Part 2

Last month we interviewed F, G and N, three writers of the Association for Justice, about their collaboration with the series Hic & Nunc. They told us about their strong disagreement with two writers, m and b (signing together as M) from Temporary Democracy, the main producer of the series. They recalled how they patiently explained to M why they could not accept the latter’s work because of their character Camila’s oppressive statements that were harming the causes they were defending. After a number of carefully argued messages and a more heated poem by the writers of the Association, M kept on defending their problematic work.

F: ‘Famous last words’ again: they didn’t let go. They even wanted to add N’s poem to their episode. They tried to explain again that it was a misunderstanding, implying we were too dumb to get them. They said they were eventually okay to add to their episode some kind of confused statement in place of a signature. Apparently, anything was addable to that episode: a disclaimer, a poem, a statement...

N: I also have their statement. There you go:

Camila is a character that was created by M. M is the combination of two artists, b and m. M believes that its perspective should be wider than those of its two members and rejects the idea of single authorship. m, as an individual, comes from a marginalised family and is, to this day, a victim of injustice. m is also an activist. Because M does not believe in single authorship and perspective, it collaborates with a number of social groups commonly designated as victims. For a conclusive representation of many of M’s creations, please refer to its submissions to most issues of the monthly publication The People.

G: We just dropped it there. They were desperate cases. They wouldn’t understand anything. It’s how it goes with the arrogance of the mainstream institutions and their servants. We left it to the chairpeople of the Association for Justice to put their foot down. They did and this unfortunate Camila episode got cancelled all together.

Following this exchange of messages between M and the three writers, the chairpeople of the Association for Justice had a meeting with two of M’s producers from Temporary Democracy, J and P. We met P who recounted the meeting for us and gave us some back story.

P: We [J and P] loved Camila. She was a fantastic secondary character. She was very discreet at the beginning of the series, just playing the piano in the background, never present in person in the main action but often mentioned. Her first grand gesture was a very short solo supplement where she was making fun of some employees of Temporary Democracy. Camila was always traveling back and forth between the fiction of Hic & Nunc and the reality of Temporary Democracy. We thought it was important to be capable of some self-mockery, so we welcomed this idea of a character making fun of an actual maker of the show. In the first draft of that supplement she was commenting on the production itself, which we thought was fair but we could not afford to publicise internal conflicts… This wasn’t a question of free speech but of common sense… In short we asked M to trim that part. Besides this particular and understandable exception, we were ready to defend at all cost Camila’s freedom of speech and her vivid attitude. The second supplement, the one that triggered the whole Camila-gate with the Association for Justice, was more problematic, but we still defended it whole-heartedly. M had started making caricatures of specific people. We loved these caricatures, but could not make all of them public. The first one was showing an employee who did not want to appear in a publication (because again Camila was traveling between fiction and reality), so we had to trim it. The second caricature was about an employee we were not thinking of keeping, so it was logical not to publish it, since it would not have made sense in terms of continuity. The third one was about a very important co-producer, the boss of Tiny Basket ^{[a famous production company in Gxxx]}. We found it cruel and hilarious but we thought it was not fairplay to make fun of a co-producer, so we could not keep it either. As the main producers and initiators of the series, our job was to trigger a debate, shake people’s comfort, be provocative even, but creating counterproductive conflicts had to be avoided. Hic & Nunc and Temporary Democracy were all about giving everyone a voice, but these voices had to be guided, for consistency purposes. The conflict between M and the writers of the Association for Justice was not about these caricatures but about Camila’s ideas and wordings in the body of the episode. The exchange reached a dead end, after which we had this meeting with the chairpeople of the Association. They confirmed they were 100% in favour of freedom of speech, but this Camila episode was crossing way too many lines. Camila could not possibly be mean to half the city. This is not what comedy is about. We offered M to rewrite ourselves the whole episode in a friendlier way. We emphasised that one part at least did not need any rewriting, the one where Camila was talking about a painter she liked. That was the fairest offer we could make, but M decided to kill their character instead. Artists and their pride… Anyway, M was a real asset to Temporary Democracy, so we were happy they decided to move to another department, a more technical one, away from more possible conflicts.

Following the publication of the first part of this investigation, C contacted us. C is an activist in the town of Mxxx where she created the first Injustice Awareness Group just one year before the events. C was also b’s friend at the time of the events.

C: I knew N, I had met her some ten years before the whole Camila-gate. N was a fraud. She was claiming to be a ‘transgressive person’ but she was just hardly transgressing good taste. People like that come from families that have all the privileges they denounce. They invent a biography and a costume that allow them to look consistent as members of the Association for Justice, while at the same time despising people like me, because my job is too unethical for their high moral standards. My job, by definition, makes me a permanent target of oppression, but instead of protecting me and my peers, they tell us to change our line of work because it reinforces oppression mechanisms of the ‘mainstream system’. It’s really like telling a factory line worker to quit because that makes him an accomplice of capitalism.

We also received an invitation to meet from an anonymous man who wished to share his views on the Association for Justice.

Anonymous man: I know the Association for Justice even though I have never been properly introduced to its members. When I arrived in Gxxx, I was part of a group that had been smuggled in and we were forced to work for our smugglers to pay our debt. Let’s make it clear: the ‘work’ was to trade illegal material and substances. We were in a very sensitive position, trapped by our smugglers on one hand, persecuted by the police on the other hand, disliked by the local population on the third hand. Our trading territory happened to be just outside the building of The Association for Justice. They let us use their toilet sometimes, they were really nice. Did they help us in any way? No, why? I think they were fighting their own fights. You know, we were just strangers in this town.

Most of the other writers of the series are now impossible to locate. With the help of P, we were able to contact and meet B, one of the seven writers of the series.

B: I was one of the many writers of Hic & Nunc. One day I received this message from Temporary Democracy asking me to read and comment on a draft by a couple of writers I did not know. J and P said they wanted my opinion ‘as a writer and as a victim’. I learnt only much later that it was the epicentre of a storm in Gxxx. Honestly this draft was fantastic. I couldn’t wait to see it go to production. It was doing the job of tying up the many subplots of the series in a witty, provocative and complex way. It was playing with visual codes, layers of language, more or less academic references in a punk/pop manner. Sure, there was a couple of jokes that were borderline, but nothing a 19-year-old could not have come up with.

All traces of that draft have disappeared. Yet, P was able to remember the name of one of the persons who was quoted in Camila’s text: K. K was involved neither in the making of Hic & Nunc, nor in the argument between the Association for Justice and M, but told us a few stories about the latter.

K: You know it’s funny, I had been an activist some twenty-five years before the Association for Justice decided they were the main authority in the matter. A year or so before this whole thing happened, I had written this aphorism in a popular publication back then: ‘Did you lose your sense of humour? Congratulations, you’re finally an activist!’ Just to be clear, I was publishing this kind of jokes while organising strikes and demonstrations. Still today I am on the field all year round, and I think we should be able to be vitriolic about ourselves. Anyway, this joke didn’t really please everyone when I published it and not much more when Camila borrowed it (with my agreement and my name credited). Apparently, it was one of the jokes that was particularly picked up on by the Association for Justice and Temporary Democracy when M had to go on some kind of trial. How can I describe that? ‘Ironic’?

(to be continued)