LONDON, 13 March
2001 - Speech has never been so free and easy, or so you might
assume. Anyone with Internet access can articulate an idea and
transmit it instantaneously around the world. If the thought is
sufficiently lurid - perhaps the enthusiastic details of an erotic
encounter - it will be shared by millions before sundown.
state, except for a handful of tyrannies, has lost the means to
repress expression. Obscenity is no let, libel no hindrance. The web
fairly quivers with pornographic, xenophobic and childishly abusive
chat-sites where intellectuals and congenital nerds spew bile
indiscriminately without fear of exposure or prosecution. Cyberspace
is an unpoliced playground of extreme expression.
same time, however, as if by way of civilised response, the
conventions of free speech are being narrowed in real life to the
point where it is becoming impossible to describe what you see and
hear with any degree of verisimilitude. Political Correctness, that
fearsome deterrent launched by American academics a decade ago to
protect minority sensitivities on multicultural campuses, is steadily
eroding and emasculating our available terms of reference.
intrusion is particularly inhibitive in the arts, ever blowing in the
wind. It has become, for example, impermissible to allude to the music
that the cellist Yo Yo Ma recorded with a bunch of country friends as
"hillbilly". When I did so at an ancient Pennsylvanian
college where George Washington reputedly slept, I was instantly
attacked by a liberal-arts professor for employing "defunct"
and "pejorative" terminology.
Just so, I replied.
The term "hillbilly" was case-specific, describing a
localised genre of white country music, and I intended it pejoratively
to criticise the classical soloist for slumming it with hootenanny
musicians. "That's elitist", snapped the professor, reaching
for the ugliest put-down in the PC lexicon.
said. I was seeking to differentiate between high and low music in
order to define the terms on which they could usefully correspond. "You
have no right to do that", was the common-room consensus, "it's
discriminatory." In that case, I shrugged, what earthly point is
there in attempting to describe or criticise art in any terms except
nice and not-nice?
Is all music created equal?
political agenda here is paramount. Those of us who believe there is a
value difference between playing a Brahms sonata and banging a dustbin
lid should be acutely aware that such views are no longer
educationally acceptable. Multiculturalists maintain that all music is
equal, and that which is unequal must be unutterable.
to any intelligent person, abhorrent to regard world art as "primitive"
- as most western authorities did until the late 20th century - but it
is every bit as perverse to pretend that Congolese street music and a
Shostakovich symphony display the same level of cultural advancement.
Yet such is the power of PC that it is now nigh-impossible to assert
that distinction publicly and in print.
As well as disabling
the capacity to discriminate - the very word "discrimination"
is enough to provoke a walk-out in US lecture-halls - the PC lobby is
cordoning off large areas of the lively arts from critical
observation. A reviewer may no longer allude to the size, features,
and personal attributes of a performer. Most nights there is no need
to, and most writers would stop short of describing an artist as a
fat, bald gimp with a runny nose. But when physique plays a part in
the artistic experience, to suppress it amounts to active deception.
once watched a grotesquely obese soprano being pushed from behind by
two bass-baritones onto a high Royal Albert Hall rostrum from where
she sang her part precariously in Mahler's Eighth Symphony. None of
the reviews mentioned her girth, though the audience and her
co-soloists could not ignore her physical predicament. Were the
critics being polite, or pc-cowardly, in air-brushing her size from
their reviews? Or had they reported the event faithfully, only to be
censored by a style-conscious sub-editor?
The fat and
feminist issues were brought to a pustular head three years ago when
the soprano Jessye Norman issued writs in the US and Britain against
Classic CD magazine for noting the discrepancy between her stately
dimensions and her recorded portrayal of the lissom and libidinous
Salome. The case collapsed amid judicial mirth, despite claims by Ms
Norman that the magazine had also "patronisingly" and "degradingly"
referred to her racial origin.
Both attributes, viewed
within the context of a remarkable career, warant attention. As a size
18+, Ms Norman cannot pass for a consumptive Mimi. So uncomfortable
did she feel about the demands of opera that, for ten years, she
devoted herself entirely to the recital stage. Additionally, her
struggle against poverty and prejudice has made her a role model for
Yet the second edition of the New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians fails to mention that Ms
Norman is either black or big, both areas being taboo under PC rules.
Since no photograph is published beside her entry, readers might well
be misled to mistake Jessye for Emma Kirkby.
II ties itself in terrible knots to avoid offending PC rules. It
identifies the inimitable David Oistrakh as a "Ukrainian
violinist", which he avowedly was not. Oistrakh was born in
Odessa under Tsarist rule and lived in Moscow under the Soviets. He
spoke Russian and Yiddish and was proud of his Jewish roots, which New
Grove refuses to mention. Instead, it twins Oistrakh with a hoodlum
state that was not founded until 18 years after his death.
York Times the supreme court of PC in arts writing
supreme court of political correctness in arts writing is The New
York Times, which changes the rules with bewildering frequency. At
present, according to its style-book, it is acceptable to note that an
artist is black or Jewish, obese or disabled, but "only when it
is pertinent, and its pertinence is clear to the reader." Well,
deconstruct that. When Zubin Mehta conducts Wagner in Israel, is it "pertinent"
to the writer and the potential reader that he is an Indian of the
Zoroastrian faith? Wouldn't it be better to lift the cuffs and let
reporters write as they find?
It is an absolute no-no on
The New York Times to discuss "sexual preference",
implying that the subject has a choice (which is more than the writer
does). The correct term is "sexual orientation" and it may
be applied to an artist under the above rules of double-pertinence.
However, double standards prevail. It is acceptable to
identify gay male artists (conductors excepted), provided they are
safely "out" and comfortable with it. Lesbians, though, are
off limits. Female singers, soloists and opera directors are never
described as living with a same-sex partner, even when they are
artistic collaborators, a matter which should surely be drawn to the
public attention in the interests of openness and appreciation of the
work. For every PC rule, there are any number of senseless exceptions.
These strictures are not confined to art and can, at times,
arise from direct political intervention. When China proclaimed that
its capital should no longer be known by its "colonial" name
of Peking, it was not just newspapers that changed their style.
Restaurants the world over reprinted their menus with "Beijing
A piece of Ford Foundation research, oddly
unpublished but conveyed to me by the author, reveals that most PC
changes and excisions in educational texbooks arise from authorial
self-censorship, "anticipating parent/teacher reactions" to
contentious material. That may be understandable in the classroom and
on the diplomatic circuit, but on the performing stage it directly
contradicts the nature of art, which involves the boundless expansion
and liberation of the human spirit.
The language we employ
to describe what goes on in art is, a priori, inadequate. To have it
further shackled by an excessive regard for bruised feelings and
academic convention is to risk a situation where what is described
bears little relation to what actually happens. This anomaly is daily
on the increase. Those who write about culture face a constant
struggle to resist the creeping pestilence of political correctness
and preserve their rude independence and moral integrity.
Lebrecht is a columnist for London's Daily Telegraph and the author of
several books on culture. His most recent book, Covent Garden, The
Untold Story: Dispatches From The English Cultural War, 1945-2000,
was published by Simon & Schuster.