Goed stuk!
Ben het met name volmondig eens met de laatste alinea's:
quote:
Sylvanian Families, the popular toy that allows children to collect a whole miniature world of old fashioned shops, VW cars (that’s another opportunity for satire right there), water mills and canal boats populated by cutely costumed mammals, lends itself to dark humour. It creates such a bland fantasy of innocence that it seems to invite disaster. The arrival of Islamic State is it.
The satire is not on Islamic State so much as on the west, living out our Sylvanian idyll, pretending this is not happening. The violence of the black-clad terrorists keeps interrupting domestic tranquility and public peace. Girls getting an education are about to be kidnapped. Violence is about to shatter a day at the beach. All that is missing from these funny yet grisly glimpses of our time is a scene of Sylvanian jihadis demolishing ancient temples.
How can the Queen’s safety by threatened, as the artist says she was told, by a picture of a Sylvanian family watching TV? On the screen is something terrible: a hostage is about to be executed by terrorists.
Satire is not meant to be subtle. These works of art are viciously funny - and for once the joke is directed against a truly dangerous target. But is it such a dangerous target that no-one can make jokes about Islamic State any more? If an artist can’t show art on the grounds that it might provoke terror, the terrorists have plainly won. The suppression of these Sylvanian satires is as absurd and sinister as the reports that police officers asked for the names of British people buying Charlie Hebdo. What’s happening to us? Are we already ruled by black clad puppets of intolerance? This art is brave and witty. It deserves to be seen. To let fear of bigots and maniacs rule our art galleries is a betrayal of the civilisation we claim to uphold.