About the background of the problem

Have you ever heard that... is a song Fat Bottomed Girls grupe Queen kicked out of some kind of selection of the band's best songs, because it is, well, "offensive"? By the way, the song was published back in 1978, but it took a whole 45 years for someone to recognize it and be offended enough to put it on the annihilating blacklist of political-gender (in)correctness. Because, please, "Fat Girls"?!

I guess next in line for extermination will be the "Fat Girl" of Electric Orgasm, as soon as the frogs here see how the white world horses are being shod, they want the same.

I immediately remembered that "cancelled" song, even though I hadn't heard it in decades. It is on the only album Queen that I have ever bought: Jazz, from 1978. When it came out I was 13-14 years old, experimenting with listening to all kinds of music, so I tried to like it Queen, one of the most hyped bands of that era. The experiment failed, I listened to the record a couple of times and left it to gather dust. However, look, when I looked at the list of songs from that record a few hours ago, I realized that I instantly recognize most of them and remember them to this day, that their choruses immediately appear in my consciousness. Of course, this also applies to Fat Bottomed Girls. Eh, what are you top pop artisans: once they put something in your ear, it never comes out, no matter how close it is to your taste...

Well, if we've done music education, let's now go to art education. The decision of the editor-in-chief of the "Nova" newspaper and the eponymous portal not to publish a caricature of the legendary Dušan Petričić, a regular contributor to the Saturday edition, raised some dust in the local miniature, almost disappearing "free public". Petričić assessed that it was censorship and terminated cooperation with "Nova".

Here we will not deal with the question of whether something is censorship or not, but from which socio-cultural source it comes from. It is clear that the editor-in-chief has the right not to publish something: for example, the "Vremena" rodent could decide not to publish this column, and thus he would not, or would not necessarily, exceed his authority. Namely, the editor is not there just to publish something; an even more important part of his job is NOT to publish what is not worthy of publication. For an accurate and complete assessment of the nature of his act, it would be important how he would explain his act, to say the least. justified. And there is a real problem with not publishing Petričić's caricature.

Anyone interested in the detailed reasons of the editor Mihail Jovićević will easily find them on the website new.rs. It is not an uninteresting read. Also, even Petričić's caricature is not difficult to find in the vastness of the internet. However, for those who have not seen it, a small verbal illustration: the drawing shows a younger, scantily clad female person dancing, somewhat in the manner of the so-called bar singers, and a man on his knees who fell into a karasevdah in front of her and waves some handkerchief... or her panties, maybe? It's hard to say.

Now, the interpreters of Petričić's language had no difficulty in explaining that the drawing represents the current president of the Republic of Serbia and TV Pink journalist Jovana Jeremić, a person allegedly prone to very bizarre behavior, both on and off his "work tasks". And her main task lately is to assist the president of the country in turning the rest of this country into a big wedding tent, only without the bride and groom, and with increasingly poorly acted merriment.

Considering the general orientation of the said media, the caricature should not be controversial "politically" in the narrower sense of the word. The editor, however, refers to reasons that in the past might have been called reasons of public morality or good taste, and today would be in the category of gender-political correctness. In this brave new world, there is no place for "fat girls" anymore...

The editor, in fact, also writes this: "I believed and still believe that this caricatural approach to the presentation of the female body would represent a step backwards for 'Nova'", and a little further on: "I am of the opinion that every woman is the owner of her body and the way in which presents it."

The "body" and "presentation" thing is more interesting, but also more complicated, than it seems at first glance. It is intriguing that the scene of the "party" of the female person from the caricature is a very faithful copy of what the real Jovana Jeremić herself announced to the world through the so-called social networks, so the only caricaturization factor is that Vučić was added to her merry company. Oh yes, maybe this too: Jovana Jeremić from the video seems like a slim person, while the one from the drawing is in a certain struggle with kilograms and cellulite. However, you know, it's a caricature: it caricatures, distorts, enlarges, reduces, narrows, expands... If, for example, the "real" Seselj weighed as much as his cartoon avatar in Corax's cartoons, four Rmpali would have to carry him around the world.

Jovićević is, of course, right that "every woman is the owner of her body" (but I guess so is a man?!), but the body of Jovana Jeremić, or anyone else, cannot be harmed by any drawing. Pushing superficial and fake feminism where it doesn't belong only harms what it claims to stand for. As for the "presentation", none of us have ownership over it, although we would probably like it intimately. Especially "public figures" do not enjoy that right. The Internet, for example, is full of verbal and artistic (drawings, photo montages...) hater's insults against me, that I am "fat", "pig", etc., and now what? The problem with insults is that they are banal and simple: baseness is both their source and method and outcome. Caricature as a combination of art and journalism is the opposite: a kind of triumph of spirit over matter. Not being able to see through her beyond the "fat girl" means just staring at the fat flesh and not seeing anything.