I’m not much of an opera fan, I like “shows” even less and l don’t think I’ve ever seen more than a few minutes of Jerry Springer (or any other confessional TV shows) so I didn’t bother watching the Jerry Springer opera on BBC2 the other evening.
Or rather, I *did* watch about five minutes of it (and found it extremely funny, despite the very “broadway” style of singing). I did so purely because, despite the attempts of commentators such as the Daily Mail to suggest otherwise, we do live in a liberal society where challenging and non-mainstream concepts can be explored on TV and I wanted to remind myself of this. The protesters think they have a right not to be offended by what they see on TV, but they have only the same rights as everyone else… the legality of all content and the ability to switch off.
In the days since, though, I’ve seen a number of comments online, both by Christians who didn’t find the programme blasphemous (not least Mark Thompson) and by people who didn’t approve of the swearing (those “8000 obscenities” as the Mail claimed) but were quite happy to change channel. I’m not religious and I think swearing is both big *and* clever, so I’m unlikely to be outraged, but it’s particularly encouraging to see such comments from people who potentially could have been outraged. They emphasise the childish and self-centred attitude of the anti-opera protesters more powerfully than I ever could.