Caving in to the perpetually outraged is madness
WE’VE lost the plot if a film about a rabbit can spark petitions for promoting bullying. Even worse is the cringe-worthy apology from the film makers, writes David Penberthy.
SOME years ago, a colleague wrote a typically thoughtful piece of political analysis documenting what she described as the Rudd Government’s “policy schizophrenia” on border protection.
A few days later, she received a letter from one of the nation’s major mental health organisations accusing her of borderline hate speech.
She initially thought the letter was a put-on, but when she contacted them they told her — in no uncertain terms — that as far as they were concerned she was guilty of marginalising, if not vilifying, people with schizophrenia, all by using a commonplace analogy that has no specific bearing on those afflicted by this disease.
It is a defining feature of the age that the world is now home to a bunch of loud, organised people who spend their days on permanent standby to be offended by the most marginal slights.
From a crowded field, my favourite recent local examples involved last year’s Christmas catalogue by the discount retailer Cheap as Chips. Apart from causing offence on the old-fashioned grounds of crassness by selling a product called a Santa Mankini — I’d been looking everywhere for one of them — the Cheap as Chips folks drew orthodox feminist ire for depicting a man in a Father Christmas costume touching a woman near the breast.
This cheeky catalogue was extrapolated into a clarion call for every man in the land to get along to the office Christmas party and go the grope. So, too, the KFC advertisements where a troubled teacher is showing two parents a drawing their young child has done, with the heading “Mummy and Daddy Nude Wrestling”. It was elevated to the status of pornography by those with no sense of humour.
The world reached what could be called peak offence during the week with the news that a loveable fictional rabbit created by Beatrix Potter had been accused of hate crimes against innocent children who suffer from food allergies.
The new Sony Pictures film Peter Rabbit features a scene where a bunch of rabbits gang up on the cruel farmer, Mr McGregor, by bombarding him with blueberries, to which he has an allergy.
Not one but several health organisations launched a full-blown social media campaign against the film, complete with the hashtag #boycottpeterrabbit, accusing Sony Pictures of trivialising the issue of food allergies and exposing allergic children to ridicule.
In an open letter to Sony, the Kids with Food Allergies charity denounced the film’s “cavalier attitude” towards allergic reactions, saying “making light of this condition hurts our members because it encourages the public not to take the risk of allergic reactions seriously”.
A change.org petition was set up, saying: “To spread a message that condones such victimising and dangerous behaviour among children is grossly offensive to worldwide viewers especially those who live with severe allergic disease.”
At last check, the petitioned attracted more than 10,000 signatures. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America also wrote an open letter demanding Sony executives attend a meeting where they could be “educated” about the realities of food allergies, and even accused the company of promoting bullying.
The Australian group Global Anaphylaxis Awareness and Inclusivity also called for a boycott of the movie, saying it “mocks the seriousness of allergic disease and is heartbreakingly disrespectful to the families of those that have lost loved ones to anaphylaxis’’.
What a bunch of peanuts.
Now, I’ve got friends whose kids have food allergies, and I don’t like hearing those snide comments from some who think the whole allergy thing is some imagined condition. It is a real condition, one that has tragic and fatal consequences for plenty of people, young and old. But it is beyond absurd to argue that a kid’s film, where a mean old farmer is targeted by a bunch of bunnies who are wise to his weakness, is some kind of deliberate attack on children who can’t eat cashews, or a blatant call for the rest of us to rise up and start force-feeding blueberries to sufferers of anaphylaxis.
It makes as much sense as saying that the slapstick violence you find in a Tom and Jerry cartoon legitimises the culture of coward-punching.
Whatever the case, Sony caved in. The prospect of being bombarded by an ongoing campaign was too commercially daunting.
This was their cringe-worthy statement: “Our film should not have made light of Peter Rabbit’s arch-nemesis, Mr McGregor, being allergic to blackberries, even in a cartoonish, slapstick way. We sincerely regret not being more aware and sensitive to this issue and we truly apologise.”
The most irksome feature of that apology for mind is the use of the word “truly”. You would think Sony had inadvertently released a film denying the Holocaust or calling for the reintroduction of slavery.
But, no, it was the evil Peter Rabbit and his blueberry gun, prompting an apology so overblown as to be almost as ridiculous as the complaints themselves.
At the risk of getting the same letter my friend did, the world does appear to be going mad.