What Cinema Teaches us About Language

I have been to see three excellent historical films recently: The Butler, Mandela and 12 Years a Slave. Each of these has had something powerful to say to the audience about the way we have engaged, as a society, with differences in ethnicity in the past and the way in which power relationships have operated.

Watching the films I was struck by how the language relating to them has been used within the debate about LGBT rights and particularly to the discussions around the divisions within the Christian community regarding LGB issues. The Butler was looking at mid-late 20th century experience with reference to the civil rights movement. Mandela was dealing with apartheid and 12 Days a Slave with slavery. Whilst with the Butler it made me look more favourably on the use of such language in the case of the other two films I felt deeply uncomfortable and I want to urge people to be more careful in the language that is used in their debates.

First I want to look at the reaction I had to Mandela and 12 Days a Slave. Both looked at specific and contextual issues and ways the ways in which power was violently used to oppress others by controlling their movements and restricting their liberty. Whilst I appreciate that there are strong and clear parallels, particularly in countries where there is institutional violence and/or discrimination is enshrined within law against LGB(andT) people there is a difference because of the way slavery and apartheid operated. Part of this difference exists because, as a variety of people have pointed out, ethnicity is observable and sexuality is not embodied in the same way.

The main way in which parallels have been drawn with apartheid and slavery in the debate in the church relates to the way the bible has been used to justify the discrimination. 12 Days a Slave did have scenes which showed how the bible was used in this way, but these scenes also indicated the difference. Slaves were forced to sit and listen to these passages by their oppressors as part of a systematic process. Slavery was (and in some places still is) an economic form of oppression and the use of the bible was intended to support economic dominance, as was apartheid.

LGB issues are not linked to economic relationships in the same way. Yes, the bible is being interpreted by a dominant group in a particular way, but in this case it is not linked to economic relationships. Where the parallel does lie is in that discrimination has been justified by particular interpretations of the bible which others argue are being misinterpreted or are contextually specific and that the group being discriminated against has taken an alternative reading of the bible which focuses upon liberation.

That brings me to The Butler. I have to confess having heard Bishop Alan Wilson and others use the language of civil rights with regards to LGB issues the past I have sometimes been more than a little sceptical. I am the sort of person who would have been a suffragist rather than a suffragette in Edwardian Britain and so felt the civil rights language has been part of an polarisation which has failed to appreciate the complexity of the issue. However, watching The Butler and seeing the way in which discrimination was shown to operate I understood that the LGB(andT) debates within the church do relate to a civil rights campaign and that those taking an activist stance are needed as well as those of us quietly working for slow movement forward.

The experience of those who have suffered discrimination due to their ethnicity has to be seen as similar but also different to those suffering discrimination due to gender identity or sexuality. To seek to use some of the language in other arguments and debates does not give due respect to those who have suffered from that form of oppression (be it slavery or apartheid).

However, in some cases the language does need to be applied. There are LGBandT people in various places who are suffering repression and real physical threat as well as the fear of imprisonment due to their sexual orientation. Within the UK there are those who are facing direct discrimination from churches and church structures and policies. The is also a culture in many denominations that indicates all is well as long as LGB people behave in a certain way or remain silent on particular issues. The work to change these policies or attitudes is part of a civil rights campaign.

It is for this reason I would urge any Methodist reading to positively engage with the consultation currently on Same Sex Marriage and Civil Partnership the Methodist Church of Britain is currently undertaking. Whatever may be said about this consultation and what it is and what it is not for those of us whose lives it directly impacts this consultation is about our civil rights.