Where is your CVC code?
How is it that despite thousands of people in the streets of Sanaa, Casablanca, Bissau and Rangoon, the top protest story of the past day is Rupert Murdoch getting a pie in the face? On the one hand this News Corp. scandal is justifiably a big deal and the kind of public scrutiny foisted upon Murdoch has been a long time coming. But on the other hand, does a pie in the face really deserve top billing and constant replays on CNN, MSNBC and surprisingly even Fox?
After my initial frustration at the second-class news status given to people risking their lives to end oppressive regimes, I realized that there might be something to the whole pie-in-the-face protest—something that we often talk about on this site as a successful strategy: humor. Not only does the action lend itself to such irresistible headlines as “Just Dessert” and “Humble Pie,” but it dissolves a quiet tension that might allow for greater public outcry.
Perhaps going a bit over the top, the Vancouver Sun interviewed a sociologist at the University of British Columbia on this point:
Pieing someone in the face is a form of protest that is relatively harmless and gets people’s attention quickly, said Christopher Schneider, a sociologist at the University of British Columbia.
“By the very nature of its definition, a protest is supposed to be disruptive,” Schneider said. It should get people’s attention without being harmful, he said.
At a time when protests are scripted, require permits and are confined to special protest zones, slapping a pie in someone’s face gets a lot of media attention. It’s also funny.
“It conjures up these images of silliness, clowns, cartoons, children, carnivals, comedy,” Schneider said.
“It’s very difficult with all of that (symbolism) to redefine the pie as being a harmful, dangerous assault.”
The public will usually dismiss it, even when criminal charges are laid.
Before anyone thinks I’m advocating a pie-in-the-face as a legitimate protest tactic, let us now consider its shortcomings—of which there are many.
First off, what’s funny is always a subjective matter. Not everyone is going to think shoving a pie in an 80-year-old man’s face is funny. In fact, many will be turned off by it. Here’s what The New Republic‘s T.A. Frank had to say on that point:
I can’t find anyone who approves of what happened yesterday, when news titan Rupert Murdoch suffered a near-shaving-cream-pie in the face during a hearing before members of Parliament in London. Everyone seems to agree that the pie-thrower, “activist” Jonnie Marbles, is a dumbass. We even seem to agree that Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi Deng, is a badass. (If you’re late to the story, Wendi personally lunged at Marbles and smacked him on the head. Sadly, no black eye was administered.)
Frank is right. If you watch the video, the only thing you can see clearly is Murdoch’s wife reacting with hair-trigger reflexes. She’s the star of the video. Not Jonnie Marbles.
Frank also points out that none of these pie-in-the-face videos are really all that funny. The idea is funny, perhaps, but the execution never is.
Being a conscientious journalist, I’ve watched a lot of pie-attack videos in the last 24 hours. One thing they have in common is that they’re not funny. And I don’t just mean that I don’t find them funny. Watch a few of them. Here’s Anita Bryant getting pied. Here’s Bill Gates getting pied. Here’s Ann Coulter getting pied. Does any of them make you laugh? Does anybody in any of the videos laugh? Invariably, the response of the gathered crowd is alarm followed by disgust. A whiff of chaos, of a broken social compact, is in the air. Everyone is shaken.
More to the point, Frank argues that “pie-throwing amounts to the most violent way possible to attack someone powerful without being likely to get in trouble for it.”
A common defense of pie-throwing is that it’s, well, just a pie. But, of course, the person getting attacked has no idea what the hell is about to hit him or her. In 1976, during a campaign appearance in his first run for the U.S. Senate, Pat Moynihan got pied by a Yippie yelling “Fascist pig.” Moynihan, a child of Hell’s Kitchen, was no softie, “but it scared the hell out of me,” he told The New York Times. It had been “a violent act.”
The defense that the fear lasts only a short while—between the time you first notice you’re being attacked and the time you realize it’s just a pie—doesn’t work, either. If fleeting fear were no problem, then mock executions would be just hilarious.
Finally, though, it’s important to note that humor and fear are, more or less, side effects of the action—not the purpose. Frank believes pie-throwing is motivated by a desire to “degrade and humiliate.” On those grounds, as he suggests, it’s hard to praise. After all, Gandhi didn’t help India achieve its independence through shaming its opponent. One of the greatest accolades he ever received was from British historian Arnold Toynbee, who wrote “Gandhi made it impossible for us to go on ruling India, but he made it possible to leave with dignity.”
Of course, seeking some kind of citizen justice against an evil media mogul isn’t the same thing as taking down an imperialist oppressor. They’re different issues entirely and the former is probably more likely to inspire stupid and silly actions than the latter. But if you want to make a statement that the majority of people will embrace, it’s worth looking at the way nonviolent movements work. They understand the dynamic that sways public sympathy.
The pie-thrower himself, Jonnie Marbles, seemed close to realizing that in a piece he wrote for the Guardian today:
I worried, too, that my clowning would detract from the scandal, or provide sympathy for Murdoch. Believe it or not, I even worried about Rupert Murdoch’s feelings.
Ultimately, though, he excused himself and his actions as a means of reminding everyone that Murdoch is a mere mortal, but “one who has got far too big for his boots.” It’s a legitimate message, no doubt. But if you have to spell it out like that, you have to wonder if there’s something wrong with the presentation.
To your list of pie-related headlines, I’d add the Twitter hashtag that started showing up yesterday: #piegate.
To me, the pie felt like kicking the guy when he’s down. It might have been more effective if dispensed while he was receiving a journalism award or blackmailing a politician. Even so, though, there have got to be better ways. Maybe pie his newspapers; part of what makes nonviolent action distinctive is how it is directed against the wrong itself, not the wrong-doer.
Yes, absolutely. The main reason this sort of public shaming doesn’t work is that it turns the “bad guy” into a victim. I think of Otpor’s barrel action as a way around that dynamic. First off, no one is directly harming the “bad guy.” They are harming his image or likeness, which is a symbolic action against injustice. Secondly, and more importantly, the action creates a dilemma for the opponent. If they react, they will look silly. If they don’t react, they will look weak. In that sense, the opponent only ends up hurting himself, which is far more divisive and hilarious than a pie in the face. Of course, as I mentioned in the post, doing something like this to a media mogul is different than doing it to a dictator (although they share many traits). The point is, a more effective and humorous action would make a fool of Murdoch, not a victim.
It strikes me that the pie was made of shaving cream, not whipped cream. Burns the eyes a little, no?
I think the pie throwing is also a form of vigilantism. Assuming that this form of “justice” serves a better (or best) purpose than holding hearings and publically discussing the really inexcusable journalism that Murdoch peddles.
In a civil society we are free to act but not free to harm others. Pie throwing is a form of violence and humiliation. It is an attemt to dehumanize the intended victim.
I don’t see how making someone appear less human is a form of social justice and I agree with you that not only is it unfair, it is also cruel.
It’s not necessary to vilify pies as violent weapons to regard the pie thrust at Rupert Murdoch as an ineffective form of protest. News accounts of his testimony said that his answers weren’t especially effective. Attention at the hearing had shifted to his more voluble son (who it was disclosed only today made a statement in the hearing that may have been untrue or deliberately misled parliament). But whatever substantive evidence of covering up the company’s wrong-doing may have emerged in the hearing was, via broadcast news, mostly foamed over by the pie-throwing incident.
Some protest tactics are very satisfying to protesters but may distract onlookers from the abuses they wish to dramatize. They are what I call exhibitionistic protest, i.e. they exhibit the protester’s feelings, rather than communicate a real message or impose a cost on the protest’s target. This incident is an example of that. Murdoch, a media baron whose company had cavalierly broken the law by hacking into the telephones of tabloid news victims and also government officials, and whose tactics of business intimidation elsewhere had rightly been reviewed by news outlets all over the world in the past two weeks, was made to seem like a victim himself. Pies should be eaten (or, if foam, used to shave with) and not used politically — because they’re likely to smear cream on the cause of the protesters who throw them.
Great thoughts, all. It definitely seems like the verdict went in Murdoch’s favor after the incident—and I think Tom is right that it’s probably all the more so because the pie-throwing took attention away from what was actually said and done. The Times reports, after noting that News Corp.’s stock price started going up following the pie:
To deflate and to dehumanize are not the same thing.
A pie in the face is an act of rehumanization: it takes someone off of the pedestal and shows that their pretensions, like ours, can be laughed at.
Gandhi has been evoked, and it should be pointed out that he was no stranger to this.
“What do you think of British civilisation, Mr. Gandhi?” “I think it would be an excellent idea.”
“Don’t you think you were underdressed for your meeting with the king?” “His majesty was wearing enough clothing for the both of us.”
Let us please reserve words like “degrade,” “humiliate,” and “dehumanize” for actual assaults on human dignity, not assaults on pretentiousness. To do otherwise makes it harder to name and confront true acts of violence.
Throwing a pie in a person’s face is battery.
Committing battery is a violent act. Is Waging Nonviolence advocating violent acts?
You should actually read the piece, Dave. It sounds like we might not be far off from agreeing.