Column | Pissed, bullied, candle in ass and I want to see it

In 17th-century Rome, a troupe of Dutch painters turned things upside down. They drank and they zooided and they called themselves the ‘Bentvueghels’. The Utrecht Central Museum is dedicating a fine exhibition to the society, to their serious paintings, but also to their impressions of violent initiation and troublemaking. And as I chuckle, I notice the aftershocks of last week’s sensitivity uproar. I see jaunty images of a bar fight, pissed and bullied, a burning candle in an ass, a drunken boy next to Michelangelo’s Moses (mirrored for the occasion). I admire the ruthless debauchery of the Bentvueghel paintings, but, I think (while I don’t want to think so at all), submit them to selected experts by experience and they would end up in the depot with their vulgarities, their hedonism, alcoholism, exhibitionism, noise pollution and violence.

In other words, even though the tide seems to have turned for now, I can’t seem to shake my dismay at the corrective digging in Roald Dahl’s books. I can’t do anything with those subjective standards. For example, ‘fat’ had to be deleted, but what does that mean at a time when singer and megastar Lizzo, as a fat woman, is causing a carefree furore with an irresistible show? (I saw it on Netflix, gritting my teeth, because I would have loved to see her perform in the Ziggo Dome).

On the other hand, I think, it doesn’t bother me when a sensitivity coach makes a businesslike proposal to footnote racism in a work of art, for example. To me that is something like the spelling revision with which Multatuli and Cissy van Marxveldt are kept accessible.

E-mail from the Utrechtse Schouwburg: they distance themselves from choreographer Marco Goecke and his “cross-border behavior” (which they do not name, so I will do that: he smeared a reviewer’s dog poop in her face). And they have considered for his dance production In the Dutch Mountains to delete. It will continue, they decided, but if I no longer want to see Goecke’s work, I can return my ticket. Yes, that would be consistent, but I want to be inconsistent. I want to find Marco Goecke a horrible man with a perverse lack of understanding of the importance of art criticism. But I didn’t want to sign the open letter with which theater critics urged Nederlands Danstheater to tackle him. Because I don’t participate in taking someone collectively, but also out of self-interest. Because the critics almost pushed for the NDT to also cancel Goecke’s performance. And I want to see it. I just admire his work (and I’m not the only one, judging by the appreciative interviews beforehand) and that doesn’t just stop with me.

I’m going. I like the ballet In the Dutch Mountains strong and special and the NDT also dances it unreal well. The piece receives a standing ovation. I also jump out of my chair and applaud and I’m not going to be ashamed of that.