Are we crying wolf?

By Oby Obyerodhyambo

Recently, curiosity took the better of me and I watched the ‘banned’ The Wolf of Wall Street. This is the film that was deemed inappropriate and went through a ban order.

Usually, I am not one to break the law willy-nilly, but in this case, there were two fundamental reasons that guided my protest: One is the fact that the Kenyan constitution allows me freedom of information.  Secondly, I am appalled by the notion that there are individuals who would abrogate to themselves the role of moral barometers or thought police.

Kenya’s struggle to attain constitutional protection for the right to seek and propagate information was a long and arduous one. Those old enough can recall the days when the Special Branch would search premises and after ‘finding’ planted copies of Mwakenya and other ‘seditious’ documents haul one off to court after extreme torture.

I also remember when the editor of Beyond magazine, Bedan Mbugua, served time for publishing his magazine; a periodical that Attorney General Matthew Guy Mulli asked the court to ban past, present and future publication of. I recall that while being held in a police cell because some over enthusiastic policeman had found on my person a copy of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross, a gentleman arrested with a copy of the ‘seditious’ Beyond magazine was brought to join us.

There was also the time when, using the Film and Stage Plays Licensing Act, some police mandarins banned plays like Ngugi’s I will Marry When I Want, Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay Won’t Pay, an adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm titled, Shamba la Wanyama, Tewfik el Hakim’s Fate of  Cockroach, and Oby Obyerodhyambo’s Drumbeats on Kerenyaga.

We also know that recently, the Ministry of Education, feeling hot under the collar because of the socialist realism in the play from Butere Girls’ High School, Shackles of Doom sought to deny it performance rights.

How, then, was the film depicting the evil face of capitalism as epitomised in Wall Street termed undesirable? The constitution allows us freedom to seek access to and disseminate information, unless that act compromises state security. There is no way that this movie compromises anybody’s security.

The film is based on the story of one Jordan Ross Belfort, an American Stock broker who ran a firm that engaged in securities fraud and corruption on Wall Street in the 1990s. He is reported to have defrauded 1,513 people of hundreds of millions of dollars. He was arrested and served a 22-month sentence, and ordered to pay restitution.

The movie, though somewhat hyperbolic, with many scenes where senseless sexual and drug-related trysts are depicted is an artistic indictment of bare-faced capitalism, corporate sleaze and corruption.  The lifestyle of the thieving stockbroker is repulsive, and how one could surmise that this movie celebrates sex, prostitution, drugs and profanity beats common sense.

A few years ago, Kenya’s financial sector went through a near total collapse. Banks went under, and with them deposits belonging to ordinary clients. Names like Rural Urban, Trade Bank and Trust Bank spark painful memories. More recently, there were stockbrokers who fleeced wananchi of their earnings, forcing the closure of several stock brokerage firms still under receivership.

And then there was an elaborate pyramid scheme that impoverished many people, some still trying to get the State to intervene in their favor. Currently, there is a buzz about quails; their egg and meat are sold like some elixir for those in need of rejuvenation. This quail business has been dubbed a high-risk pyramid scheme already crashing.

This is the country that produced Goldenberg, Anglo Leasing and Tritron, as well as a mega maize scandal. There are mammoth financial scandals in the making as we speak.

One might ask, are the characters in some of these landmark frauds not the likes of whom movies would be made? Would such a movie be deemed inappropriate or educative? 

The film censors also cited profanity, lewd language, and sexual exhibitionism as among the reasons that they deemed the film unsuitable, alongside what they termed a celebration of drug culture. 

HYPOCRISY

Discourse on morality in Kenya has always revealed a high degree of hypocrisy.  There has never been any attempt at defining what is acceptable or unacceptable when it comes to sex and sexuality in real life, or when it is portrayed in the media, in advertisement or as a subject of talk shows on FM radio stations.

Though we have laws banning pornography, the Kenyan public has never engaged in a free and frank discussion on what the limits should be.  There is an undefined place where our cultures, faiths and personal freedoms intersect, and this space is a contentious one. Like our ethnic relationships, this space is left undisturbed because of the fear of its volatility.

So, when a ‘jury’ sits in judgment over the moral acceptability of a work of art, whose morality are they using as a yardstick? Are they guided by prescriptions of faith, and if so, which faith?  Are they guided by a cultural compass? From which culture?

We must have faith in the capacity of every adult in Kenya to discern what is appropriate for him or her, and to not parody everything they watch. If what we watch would corrupt your morals, I would sooner have our politicians off air before anything or anyone.