Devvo Did Nothing Wrong
It recently emerged that Christian Webb, longtime collaborator of cult internet figure David Firth, lost his job as a primary school teacher when it emerged that he was the man who portrayed joke rapper MC Devvo, a sort of one-man Goldie Lookin’ Chain.
The reasoning cited for this decision was Devvo’s vulgar lyrics – that is to say, nothing Webb did while on the clock, acting in his capacity as a teacher. Are we to believe that this is reason enough for a man to lose his livelihood? When the likes of Marshall ‘Eminem’ Mathers, Kanye West, and Nicki Minaj, vulgar lyricists all, tell children to stay in school and study, it’s usually seen as a fluffy feel-good thing. Webb actually put something behind those words – or at least, he did, before some pearl-clutching official sent him his P45.
(Further, unlike the works of Em, Ye, and, um...Min, Devvo’s brand of vulgarity was always so ridiculous that nobody could construe it as sincere.)
One might suggest the vulgarity is compounded because Devvo is an offensive stereotype of the British working class, which he is – but so too were Ali G and half the characters Matt Lucas and David Walliams portrayed on Little Britain. Sacha Baron Cohen, Lucas, and Walliams have, to my knowledge, faced no negative consequences in their careers or otherwise for what was, when all’s said and done, greater displays of bigotry than anything Webb ever turned out.
(Lucas and Walliams, in fact, regularly blacked up – in the 2000s – and Cohen is likewise no stranger to a touch of boot-polish.)
I mention Sacha Baron Cohen with good reason, since a pupil’s parent was quoted as saying “Everyone always said he was a brilliant teacher and I can see why people will stick up for him, but at the end of the day you wouldn’t want to have Ali G as your kid’s teacher”. A fairly naive argument – Jon Hamm, star of Mad Men, briefly worked as a teacher, and by all accounts didn’t spent that time drinking, smoking, and whoring.
Had Webb taught classes in character as Devvo, he’d have been fired long ago, and would probably be in prison. But, and I don’t know how this eluded the parent in question, he did not do that. Reality and fantasy remain as separate as ever. It’s curious that it’s usually children we reckon have trouble telling the difference, since the people who get worked up over works of fiction are almost invariably well over the age of majority.
A better argument would have been that this revelation could reflect badly upon King Edward Primary School, and upon Webb as a teacher. This sort of thing has always been applied very arbitrarily. For instance, when Henry Kissinger, the man behind the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile, gives a speech at a university it’s usually seen as a badge of honour. Put old Super K’s misdeeds in verse form, and apparently it’d be a different story.
Further, it’s been about ten years since the height of Devvomania. This is not some cold case, or Operation Yewtree-style investigation into historic sex abuses, this is a man who appeared in silly videos on the internet. Any reasonable statute of limitations on that expired long ago. Nonetheless, Webb himself kept his stage persona quiet, which raises the question of exactly which employee of King Edward Primary School recognised their colleague as MC Devvo – and how, exactly, they then introduced the subject to their superiors.
This is a fairly clear case of the Streisand Effect, that curious paradox where attempts to stifle a story expose it to a much wider audience. Nobody knew King Edward Primary School was employing the man who was once Devvo until it came out that they’d fired him because of it. Had they done nothing about that revelation, it would have generated barely a ripple, because the idea that people will settle down a bit and get a real, non-rapping job when their twenties are over isn’t particularly controversial. ‘Where are they now?’ Well, in Devvo’s case, he is (or rather, was) a well-liked teacher, good for him.
The broader point here is the chilling effect this has upon freedom of speech. Being a UK resident, Webb is perhaps lucky to not be facing actual criminal charges for having created material people found offensive (although those laws only ever seem to be used against the working classes – had Devvo not been a character, he would likely have received a hefty fine). This is at least not the actual legal system clamping down on speech. Nonetheless, it’s the sort of creeping authoritarianism that is the death of free and open societies.
In its way, this is even more insidious than state censorship. The justice system, at least, is open to the idea that people can change. The administration at King Edward Primary School appear to believe, against the evidence of their own eyes, that Webb could not – that his time as Devvo should hang around his neck forever, as a mark of Cain.
Many have condemned this kind of non-state censorship, although the focus in that regard is usually on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, neither of which have been at all shy about trying to stamp out stuff they disapprove of. With bodies both public and private trying to effectively regulate our personal lives, it begs the question: where does it end? In an increasingly politicised world, will we see banks freezing the accounts of anyone whose opinions they dislike? Will trains and buses refuse to stop for anyone who whips up too dank a meme? Laugh if you like, there’s probably a long list of these being circulated in the halls of power in Beijing.
Most great art has the potential to offend. The last thing we need is the artists behind it hesitating to create or publish it, with the fear of it coming back to ruin their life years later in the back of their mind. Even if it’s not great art they’re creating – even if it’s downright awful art – forcing them to not do so carries a far greater and more terrible cost.
