Imperial blather
Posted by Jonathan Birch on February 16th, 2009
Creative Commons licensed photograph courtesy of Flickr user photoverulam.
If there’s one thing more irritating than excessive political correctness, it’s excessive whining about how political correctness has “gone mad”. So I’ll try not to take that line here. But I’m a little baffled by the complaints over Emmanuel’s British Empire-themed May Ball, and the subsequent backtracking by its committee, who have renamed it.
I’m not a gung-ho imperialist. I can self-flagellate as heartily as anyone. But the suggestion that we ought to respond to our dark past by erasing every morally neutral portrayal of it — by outlawing every representation that fails to be sufficiently negative — this is, at best, naive, weird, and unrealistic. But I worry that it’s also dangerously misleading when it goes hand in hand with a contrasting rose-tinted celebration of other cultures.
What, for instance, is the theme of this year’s Clare May Ball? It’s The Forbidden City, a wondrous adventure through the sweet and innocent delights of Imperial China. I know relatively little about Imperial China, but I am reminded of the description of the suppression of the Taiping rebellion of the 1850s, in W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn:
More than six thousand citadels were taken by the rebels and occupied for a while; five provinces were raised to the ground in battle after battle; and more than twenty million died in just fifteen years. The bloody horror in China at that time went beyond all imagining.
Sebald records how the imperial household of Tz’u-hsi, the despotic Dowager Empress and the Robert Mugabe of her era, blew £6 million a year, in 1870s money, while her subjects died in their millions from drought:
Between seven and twenty million people — no precise estimates have ever been calculated — are said to have died of starvation and exhaustion, principally in Shansi, Shensi and Shantung.
Is this the “decadence” Clare is celebrating? Should male guests be made into eunuchs, or given the chance to enjoy punishments such as “slow slicing“? Should female guests try having their feet bound for the night? One could raise similar points about almost any theme imaginable. All civilizations stand on a pile of corpses, and you can’t count the “dark chapters” in history on the fingers of one hand. These are important lessons for anyone. But May Balls aren’t history lessons — and let’s not pretend they are.
Filed under: jonathanbirch on February 16th, 2009
“The suggestion that we ought to respond to our dark past by erasing every morally neutral portrayal of it — by outlawing every representation that fails to be sufficiently negative — this is, at best, naive, weird, and unrealistic.”
How is a May Ball a morally neutral portrayal of our dark past? By its very nature, it is a night of celebration, decadence and indulgence. By making the theme ‘Empire’, it is therefore an implicit ‘celebration’ of our imperial history. In fact, it was not so much implicit as painfully explicit, inviting us to ‘celebrate the glory days of the Victorian Empire’.
You are quite right, May Balls shouldn’t pretend to be history lessons - because, let’s face it, were Emma to give a neutral portrayal of the British Empire its May Ball wouldn’t be a barrel of laughs. Yet by the same token, they shouldn’t treat the past with an insensitive brashness as they have done in this case.
How about May Balls just steer clear of sensitive historical issues and just be huge parties?
“By making the theme ‘Empire’, it is therefore an implicit ‘celebration’ of our imperial history.”
So is Clare’s May Ball an implicit celebration of China’s imperial history? I meant that suggestion as a reductio ad absurdum, but maybe some people really are offended by Clare’s theme. I guess this should be debated.
Personally, I think it’s fairly clear that the committees at Clare and Emma do not expect guests to come along and celebrate human rights atrocities. I think they want to highlight the exotic aspects of the foreign lands that have inspired their ball. I don’t think they needed to make that explicit to anyone.
Inviting us to ‘celebrate the glory days of the Victorian Empire’ was a little careless. Above all it can’t help but sound nostalgic!
But surely celebrating the culture of a period isn’t celebrating every aspect of its social and political make-up?
Food, drink, decor and entertainment do not surreptitiously infect one with the values of their day - nor do they imply and an agreement with them.
We go down a dangerous path if we damn culture by the society that produced it. The Victoria and Albert Musuem’s current exhibition ‘Magnificence of the Tsars’ must surely be inappropriate, lets never listen to Wagner ever again, perhaps we should designate the Tower of London a national memorial to political prisoners? Keep the school children away or before you know it they’ll be shouting ‘Off with his head!’
Recognising the mistakes and respecting the horrors of the past is vital in preventing them from happening again. But this is a party not a political rally - afford culture some status of its own.
Having recently talked to some friends in Emma, it seemed that one of the reasons for the Ball’s theme being changed was that many of the Fellows were against it and seized the opportunity given by the student “protest” (ie facebook group) to do something.
And, from what I understood, the focus of their criticism was not so much the “Empire’s Dark Legacy” then its connection to Cambridge. They felt that Cambridge had been associated with the Victorian Empire & elitism image in the past, that Emma had managed to get ride of it, and that therefore reassociating it through the May Ball may be damaging to Emma’s image in terms of Access. In a way, they feared reinforcing the stereotypes about Cambridge. ( Though I admit that the facebook group is more directly targeted at the Empire itself)
Oh, and as an afterthought, Clare’s theme two years ago was “Chateau Fantaisie”, modelled on 17th century Versailles. As a Frenchman, I should have found it very offensive to have such an absolutist and repressive regime presented in a favourable light and will therefore support any chinese person protesting against this year’s theme… :p
The Versailles-themed Clare Ball is another good example. Almost all May Balls seem to be in poor taste. They’re gaudy, brash, decadent… and proud of it. So if one May Ball reinforces Cambridge stereotypes and damages access, they all do.
I can’t quite decide whether they should all be banned or all be permitted.