To Portray is to Participate

"Censors tend to do what psychotics do. They confuse reality with illusion."
David Cronenberg

An exhibition at the Barbican, depicting slavery as a degrading, humiliating and racist institution, has been cancelled because campaigners objected to the degrading, humiliating and racially charged nature of its images. The exhibition consists of a dozen tableaux depicting "settings drawn from real life" in the good old days when everyone knew their place, or at least could be duly informed of it (perhaps via castration) without provoking a lot of liberal fuss. A former equalities and human rights commissioner said that "having people objectified in this humiliating way was always going to cause a fierce reaction"; a statement whose categorical wrongness the exhibition was designed to show. As so often with the morally righteous, a disturbing depiction is as culpable as a hateful act. Certainly, thanks to some loud voices on one side and some weak knees on the other, the depiction is easier to prevent.