Should Salman Rushdie Live and Let Die ?

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2019

⏱️ 23 minutes

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Summary

You are a liberal who opposes art being banned. But would a movie that calls for you to be killed change your view of censorship? This was the quandary facing Salman Rushdie when filmmakers in Pakistan produced a James Bond-style action thriller in which a trio of Islamist guerrillas are inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa to track down and kill the author of The Satanic Verses. In the year of the 30th anniversary of the fatwa against the novelist from Iranian clerics, film historian Dr Iain Robert Smith explores what this largely-forgotten episode from the Rushdie affair can tell us about current debates on freedom of expression.

Iain Robert Smith researches the impact of globalisation on popular films made around the world. He teaches at King’s College, London.

The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Fiona McLean

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Shahadabari, and I'm delighted to be introducing this short talk
0:41.2	recorded at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival as a BBC Arts and Ideas podcast.
0:47.9	Ian Smith spends his time at the University of London studying film
0:52.1	with a particular interest in world cinema and international
0:55.7	superheroes from the Turkish Superman to the Philippines films where Batman fights with James Bond.
1:02.7	He's a new generation thinker on the scheme the BBC runs with the Arts and Humanities Research
1:07.4	Council to make radio programmes from academic research. And his talk today is called
1:12.9	Should Salman Rushdie Live and Let Die.
1:27.0	It's 1990.
1:28.3	You are an examiner for the British Board of Film Classification.
1:32.3	It's your job to watch the latest releases and decide what age certificate is appropriate.
1:38.3	Earlier this year, you gave a 15 rating to pretty women and a PG to teenage mutant ninja turtles.
1:45.6	And you've just received a new film from Pakistan called International Gorillus.
1:51.0	As with many South Asian films, it's nearly three hours long. It mixes together elements of
1:56.9	the action, comedy, romance and musical genres. and as a wonderfully over-the-top villain
2:02.5	whom the audience is encouraged to hate. On first glance then, it seems fairly unremarkable.
2:09.1	But then something catches your attention. The villain in this film is named Salman Rushdie.
2:16.0	And our heroes are a trio of Islamist guerrilla fighters
2:20.4	who are inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa
	...

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