Limiting Availability

In this month's Harper's, Art Spiegelman deconstructs the Danish cartoons of Muhammad that caused such problems in the Islamic world a little while ago. Explaining himself, he writes:

If--as the currency of cliche has it--a picture is worth a thousand words, it often takes a thousand more words to analyze and contextualize that picture. . . . It's a matter of demystifying the cartoons and maybe even robbing them of some of their venom. I believe that open discourse ultimately serves understanding and that repressing images gives them too much power.

Unfortunately, open discourse about the pictures means that they've got to be on display, and that makes some people uncomfortable. Tom Spurgeon has been keeping track of a story from Canada's Globe and Mail (sorry, Dad, I hope you're not too disappointed that I didn't come across the article myself) about Canada's largest chain of bookstores, Indigo, refusing to sell the issue because the group of cartoons "has been known to ignite demonstrations around the world." Yeah, I think that's part of the point. Spurgeon also picked up this editorial from today's Montreal Gazette talking about the Indigo decision and a separate situation in which Cineplex movie theaters refused a short ad from Campus Crusade for Christ to precede The Da Vinci Code (ostensibly because they didn't want to cause offence by taking religious advertising). Since it's a Canadian editorial, it's very polite ("Let it be said from the start that these two businesses are private, profit-making entities that are free to sell or exhibit whatever they wish and equally free to refuse to sell or exhibit whatever they wish"), but it wastes little time in making its point:

The [Harper's] article is only modestly provocative and well within the bounds of reasonable discourse. That Canada's largest bookseller should deem it beyond the pale sends an unfortunate message. It tells the thousands of Christians, for example, who are outraged by The Da Vinci Code, that if they want that offending novel out of circulation, they should go and burn down a few embassies. In fact, it would be hard to name a religious or political group in Montreal that couldn't find something to offend them on Indigo's shelves. Maybe they, too, will absorb the lesson that violence trumps reason every time.

Indigo's decision is a definite overreaction, but it's a good indication of the political hesitancy that seems to be becoming more and more pervasive.