“It’s a hate propaganda law” — that’s how the director Data Tavadze assesses the legislative package, which already has many names. The media, civil society, and the artistic sphere call it a law of homophobia, hatred, and censorship, because the content is exactly that. At the legislative level, it is called “On family values and protection of minors”. And the team that has been violating human rights for years and now decides to legislate it, calls it a regulation against “LGBT propaganda” – just like in Russia.
The law, which restricts people’s freedom of expression, access to health care and imposes censorship in the media, literature, cinema or other areas of the arts, will come into effect on December 2. Director Data Tavadze says that the purpose of this law is to instill shame and fear in people, to eliminate differences and to make us oppose each other.
“This law is a disaster, it is terrible. On the one hand, the queer community is going to disappear from our cultural consciousness and certain groups of people are going to disappear from the space where we have to value reality. A specific group is being expelled from our reality. This is a fascist law.
For art, this is already legalized censorship. I don’t know how to implement it, I haven’t heard it yet, I’ve been asking this question for many months. What do they want? Who should check these products? Should a body be created for censorship in this country? Can a country with a Soviet past, a past of censorship be in favor of this? Shouldn’t it draw a similarity or a parallel with the time from which this country, thank God, emerged? How can you not be afraid of this”, Tavadze says.
The director explains that another bad consequence of the law can be self-censorship. According to him, frightened people will begin to limit themselves, which will lead to catastrophic results.
“The most dangerous thing for me is not that a body will be created that will check our premieres, or before we have a play, they will see it and tell us that these scenes should be cut, or that the play should not be shown at all… but, I am afraid that the existence of such a law automatically creates self-censorship in our society and people themselves begin to enforce this law. It may not be necessary to cut anything, because people themselves will cut everything that may not suit the government. Art will be crushed, cut, rearranged because they are afraid. Self-censorship is the most harmful thing we live in, despite the rise of official censorship from the past. Society is still on the path of liberation, our art was on the path of liberation, and it was on this path that official censorship again caught up.”
All this is against what this country has been fighting for, for 35 years, that is, it is against freedom.
The director talked to us about the main narrative that the Georgian dream uses to explain the need for this law. This is non-existent “LGBT propaganda”, which is used to sow fear in society, as if it is possible to change a person’s gender or orientation by talking. No research supports this.
“It is impossible to change a person’s orientation by talking or showing something, it’s just funny, it’s comical. But it is tragic because we see the results of this law and rhetoric — we see victims, physically destroyed, killed people. As much as, on the one hand, this rhetoric is absurd, the consequences that follow are so disgusting”.
Tavadze explains that the propaganda of love is absurd, but it is easy to propagate hatred.
“I call it the law of hate propaganda, because you can and obviously do well in propagandizing hate, but of course it is impossible for someone to tell you who to love or force you to love. This is impossible and complete absurdity”.
According to him, a person is freer in a free society and “when the society is not intimidated and the political system, the regime is not based on fear, contempt and hatred, then a person feels much safer and freer and, accordingly, is much more emancipated”.
“Therefore, if something is seen more because there is less fear in the country, this should be happy for all parties, because it is an indicator that life in our country is not dangerous.”
Tavadze said that with these steps, the government will enter the culture of shame, where the main driving force is fear and shame.
“This is very dangerous, because shame is a mechanism that leaves us alone and is carried out in a mode where there is an “I” and an “other”. There is constant division and individualization, the introduction of absolute, fundamental fear, which is difficult to fight within oneself.
They really want us to be in a shameful territory, to be ashamed of who we are, to be ashamed of any kind of difference, dissent, orientation, ethnic difference, language, dialect, etc. This difference is not marked and celebrated, but people are shamed for being different”.
Gray, monotonous and scared – this is the crop they preach to us, and if we don’t do as they say, they will turn the universities into barracks and from there they will mix and hurt us. In fact, the game the government has started is very dangerous, and I can’t say anything other than that it will end badly if we don’t turn this vector around in time.