Tehran Responds to the Danish Cartoons

In response to the test of where the boundaries lie that a Danish Newspaper held by publishing cartoons that mocked the Islamic prophet Mohammed, the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri set out to challenge Western concepts of freedom of expression (and hypocrisy) by exploring one of the West’s taboos: the WWII Holocaust. With an open call for images that question the accounts of the Holocaust, the goal was to demonstrate that there are subjects that simply shouldn't be taken lightly.

The New York Times reports today on the exhibition that is being held of the images (which came in from around the world) selected to represent the best of the submissions:

The title of the show is “Holocaust International Cartoon Contest,” or “Holocust,” as the show’s organizers spell the word in promotional material. But the content has little to do with the events of World War II and Nazi Germany.

There is instead a drawing of a Jew with a very large nose, a nose so large it obscures his entire head. Across his chest is the word Holocaust. Another drawing shows a vampire wearing a big Star of David drinking the blood of Palestinians. A third shows Ariel Sharon dressed in a Nazi uniform, emblazoned not with swastikas but with the Star of David.

The cartoons are among more than 200 on display in the Palestinian Contemporary Art Museum in central Tehran in a show that opened this month and is to run until the middle of September.

There are two issues I want to discuss here and I want to keep them separated carefully. I'll start with the easy one.

As I've noted many times, such images are propaganda, not "Art," and have no business being displayed as such in an Art museum. I'm not at all sure what goals the Palestinian Contemporary Art Museum has for its reputation, but they might as well hang a red light outside their entrance during this exhibition, which is too bad because we were just starting to see inroads into exhibiting Palestinian Art in the US (pdf file) and I suspect the association between this exhibition and other efforts might (despite being unfair) fuel the resistance to it already out there.

The second issue is whether or not this response was well designed or carried out. I have to say "No" on both accounts. I can understand the impulse to turn the tables on the West, and if there are any true taboos in our collective Western society, questioning the Holocaust is high among them. So I can see why, if one was truly offended by the Danish Cartoons and was frustrated with how Western people didn't seem to get it, devising some method to help them get it would be attractive. But unless Western mobs riot in response or burn down the embassies of Islamic nations (which I can't see happening), the test will essentially prove little.

Further, having announced that your intent was to evoke outrage might seem parallel to the Danish experiment, but given the West knows full well what the test hopes to demonstrate, it's foolhardy to think we would take the bait. (Of course, if the exhibition were to be shown in the US, the response might be a bit more than the yawn it seems destined to generate now, but we'll have to wait and see.) All of which suggests the premise for the test is a lie, and the true purpose was merely to rally the locals. But, according to the Times it seems to be generating little more than a yawn in Tehran, so....

And, again, I'm at a loss as to why they're confusing the issue by presenting the images as "Art":

A few visitors stopped by, mostly art students who said they had visited to examine artistic techniques. Many were happy to take away a free poster: a photograph showing three military helmets piled up, two with swastikas on the crown, a third with the Star of David.

“I came here to study the quality of the work,” said Hamid Derikvand, 27, who said he was an art student at the university across the street from the gallery.

{deleted art-snobbish snark}....truly, why bother with the whole "Art" pretext? The Danish Cartoons were not presented so pretentiously. This foolish mixing of messages might be the leading reason the attendance is reportedly so low (although one person interviewed by the Times suggested it's because they see such messages all the time).

Finally, the implied parallel between the sanctity of a religious figure and respect for the memory of millions of slaughtered innocent people is conceptually weak. It's clearly an apples and oranges comparison. I know the announced intent was to demonstrate that the West holds some topics taboo, but unless the topics are closer in essence, you're giving the target audience too much of an out (i.e., most folks supporting the Danish cartoons would see Islamic cartoons about G-d or Christ as a parallel and would argue that they too would object to the mocking of the slaughter of millions of Muslims), and so, again the test was poorly designed.

Other images (mind you, being a horrible speller, I feel for them in this first one)...and if anyone finds bigger ones (you know ones in which you can see the works, please let me know)