I admit, I knew about this quite late. Apparently an introductory day to kinkiness at KED has been banned. You might read about this at length here. This would not be the first time or the last time a cultural event (because that's what it was) would be banned.
Someone told me we are running backwards. Society at large in Lebanon is going backwards but it got me thinking: Is it?
First some facts: In the 1960s a nightclub in Aley (Los Cuevos) had a BSDM room and a dominatrix.
Lebanon did have the first soft-porn mass market movie (Sayyidat Al Akmar Al Sawda2 - directed by, no I am not kidding Samir A. Khoury, who would go on and direct Remi Bandali in her children's fairy film "Amani ta7t kaws kouza7"). The film was produced in 1971.
In 1972 Lebanon - yes, the country - advertises in Playboy - yes, that Playboy.
In 1978 the late Elias Rahbani released his hit Liza Liza with a women showing her naked breasts on the sleeve.
In 1982, Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt gets interviewed by Playboy - yes, again, that Playboy.
Now all of these signal that Lebanon was an open and sexually-tolerant society. I have heard that too many times.
And yet....
What if these were the exceptions, not the rule.
What if society, has always been conservative, unaccepting of new ideas, what if it benefited everyone - I mean politicians do not want people to actually think, the clergy of all religions would see their reign destabilized by people who ask or ague too much, people themselves prefer their ignorance to really straying too far in thinking.
Here is an incident I spoke of before:
A commission of the delegates went to Kamel Assaad*'s father who was one of the most influential Shiite feudal lords (or dignitaries to put in mildly) in the South of Lebanon and asked him to build schools for their children, his retort was: “Kamel a’am yeta’alam a’ankon” (Kamel is studying on your behalf!) (*Kamel Assaad became speaker of the house after the parliamentary elections that preceded the war of 1975 and remained until the end of the self-prorogating law which lasted until the first post-war elections which included “nominations” of certain MPs).As I said, a lot of people benefited from ignorance. From conservatism. I kept a large chunk of people under control. And control is the key word here.
On all accounts, I still think that perhaps, if we look at this from a different standpoint, I do not think we are regressing. We are simple where we have always been. What happened prior was perhaps the exceptions that proved the rule and which happened before things got "better organized".
Take it from someone who taught at universities since 2005, no our youth are not open-minded at all, and teachers make a point of disciplining anyone who tries to make something which - supposedly - goes against their morals (their being the teachers themselves).
In a retrospective on Jeff Koons, a student was forbidden to include the work he did with his then-wife Elena Anna Stoller better known as Cicciolina (see work under "made in heaven" on Google). Let me repeat, the student wanted to include this seminal work and it is the teacher who forbade him.
With this, I really wonder - are we going backwards?