Protest at Dogs the Musical
Dogs, the musical: There's Mo, second on the right
It’s been a while since we heard from Lars Vilks, the Swedish artist with an al-Qaeda bounty on his head. He is back in the news this weekend with his long awaited musical about the Modoggie furore – Dogs, The Musical.
From The Local:
At a panel discussion after the premiere of the musical – a filmed documentation of events occurring after the drawings of the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a roundabout dog, chaos reigned on Saturday.
When Vilks stood to address the several hundred people gathered in the ABF building in Stockholm, a young woman rose to her feet, made threatening gestures with her key ring and screamed at the artist.
One of the debate’s organizers seized the woman in order to escort her from the premises.
“She then scratched her keys over his underarm, cutting him in two places,” said Filip Björner for the event’s organizers, the Swedish Humanist Association.
According to Björner the association had reached an agreement with the police to deal with any demonstrators gently. The woman was therefore allowed to join other demonstrators outside the building in central Stockholm.
But after the woman was removed from the debate, another woman swiftly took her place. She was permitted to participate in the debate and took the opportunity to verbally abuse the co-organizers, the Ex-Muslims, a group known internationally as “Muslims for Christ.”
Naturally, Vilks left by the back door with a police guard.
The film itself is described on Vilks’ dedicated website:
The Musical DOGS is a documentation of events occuring after the drawings of the prophet Mohammed as roundabout dog. DOGS is a film including documentary clips from other films.
The Musical starts with The Choir of The Offended and continues true demonstrations to deathtreaths and debates. The musical also contains a musical in three parts inside the musical, named “Life of Prophet M.”, which is a light entertaining parallel to Monty Pythons “Life of Brian”. The three parts is named “The Satanic Verses”, “Isra and Mi’raj” and “The Koran”.
Finally, someone has made a Life of Mo! Can’t wait for it to be on YouTube. At the moment all we have is this trailer:
[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nAQhZEN4-ws[/youtube]
On top of all the Dogs kerfuffle, an exhibition of Vilks’ work was cancelled by Kalmar Art Museum. Apparently the board overturned the decision of the curator because “it is important to be careful with the exhibitions that are chosen”.
