Simpsons did it!
Is there anything that The Simpsons didn’t “predict”? Well, it’s not so much a case of “prediction”, as a show with a 32-year life inevitably covering nearly every story scenario imaginable, no matter how ludicrous. In this case, its 22nd episode, Itchy & Scratchy & Marge “predicted” what has become a serial absurdity: pinch-mouthed busy-bodies trying to censor one of the crowning glories of Western art, Michelangelo’s David.
There have been several efforts to censor the Renaissance masterpiece, but the most recent is one that the now-safely-woke Simpsons would surely never dare satirise: conservative Muslims covering David’s bare bum and cricket set. In a twist that will surely write a hundred Communications Studies theses, it’s not the original statue that the sons of the Prophet are trying to make halal, but a 3D-printed replica.
A 3D-printed replica of Michelangelo’s David at the Dubai Expo has been mired in controversy after organisers blocked views of his buttocks and manhood to respect Muslim culture.
According to the Italian daily La Repubblica, Expo staff agonised over how they could display the 17-foot-tall (5.1m) replica of the Renaissance masterpiece without offending conservative Muslims.
It might have been brave and very modern-art of them to drape the statue in a burqa. A sort of Christo-meets-Banksy statement. Draw attention to the censorship by making it ridiculously blatant.
But modern Europeans are too timid to challenge Islamic censoriousness. So, instead they’ve chickened out and censored the statue in the most gutless way possible.
They eventually decided to place the statue within an octagonal glass gallery spanning two floors, one level with the warrior’s muscular legs and another with his eyes.
A large stone slab placed between the two floors means no visitor faces the embarrassment of staring directly at the statue’s penis, while wide ledges on the top floor – open to public visitors – make it impossible to lean over and peer downwards.
The nude pubic area can only be seen by standing close to the glass and looking upwards from the lower floor, which is only open to authorities and functionaries, according to Italian media reports. Public nudity is outlawed in the United Arab Emirates.
This is not the first time the statue has been censored, of course: almost from the moment it was unveiled, the statue has at times been adorned with fig leaves made of bronze or plaster.
In each case, who is doing the censoring says a lot more than the censorship itself: in the 16th century, it was senior Catholic clergy. In the 19th, Queen Victoria’s courtiers.
Vittorio Sgarbi, outspoken Italian art critic, called the Italian pavilion’s decision “grotesque and ridiculous”. “This is a biblical theme, not a pagan theme, so cancelling a part of Michelangelo’s David at the Italian pavilion of the Dubai Expo is just bowing to their religion and culture,” Sgarbi told Adnkronos wire agency […]
While Expo pavilion organisers dismiss the criticism as a storm in a teacup, critics say the decision to cover up the David is part of a broader clash between Western and Middle Eastern culture.
Stuff
And we know who’s winning, and which side is too craven and weak to even stand up for itself.
The same people who would sneer at Victorian prudishness and lose their minds if the Catholic church successfully censored nudity in modern movies, pathetically chicken out in the face of the fundamentalist prudery of a violently censorious religion.
But then, Queen Victoria was unlikely to set a bomb off in the British Museum.
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