Cancel culture and political correctness: the cabal of the new devotees

Marni 1664: the Company of the Blessed Sacrament, spearhead of the devout party, tried to have Molière’s Tartuffe banned on the grounds that it would attack religion and be blasphemous. Some even called for the playwright to be burned. This episode, which has gone down in history as the « cabal of devotees », should be a warning to us. Today, through political correctness and  » cancel culture « , new forms of censorship and self-censorship are being put in place and are targeting culture and the arts in general. An overview of a society where the freedoms of creation and expression are once again under threat. Not long ago, on the set of a regional television station in Brussels, a well-intentioned Ecolo politician was lecturing about « ethical consumption of culture » and warning against works judged morally dubious. I don’t remember which sulphurous works she was referring to or what kind of morality she was referring to, but the expression used by this lady was striking and revealin …

1. Natacha Polony et Jean-Michel Quatrepoint, Délivrez-nous du bien !, L’Observatoire, 2018.
2. Claire Talon-Hugon, L’art sous contrôle, PUF, 2019, p.8.
3. Voir Monique Canto-Sperber, Sauver la liberté d’expression, Albin Michel, 2021, p.31.
4. Idem, p. 27.
5. Ce film, remake de celui de Don Siegel avec Clint Eastwood (1971), raconte l’histoire d’un soldat nordiste blessé et recueilli dans un pensionnat de jeunes filles sudistes. Bien que situés à la fin de la guerre de sécession, ni ces films ni d’ailleurs l’histoire originale tirée du roman de Thomas Cullinan n’ont pour thème principal l’esclavage ou la situation des Noirs durant cette période, même si la thématique est évoquée de façon sous-jacente. Il s’agit plutôt d’un huis clos psychologique où se tissent des relations hommes-femmes très ambivalentes dans un contexte de guerre.
6. Monique Canto-Sperber, op. cit., p. 240.