Last April, controversy was stirred up at the University of Michigan when it was announced that the Umix program would host a screening of the movie American Sniper for one of its “Friday Flicks” events. The Umix program is designed to offer a safe and fun alternative to the typical college nightlife, and many were astonished that this movie would be shown in this setting. Individuals from several different student groups across campus began to protest the screening and signed a petition voicing their concerns.
The biggest among these being that the Umix program was not the right venue to host a screening of a movie like American Sniper. It certainly seems like an odd choice for Umix given that movies it had screened prior to the controversial American Sniper include Horton Hears a Who and The Amazing Spiderman 2. Shockingly, this inconsistency is not the motive for the groups’ outcry. Multiple Campus groups were more concerned with what the Center for Campus Involvement stood for, the department that puts on Umix, “We embrace difference and celebrate the cultural pluralism that brings vibrancy to our campus. We seek to meet the needs and interests of all, and to empower all students as valued contributors to the Michigan community” and why they thought showing American Sniper flew in the face of that.
I spoke with Devin Jones, a member of S.A.F.E at the University of Michigan, which was one of the organization whose members decided to support the protest, to find out more about the motives behind the protest and what the desired outcome would’ve been. One of the biggest misconceptions about this protest was that the individuals involved were advocating that the film not be shown at all. In reality, Jones says “We actually didn’t have a problem with the showing of American Sniper, we had a problem with the showing of American Sniper without any discussion of it.” Jones went on to say that in the past Umix has not been known to show “serious movies” as part of its friday flicks events. When asked about the actual outcome of the protest Jones said that the protest had the opposite affect of what was intended. Since the CCI canceled with no immediate plans to reschedule the movie, Jones said “it made it look like we were trying to censor a film and that's not what was happening” This perceived censorship, in turn, caused an increase in “hateful rhetoric against Muslims and Arabs”. The students affected compiled the increased hate mail and threats into a tumblr page.
I also wanted to know why Jones and the other students who were protesting thought American Sniper didn’t fit into the inclusivity that Umix claimed to offer. It was extremely clear that these students didn’t want the movie to be shown at Umix, but what about the movie made it unfit? When asked about the movie itself Jones said that there was an”uptick” in hate crimes against Muslims and Arab Americans in the months following the release of the movie and it portrayed Muslims as either “victims who couldn’t help themselves or people who hated the American way of life and wanted to kill Americans.” Jones thought discussion could be a way to prevent the increase of hate towards Muslims and Arabs on campus that the movie was believed to have caused.
Terms like “Safe Space” and “Social Justice” are often mocked in today’s popular culture. They are used in ways to target those who are deemed over-privileged or overly-sensitive. The reasons that the students who protested this film gave do not put them into these categories. They were merely trying to look out for themselves and ensure their literal safety. However, the CCI’s decision to remove the film screening completely constitutes the first democratic failure of these events and caused severe backlash. One major reason why this was a form of Democratic failure comes in the form of a type of oppression of a minority group that Iris Marion Young refers to as “cultural imperialism.”
The university cancelled the movie due to a protest that didn’t call for its cancellation, but still attributed the cancellation to the protest and petition. By doing this the University marked the members of these groups as enemies of freedom of speech and people calling for censorship just because they were offended. This view was reflected by the kinds of hateful threats members of the groups received and media portrayal of the protest. The oppression they faced can best be summed up by this quote from Young’s book, Justice and the Politics of Difference “Those living under cultural imperialism find themselves defined from the outside, positioned, placed by a network of dominant meanings they experience as arising from elsewhere, from those with whom they do not identify”(59). These individuals in the groups who protested never called for American Sniper to not be shown but they were branded as anti-freedom of speech because the University created this view of them through its cancellation of the movie and the motives it gave for the cancellation. Although, refusing to show the movie at all is a part of the failure too, the oppression the University caused goes much deeper.
Moehlman, Lara. "UMix Won't Screen Film in Wake of Complaints." The Michigan Daily. N.p., 7 Apr. 2015. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.
Woolf, Nicky. "American Sniper: Anti-Muslim Threats Skyrocket in Wake of Film's Release." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 Jan. 2015. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990. Print.
I'm glad that someone actually took the time to look more into the whole "American Sniper" fiasco -the abruptness of it all did confuse the hell out of the student body and certainly brought on more problems than it should have (especially since it was just trying to avoid problems but instead got more or it!). I remember being quite angry at how the University would just strip a movie away because it seemed at the time, as you mentioned, that people were playing the "safe space" argument to take it down -which I believe a lot of people still think so. I didn't quite realize that in the background so much more was happening -and indeed the University should have opened it up to some discussion to eliminate this misunderstanding. But alas, here we are trying to clean up spilled anti-muslim notions and hatred. I didn't quite realize Umix was such a big thing until I heard about some protest about a damn movie (excuse my language but it seemed rather too much in any case). Now that I have a clear understanding of "What" the protest was about, the blame is really on the University for not having the nerve to explain itself. Honestly, I feel like the University would do anything in its power, suppress freedoms and rights as long as it doesn't have to deal with liability in political, societal, or any field. Great article, will follow on to the next two to see where this goes.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that someone actually took the time to look more into the whole "American Sniper" fiasco -the abruptness of it all did confuse the hell out of the student body and certainly brought on more problems than it should have (especially since it was just trying to avoid problems but instead got more or it!). I remember being quite angry at how the University would just strip a movie away because it seemed at the time, as you mentioned, that people were playing the "safe space" argument to take it down -which I believe a lot of people still think so. I didn't quite realize that in the background so much more was happening -and indeed the University should have opened it up to some discussion to eliminate this misunderstanding. But alas, here we are trying to clean up spilled anti-muslim notions and hatred. I didn't quite realize Umix was such a big thing until I heard about some protest about a damn movie (excuse my language but it seemed rather too much in any case). Now that I have a clear understanding of "What" the protest was about, the blame is really on the University for not having the nerve to explain itself. Honestly, I feel like the University would do anything in its power, suppress freedoms and rights as long as it doesn't have to deal with liability in political, societal, or any field. Great article, will follow on to the next two to see where this goes.
ReplyDeleteGreat coverage of this. Like Cavin said, I remember when Umix cancelled the showing... and something about Harbaugh watching the movie with the football anyway. Regardless, cultural imperialism is a good call here - clearly the motives of the student protestors are being defined by a hierarchical cultural authority. The most intriguing aspect of this argument is actually what Mr. Jones said was the motive for the protest. If the university would have held a campus discussion at some event before Umix, it would have been a great opportunity to foster diverse communication among the student body. I'm with Mitchell, the University ducked out of the room at the first sign of conflict. What the films showing and the opposing protest should have been interpreted as was a chance to have a real discussion about important issues in our community. Instead we had a campus where everyone heard about the issue, and promptly chose a side without taking more than five seconds to think about what was actually going on around campus.
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