Book Review: Giving Offence by Martin Rowson

After a long, exactly after 2 months, I am lettering another blog post! Frankly, a minute before writing this, I have never thought I must write something. The sudden reason for this new blog is, what I encountered in EFL library today. We had a presentation today, so as always, I went to participate it before an hour, and I had an hour to spend in some way. I could have gone to the teashop to meet any of my friends, or to open facebook and upload a new photo on its wall, or to sleep and see a wonderful daydream, but I preferred to be a good boy, therefore, I went to the library. I had an empty bag and the bag was not allowed to take inside of the library. An empty bag always behaves like our intimate friend and some theoreticians already introduced the importance of the possessiveness of a bag. For example, in everyday he is talking about the possessing of a bag and why a bag is important.

I got a token, and when I was about to sign the registrar, suddenly the security person asked my ID card! The interesting thing is, that security guy knows me well, he sees that I come and go back from the library at least two-three times every day. Still he dared to ask me the library card! I avoided his demand and pretended I heard something else, but he repeatedly demanded and glued on his need. I felt strongly offended by that person and in a hurry; I took my ID card and rushed inside the library. To air out my felt offensiveness, I could go out taking my bag arguing with the security guy or simply go and sit before a book. Here again I preferred to be a good boy. Therefore, the next option was to select a book that is suitable to the situation. Here I, either, could select a book on Mappilas of Malabar (I know there are two books in the library), or go to the magazine section and read something. In that moment, Martin Rowson’s book appeared to console me!

In the new arrival section, I saw ‘Giving Offence’ written by Rowson, a London based cartoonist. His self-explanation is one who gives offences to the society. This book is examining the psychic of an offender and why people always are offended by others. Offence, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and it is a subjective business. There are many minor offences, but there are also some major offences that are not worth to be mentioned like cannibalism, incest, paedophilia, necrophilia or coprophagus. He traces the history and goes for saying that these overwhelmingly offensive acts were practiced somewhere in some point of time. For example, Tom Stoppaardi’s noted-play Jumpers explains the cannibalistic practices of some society. The playwright describes a community who eat their parents’ dead bodies believing that by doing this they are actually venerating their parents. Even Christianity in certain community played a role to encourage them to eat the brain of the dead bodies. For example, a new disease, Kuru was found among Fore People of Papua. The reason for this disease was when they converted to Christianity, they mixed their own ritual practices with the new theology and started to ete their parents’ brain when parents were dead.

Incest was a common practice of most of the ancient communities like Greek, Roman, Egyptian and ottoman to protect their monarchy and to revolve their power around their own people. Paedophilia is seen in some societies still. There is a myth of Zappa about his act before a huge crowd. Once when he was performing in a stage he challenged the audience to do the most repulsively offensive thing they could imagine, he promised to outdo that. A woman did a ‘most offensive thing’ and he, as promised, outdid that.

Offence is a very subjective one, a daughter is easily offended when she is not allowed to wear what she wants to wear, a father is offended when he sees his son wears something he does not like, and the daughter is offended when mother wear an old dress or something. There is a story about a German Brownshirt. She went to watch Marx brother’s movie. She liked it and she laughed, laughed and laughed. But when she came out, she knew that Marx brother were actually Jew, so she was offended and went to the counter demanding her money back! Humour can be used both aggressively and defensively. When Diana was killed in a car mishap, it actually made mixed responses. As a satirical cartoonist, our author drew some cartoon on Diana’s death and it invited the offence of some people.

He goes to explain the caricature and how caricature works in a society. When 9/11 happened, he drew a cloud sky, called his manager, and said to him that he had a meaningless and senseless cartoon. The manager was impressed and responded, ‘this is the best time to give people that meaningless and senselessness!’ The book is written with very less pages and in am easy way to comprehend the idea he is presenting. I read it and ran to participate the research scholars’ open presentation.