Tweaking
Interesting. Mediawatchwatch points out that Germaine Greer’s defense of her article on the Brick Lane ruckus slightly adjusts what she said in the first article. It’s right there for all to see…
The community has the moral right to keep the film-makers out but they cannot then complain if somewhere else is used and presented to the world as Brick Lane.
I have been accused of saying things I never said about Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane and the campaign to prevent its filming in the East End of London…Natasha Walter, writing on these pages, claims not to know what I could possibly mean by saying that the residents of Brick Lane have a “moral right” to refuse to cooperate with the people making the film of Monica Ali’s book.
Come on, GG – play fair.
The irony is, she has grounds for her defense: after all, she immediately goes on to say ‘There is only one remedy available if your reality is being recycled through a writer or a movie-maker, and that is to write your own novel or make your own film – and accept ostracism as your just desert.’ She could have just said that was her basic point; but massaging what she actually did say is an error.
My first take on reading her article today is that it’s quite mealy-mouthed. I really don’t think she realy engaged her brain on this one before getting stuck in.
GG (disingenuously?) presents two different things as if they are the same:
>Perhaps Walter doesn’t understand how disturbing it is to have gobbets of your life sampled, digested and dished back up to you in unrecognisable form… By now I have appeared as a character in at least seven books, of which I have read only one – my husband’s Let’s Hear It for the Long-legged Women, which gave such a bizarre account of our relationship that I nearly drove myself mad trying to reconcile it with what I remembered…< As far as I’m aware (and I’ve seen no claims to the contrary) Monica Ali does not depict (in fictional form) any specific individuals, so Greer’s argument doesn’t hold water.
Germaine, Germaine, *sigh*, there was a time when, however nuts what you wrote sounded, I could guarantee there would be a nugget of pure undiluted exceptional sanity at its heart. Alas, no longer so.