PU #238 - CENSORING TOURETTE'S - Baffled By The BAFTAs
A lot of opinions, reactions and responses have been shared over the BBC’s airing of Tourette syndrome activist, John Davidson, shouting out the N-word when actors Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo took the stage at last week’s BAFTA awards. There is very little debate to be had in my mind that the pre-recorded and edited for air show should have absolutely cut out the offensive moment just as they had edited out many other moments of Davidson’s involuntary tics throughout the night. To keep that particular racial slur in a broadcast where other offensive terms had been deemed too offensive for broadcast is a shockingly obvious case of having a racist blindspot in the editing process. Someone in charge just did not see that word, or that moment, the same way that they saw other, non-racist, slurs that they did choose to cut.
But what interested me as a philosopher about the subsequent furore around Davidson’s impossible to control outburst, was not the BBC’s shameful choice to keep the N-word in the show, but their choice to edit any of what Davidson said at all.
If you have seen I Swear, the movie Davidson’s life story inspired (and for which Robert Aramayo won best actor at the BAFTAs that night), then you will know the entire point of the movie is how difficult life is for those with Tourette’s to find acceptance in a world that is so uninformed about, and unforgiving of, the verbal and physical tics the syndrome makes them have. The worst possible things — racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. — will pop out of the mouth of a person with Tourette’s completely involuntarily, as will physical tics, strange noises, and movements which might amount to violence (an errant swing of a fist). What the movie reminds us, as with all “disabilities”, is that what “disables” the sufferer is more about the world around them than the symptoms themselves. Davidson’s issues portrayed in the movie are only issues when the people around him don’t understand or accept what his brain makes him do involuntarily. If, for example, they take offence at something he says.
When a person intentionally chooses to call you by a racist slur, being offended and upset makes a lot of sense. When they call it you because they cannot control the words their brain makes their mouth form, you can still feel upset and hurt at simply hearing this awful thing directed at you, but offence is the wrong response. This is not someone unknowingly saying something insensitive and still choosing the wrong words, this is someone not choosing at all. They are simply not responsible. Part of the syndrome’s difficulty is that it makes you say the absolute worst thing at the absolute worst time.
So what I Swear reminds us, and what makes it such a heart-warming story, is that it is in all of our power to make the lives of Tourette’s sufferers’ easier through understanding and learning to to over-react to the things they say and do uncontrollably. Once you turn a blind ear to the outbursts and focus instead on only what the person is choosing to say or do, Tourette’s stops being a “disability” and simply becomes a character quirk.
The problem, however, is that the condition is rare enough that most of us don’t come into contact with people who have it. So when someone says or does something that seems hurtful and insensitive, our first thought is seldom “perhaps they have Tourette’s?” It is usually an instinctive upset and outrage.
At the BAFTAs, therefore, in conjunction with this wonderful movie about Tourette’s, the BBC, and BAFTA organisers, had the opportunity to sensitively highlight exactly this. Have the host explicitly remind us upfront that Davidson is there, will say and do things uncontrollably, and that in the spirit of the movie and the activism he has spent his whole life trying to do, it will not be edited and the audience are kindly asked to try to ignore it as best they can and be accepting. A completely unedited version of the night, with all the interruptions and outbursts would help to normalise to the audience what having someone with Tourette’s around is like. The unfortunate N-word moment would still be broadcast, but it would have context, and Jordan and Lindo would not be so taken off guard. If the message to everyone is, expect outrageous and horrible things to be said, then, when they are said, there is a built-in understanding and charity.
How the BBC dealt with John Davidson’s attendance at the BAFTAs last week is definitely morally questionable and offensive, but not because they let the racial slur slip past the censors when other insults were cut. It was offensive and immoral because by censoring anything Davidson said it continued to contribute to a climate of outrage and ignorance around Tourette’s when it could have been, instead, a catalyst for change.
If you haven’t seen the wonderful, I Swear, I suggest you do. (Sinners too! That movie is marvellous in a completely different way).
Author: DaN McKee (he/him)
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