, can you?

You can't apologise, but you can improve.

It's a slow process, writing a book,

so, you know, the one allowance I will give writers is

by the time that book is published,

it should be a well thought out work of the mind, or imagination,

whatever it is, but that's not the case with all this other material

and media that people are consuming.

So, something sloppy, something cruel,

something dangerous...

Yeah, just very trite, basically, yeah.

Or fleeting, a fleeting impulse.

..can have more impact than anything that we write.

And there's a real danger to that.

I'm convinced fiction is vital in this instantly-offended world.

Used well, its conceptual arguments are the best weapons.

Governments and their lackeys have subsumed sensible debate

into a dire trench of cacophony.

This leaves no genuine dissenting voices against their control,

their appropriation of the world's wealth,

their divisive racism, sexism and, above all, classism.

To speak the truth to power,

people really need to be able to express themselves freely

and to say what they want.

I want human beings to have the confidence to question

and to genuinely offended.

I think we can only do that when we come to realise

that the games of the elites and their power structures

actually have nothing to do with the rest of us.

To acknowledge their irrelevance.

The rest is just squabbling.

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