Metzger 1 Mark Metzger Ms. Gagnon Modern World 29 May 2012 My *Bleep* Essay A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, there was censorship. Censorship is the idea of censoring, or editing, something. For example, the media is a big victim of censorship. A lot of the times when the media publishes an article or statement that people think is controversial or inappropriate, the article or statement is then edited to a very conservative state wherein it usually loses the powerful meaning it once had. More often then not, when censorship is put into action, the meaning of the original statement is lost completely and transformed into something that was not intended in the first place. By censoring documents, ideas, and statements, the people will never learn to accept these controversial ideas that do exist. But people ignore them like they do not exist. Censorship blinds society to the honest truth of the world, limiting the capability of humans to develop and evolve in technological and sociological ways. Censorship has been around for a long time, going all the back to when the Ancient Greeks and Romans roamed Europe. In 399 BCE, Socrates was put on trial and executed for not acknowledging the accepted gods of the Greeks and corrupting the youth, and when the printing press developed in the 15th century, the Roman Catholic Church responded by creating a list of banned books, known as the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, that they thought would stop the spread of heretic ideas. In 1791, the United States became one of the first countries to prohibit censorship by creating the First
Metzger 2 Amendment in the US Constitution. Other countries then followed their lead and created constitutions or other documents that would prevent censorship. The Nazis were a big user of censorship. In the mid 20th century, the Nazis burnt any book or piece of art created by a Jew. They also took over national newspapers, radios, and publishing houses anytime they would take over a country. In 1948, the UN signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which would try to bring an end to censorship around the world. This did decrease censorship, but did not stop it (Censorship). Since then, there has been much less use of censorship, but that does not mean it still is not used. Now it is very much used in the production of film and television. When cinema film was first being developed, the production companies had to play it safe. The films rewarded virtue, punished vice, and rewarded debauchery. After WWII, some of the public blamed the film industry for advocating careless moral standards. To avoid governmental censorship, cinema studios and distributors formed the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), which allowed them to create films without governmental interference. They created the Motion Picture Production Code, which consisted of a list of topics that should never appear in film, such as white slavery, sexual perversion, and ridicule of the clergy. Due to a lack of attendance of an audience, they shortly revised the code. Even then, studios still found loopholes of getting around the code, such as suggesting vulgar things, like adulterous scenes, without actually showing them. Eventually, so many studios were not using the code that it was almost impossible to enforce. In its place they created a rating system based on the film’s levels of sexuality and violence. These ratings were a way to show the public what type of content was in the film without limiting who in the audience is allowed to see the film.
Metzger 3 This became an excellent way to educate the people on the content of the film without the interference of censorship (Roof). Another huge topic of censorship is China. Due to their communist government, government leaders are allowed to limit the country’s use of the internet, and they took to it to exclude the peoples’ access to ideas of, or about, democracy. If a Chinese citizen searches Google using a banned word, or “black” word, “they are likely to be arrested, tried, and imprisoned for up to 10 years on charges of subversion, revealing state secrets, or spreading propaganda injurious to the state” (Mirsky). They do this because they want to avoid political oppression and eliminate political influence from other countries. A famous example of this crime is Shi Tao. Shi Tao, a 37 year-old Chinese man, released a top state secret on a foreign site, which was a warning to the media about the threat posed on China by dissidents returning for the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen killings. Three years later, he was sentenced to 10 years behind bars. Even though he was trying to help and protect the country, the government still believed that releasing information on a foreign site was worse. Communist China uses censorship to their advantage, but it is not always a government that does that (Mirsky). Censorship is not always a governmental issue. It can also be a very cultural issue. A lot of religions and conservative societies take censorship into their own hands, and a lot of the times it violates freedom of speech. For example, in 1988, a British author by the name of Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The reason for this was because he had written a book called The Satanic Verses, which a lot of Muslims believed was blasphemous. Due to a numerous amount of death threats from Muslims, Rushdie went into hiding for over a decade. Another
Metzger 4 example is when Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s South Park released its 200th and 201st episode in April of 2010. In these two episodes, they depicted Muhammad, though he was only seen in either bear suit or with a black censor bar over him. They also bleeped his name anyone said it throughout the episode, and even then, a lot of Muslims were appalled. A group of Muslims known as Revolution Muslim even threatened Matt Stone and Trey Parker, saying that they “will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh,” referring to the Dutch filmmaker that was murdered in 2004 by a radical Muslim man. But a lot of people wonder why they are allowed to do this. Just because a religion says no, that does not mean one can violate the freedom of speech that everyone else has, which brings up the internet (Censorship). The Internet is also a big topic when it comes to censorship. A person can publish, say, or do anything almost anything they want on the internet, which brings up the topic of whether or not people should be allowed to do this. In late 2011 and early 2012, congress tried to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would basically allow the government to put the internet in their control. The majority of websites where anyone can edit or publish things, like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Tumblr, would not even exist if the bill was passed. With this act, the US would have limited freedom of speech worldwide. They would not have only affected the internet nationally, but globally. On January 18th, 2012, websites came together to protest against this act. Wikipedia went “dark” for a day and Google put a black censor box over its logo. Over seven million people signed a Google petition saying that this act would cause censorship of the internet. Shortly after the protest, the legislators said they would delay the voting for SOPA. The internet is a powerful tool that belongs to the people (Censorship).
Metzger 5 Another piece of legislation that caused similar controversy was the Child Internet Security Act, which stated that the government would refuse funding of public schools and libraries that do not have software that blocks sites with pornographic material. The American Civil Liberties Union argued that the internet is like a newspaper and deserves equal rights of free speech. By putting this act into place, it would break the First Amendment. They also argued that it would be a very slim chance that a user would stumble upon pornographic material by accident. Yet the Supreme Court drew the wrong conclusion, thinking that internet pornography is inescapable. A similar case happened in 1978 where, in the end, the Supreme Court restricted indecent speech on public radio and television. With these restrictions that congress has passed, they are taking away the majority of indecent exposure to children. By the time that they need to learn about these things, it may be too much to handle for them. Children need exposure to these types of things, or else they may not be able to handle it will later in life (Romano). Humans will never be able to evolve in sociological and technological ways if there is always a barricade from the truth and honesty of this world. Censorship impedes the understanding of things, such as adulterous concepts and society. When one never learns about a subject, it is very difficult to grasp the concept later in life. With religions shunning secular views on life, China’s exclusion of different political views, and the condemning of adulterous material, people will never learn to accept what is real and different, thus people will never evolve since they are not developing. “Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear” (Gandhi).
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Works Cited “Censorship.” Global Issues in Context Online Collection. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Global Issues in Context. Web. 10 May 2012. Gandhi, Mahatma. “Quotations.” Thinkexist. May 2012. n.p. Web. 25 May 2012. http://thinkexist.com/quotation/truth_is_by_nature_self-evidentas_soon_as_you/216468.html Mirsky, Jonathan. “China’s tyranny has the best hi-tech help; Censoring the Internet.” International Herald Tribune 16 Jan. 2006: 6. Global Issues in Context. Web. 10 May 2012. Romano, Michael S. “Putting up after for the kids; the Web is more like a radio than a library. (debate over the Children’s Internet Security Act)(Column).” New York Times. 4 Apr. 2002: A23(N); A23(L). Global Issues in Context. Web 16 May 2012. Roof, Judith. “Media.” Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Culture Society History. Ed. Fedwa Malti-Douglas. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 979982. Global Issues in Context. Web. 10 May 2012.
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