The deletion of the F-word (“faggot”) from the song Money for Nothing by the British rock group Dire Straits, ordered by a broadcasting watchdog, is an unfortunate bow to the alleged sensitivities of Canadian ears. While the term is derisory, the song mocks the ignorance of those who use it. It was co-written by Mark Knopfler and Sting, whose human-rights work has earned him plaudits from Amnesty International. The deletionist impulse of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, a private-sector group, is similar to that behind an Alabama-based publisher’s planned removal of the N-word (“nigger”) from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Songs, like novels or poems, are an art form woven from the vernacular. Should art be snipped with a scissors – censored – each time the vernacular is deemed harsh, cruel, offensive? Should William S. Burroughs’ classic novel Queer, be renamed Homosexual? It is true that a song’s meaning may often be misunderstood, but that is also true of novels, or even satirical television shows such as All in the Family. (Studies found that racist viewers had their views confirmed by the show.)
What happens when well-meaning censors blunder around like some overzealous gardener pruning an unruly hedge? The hedge dies. Satire and parody may be endangered, or subject to lifeless parameters set by bureaucrats. There’s a reason for unruliness in art.
