First Iceland, then Hollywood, next The World?
Harvey Milk emphatically states “Politics is theatre. It doesn’t matter if you win. You make a statement. You say, ‘I’m here, pay attention to me.” In Gus Van Sant’s film that is currently a giant box office success around the world. Last week, too, saw the election of Johanna Sigurdardottir in Iceland, the first openly gay female prime minister in the world. Of course, the cases of Milk and Sigurdardottir are different: Milk was elected to public office as a gay candidate, on the back of a campaign based on grassroots gay struggles against oppression, whereas Sigurdardottir does not talk about her sexuality in a political context. That being said, the coincidence of this film and this election should be raising questions in the public psyche about representation of minority groups in government, and why the demands that such groups have representation are pertinent. Why, in the UK, are less than 20% of MPs female? Why do we only have two out gay peers? Why are less than 3% of MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds? Ultimately, how does under-representation affect the political and cultural status of oppressed and minority groups?
Johanna Sigurdardottir, the first female gay prime minister in the world
Not all women are feminists, not all gays defend gay rights, and not all people of ethnic minority background actively fight racism. This is not the point. I don’t see the election of Margaret Thatcher or Ann Widdecombe as radical, but this is not what Harvey Milk is getting at. If politics really is theatre then any statement is as reliant on the character who proclaims it as it is on the content of the statement itself. Yes, men can be feminists, white people can, and do, campaign effectively against racism, but we should not be content with handing over the liberation and defence of minority and oppressed groups to a bunch of old white men. Rather, it is the duty those of us who take the politics of identity seriously to enable groups to take control of their own critical discourses, to be part of defining themselves, and to bring with them the lessons and nuances of experience of life in our society from their own standpoint.
One of the major barriers to this in the UK is our perverse system of election. The obsession with localisation, at the expense of national minority struggles, denies us the possibility of electing representatives to focus on single issues. If a gay rights activist wants to be an MP then think about how many straight people in a single constituency would need to be convinced of the worth of this. It might happen in The Castro in San Francisco, but not in any British constituency I know of. There is no way, within our current electoral structures, to allow minority groups the ability to speak out without concurrently demanding their ghettoisation.
Whether or not Sigurdardottir stands up for gay rights is not the issue. It is merely her presence as an abnormality that points to the failings of current political systems. The opportunities of radical messages in film, the rejoicing of the first black president in America, and the election of the first lesbian prime minister in Iceland should be leading us to a raising of consciousness, and now seems the time to capitalise on this so as to finally let oppressed and minority groups speak out. It is not enough for Harriet Harman, minister for women and equality, to stand up and say “I’m here, pay attention to me” on behalf of all oppressed and minority groups, but rather we must allow communities (and by this I don’t necessarily mean “community leaders”) and minorities to do this themselves. They must take centre stage and with their proclamations partake in their own liberation.
