Mind over Manners

A few weeks ago,Gap introduced a basic black T-shirt that read “Manifest Destiny” across the front. The American clothing giant has stirred a controversy among Native Americans,who are reminded of the bloody oppression their communities faced since Columbus arrived on their land. Manifest Destiny is the brutal view from two centuries ago that believes that America was “destined” to expand across the North American continent. Thousands of Native Indian tribes were displaced or wiped out,and their land and livelihood consumed.

A petition was filed,and Gap and the T-shirt’s designer Mark McNairy were made to apologise. Of course,the T-shirt is not available in their stores or online anywhere.

Earlier this year,Nike released a Black and Tan shoe. Its name refers to a British parliamentary unit known for its brutalities against Irish revolutionaries in the 1920s.

Last year,Christian Dior,one of the biggest luxury houses in the world,sacked its supremely talented and highly overworked chief designer John Galliano for making anti-Semitic comments at a bar brawl. Galliano was drunk and alone,and that paints the picture of the sad and lonely man in a nondescript pub in the very public Marais,on whose shoulders alone rested the entire couture industry of France. Almost every senior journalist and newspaper was shocked and shaken,and wrote disapprovingly. (The magazines were mum; Dior is among the top three advertisers.)

And Natalie Portman,the sweet-faced Jewish Ms Portman declined wearing his dress at the Oscar ceremony that year even though she is the face of Dior. That her new ad has been pulled out for excessive airbrushing her eyelashes is another ‘ism’ to fight over altogether.

When the mood of the world is to cry affront,it is becoming hard to sit on the fence with this one. If culture needs to exist,culturally offensive must co-exist. But we live in the age of outrage-ism. The anti-Muslim film,unwatchable as it may be,has wreaked havoc among Islamic nations. A young pre-teen blogger,Malala Yousafzai,is battling her life after being knifed in an intolerant regime.

Salman Rushdie,who is enraged by “the industry of outrage” possibly like none other,talks of his decade in hiding in his memoir Joseph Anton. He tells Sagarika Ghose on CNN-IBN: “I’m tired of religion demanding special privileges. I mean,just get over it. There’s no idea in the world that demands protection,you know. If ideas are strong,they can stand criticism.”

In the Washington Post,Fouad Ajami,a senior fellow at Hoover University,writes the cause of uproar is a “lack of modernity”,because modernity “requires the willingness to be offended”.

The business that fashion alone generates makes it the most powerful art there is today. Art,by its very definition,must thrive in absolute freedom. At the very core of fashion is its desire to provoke — a raw emotion,a new idea and the re-telling of an old story. History becomes,eventually,a farce.

namratanow@gmail.com