Ideology in "Innocence of Muslims"
Everybody enjoys movies. All kinds—action, comedy, dramas, and yes, Romance movies. I also
especially enjoy watching foreign films, in that the langue of all cultures when
dubbed over becomes fascinating and allows the viewer to experience a discourse
or ideology from another cultural perspective. A great example is the discourse
surrounding Venezuela’s socialist government of Hugo Chavez; in the west the
underlying ideology is described as essentially communist, anti-capitalist and
“bad”, while from inside Venezuela, the poor instead view capitalism as
inherently evil and instead praise the many benefits of socialism, such as free
housing, health care and education.
Ideologies
are prevalent in virtually all opinion pieces. One such example is Chris
Selley’s piece entitled ”Media should show clips of the anti-Islam film behind
the outrage if it offends people or not” in the National Post on September 15,
2012. The most obvious expression that Selley focuses on is the censorship
surrounding material that may be offensive to Muslims, and he references the
movie that has made headlines as of late, “Innocence of
Muslims”. The movie, parts of which I have watched, is as Selley says,
rather amusing. It doesn’t make any sense, it has no actual plot, and the
acting is so terrible that the actors belong on a list lower than the Z-list.
The movie has caused protests in Muslim countries around the world, resulting
in deaths. Now, it’s hard to imagine how a movie such as this can cause such international
outrage, especially resulting in the deaths of people. Selley points out a wide
variety of news outlets have refused to air clips of the film, such as CBC and
CTV, while the Global aired parts of it. According to Selley,
countries such as Libya and Egypt are too radical. He then spins his op-ed into
questioning the possible future intervention in Syria, seeing as Canada took
out a secular Gaddafi and installed a religious regime that would allow
protests such as this. I agree that the governments are more radical than the
previous secular ones, but Selley does not elaborate on the ideology of free
speech.
The
discourse that this particular movie, the Innocence of Muslims, evokes is that
of free speech and cultural sensitivity. In particular, free speech is a very
important concept in Western countries. People can criticize
individuals without fear, insult politicians, and even swear in public.
Some centuries ago, such actions would have resulted in arrest and
imprisonment, and today in some countries it still does, such as in Thailand,
where insulting the King is a criminal offense—even jokingly! Thai’s take their
monarch very seriously. In this particular discourse there are two sides—one
advocates free speech over censorship, while the other portrays the discourse
in another light. Muslims claim that it is a religious insult, and while they
support freedom of speech, their freedom of speech excludes religious attacks
and insults. Muslim religious doesn’t only refer to insults to the prophet, but
the mere depiction of the prophet is considered an insult. The pastor who
threatened to publicly burn the Koran was condemned by virtually all religions.
But drawing a cartoon, or making a satirical movie about the prophet, is
blasphemy, worthy of death? In my opinion that is taking free speech a bit too
far. While Selley’s main argument is against the removal of secular regimes in
the Middle East, the discourse evoked makes for an interesting analysis.
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