Martin McDonagh Attacks Today’s Culture of “Petty Outrage,” Admits It’s A “Dangerous Place For Writers”

Martin McDonagh is sounding the alarms about cancel culture.

His last two films were critically-acclaimed and nabbed plenty of Oscar nominations. He’s in a good place. He didn’t really need to do this, but he’s seeing it firsthand and it disturbs him.

The celebrated Irish playwright, who directed last year’s “The Banshees of Inisherin” and 2017’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” both Best Picture nominees, admits that it’s been hard to get his plays produced these days.

His plays are still hot commodities, he’s basically a UK version of David Mamet, but his unapologetically scathing dialogue and stories are not passing the smell test with UK censors.

McDonagh told BBC’s “Today” that some of his plays can’t get greenlit anymore because theaters demand he change some of the dialogue he’s written — which he refuses to do.

“They wanted to make some words more palatable to them or what they think their audience is.”

McDonagh told the BBC that state-sponsored censorship of writers is “not getting any better”, adding: “It seems like governments are becoming increasingly more scared of dissenting voices.”

“I think it’s a very frightening time,” he added, and said that new writers should “get off social media”, “stop checking the internet” and “go out and outrage.”

McDonagh also attacked woke censors for their “petty outrage” and suggested the theaters in question are now “dangerous” places for writers. “I do think it’s a good idea to write something that’s dangerous or explosive.”

Of course it is. Art isn’t meant to cuddle or conform to what any individual should perceive as “acceptable.” Some of the greatest artists strive to provoke and make you feel uncomfortable.

Don’t tell that to the modern-day censors who, most recently, have been trying to rewrite the works of iconic authors like Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie. Not to mention the “trigger warning” added to “Gone With the Wind” last week.

This resulting reality has had many artists, through every artistic domain in western culture, self-censoring for fear of backlash and censorship. How can great art possibly come out of this mindset? McDonagh sees this reality for what it is: absolutely frightening.