Censorship Issues

It has always been so that every society has a specific code of rules which is to regulate and moderate the work of the mass media and the sphere of entertainment. Everything in the world tends to be controlled, because it is believed that uncontrollable institutions, to be exact, their unsanctioned actions, can bear an unpredictable character for society as a whole. This is the reason why people all over the world, especially creative and intelligent people, have to deal with such a phenomenon as censorship. In fact, the distinctive feature of censorship is that no matter if people approve of it or, vice versa, strongly object to it, censorship will exist anyway, in a formal or an informal way.

Before speaking about censorship in various spheres of life, let us try to make it clear what censorship is. In other words, we have to give a distinct, true and objective definition to censorship. For that, it might be necessary to trace its history.

In Western Europe censorship was formed in the 15th century. In contrast, Russian censorship is much younger, because it appeared at the beginning of the 18th century. Being regulated by censorial decrees and rules censorship had two forms of control: preliminary and punitive. Punitive form of control implied administrative prosecution of the press, which all would end up in liquidation of certain periodicals or ostracism of their publishers. Defying censorship in the most objective way, it may be said that censorship is a system of state control of the mass media.
By comparison, if one has a goal to make a poll among people on the street to find out what they think of censorship, one will most probably hear that censorship is the suppression of ideas and information that certain persons find objectionable or dangerous. Most people object to censorship by saying that censors want to prejudge material for everyone so that people cannot create their own unbiased opinion of the problem.

Equally important is to understand how censorship happens. Does it have the same punitive character now as some centuries ago, or has it become milder? On the whole, censorship occurs when expressive materials, like books, magazines, films and videos, or works of art, are removed or kept from public access. Individuals and pressure groups identify materials to which they object. Sometimes they succeed in pressuring schools not to use them, libraries not to shelve them, book and video stored not to carry them, publishers not to publish the, and art galleries not to display them. Besides, censorship occurs when materials are restricted to particular audiences, based on their age and other characteristics.

Thus little by little we reached the problem of using censorship for various spheres of life. First, it should be mentioned that the most frequently censored materials are books. Throughout history, books have been challenged for many reasons, including political content, sexual expression, or language offensive to some peoples’ racial, cultural, or ethnic background, gender, or political or religious beliefs. Materials deemed heretical, blasphemous, seditious, obscene, or inappropriate for children have often been censored. Take the case of the Soviet times. During that period myriads of books, which are considered to be masterpieces now, were forbidden for reasons of Soviet ideology. For example, a book by Andrej Platonov “Kotlovan”, devoted to the period of building Socialism which was accompanied by great numbers of victims. There are other examples: Bulgakow’s book “Belaja Gwardija” was considered to be ideologically wrong, because in his book he described “white” officers who, to his mind, were no worse that red ones. However, the most vivid example of censoring books in the Soviet times is a remarkable book by Alexander Solzhenicyn “Archipelag Gulag” dedicated to Stalin’s repressions. In the book the author reveled the most dire and morbid facts of Stalin’s governmental methods, which were absolutely inhumane, violent and brutal. For writing this book, the author was charged with parricide and was expelled from the country.

Nowadays, censorship in this sphere of life, probably, became less strict. However, in bookshops we still cannot find books criticizing the work of our Government, or materials containing any incriminating information on the private life and professional activity of our outstanding political figures.

Of course, if books are censored, it can be assumed that press, television and radio are censored too. The reason is evident. These are the pivotal sources of information for many people in the country. Therefore, you will never find any negative information about the situation in our country in the scripts of our television and radio news. All problems are always covered only from one side – and that is a positive side. It sounds like we do not have any problems in the country at all. In fact, it is all not at all that cloudless as somebody wants us to believe.

Of course, nowadays censorship is applied where there is any hint on criticism of the government and governmental bodies. However, we don’t have to forget that censorship has something to do with combating obscenity and pruriency. With rapid development of telecommunications, the Internet has become the core source of pornography and propaganda of sex for the under-aged. Maybe, censorship can help us to protect our children from seeing something that they are still not ready to see and can damage their young naïve mind? To tell you the truth, censorship is of little help here, because it is assumed that there is such a thing as a healthy interest in sex, which means and adults might need to watch films of this kind as well as have a full right to visit certain pornography web-sites in the Internet. Therefore, we have no right to ban them. Yet, in our country, it happens that what is allowed for adults is allowed for kids, and no censorship will protect a child from obscenity, if at 10 p.m. a 10-year-old kid, having no parents at home, turns a TV-set on and starts watching “The Basic Instinct”. At the same time we cannot fully deny that there are attempts to do something in this concern. For example, to show obscene films late at night when kids are supposed to be in bed, or to ban access to certain porno-sites, but the problem still exists.

Continuing the theme of computer technologies, we cannot but mention video game censorship which has become one of the basic tactics of many developers of video and computer games in the USA. It means that from now on references to smoking or sex in games will have to be removed as well as any offensive content, if a game creator wants his product to be released at all. There have been offered a number of requirements to the games, meeting which the author of a game can be sure that the game will appear in stores. To demonstrate some of them I can mention the following:

The games should not: 1) include sexually suggestive or explicit content including rape or nudity. 2) contain language or depiction which specifically denigrates members of either sex. 3) depict violence 4) depict graphic illustration of death 5) depict domestic violence and abuse 6) reflect ethnic, religious, nationalistic, or sexual stereotypes of language, 7) use profanity or obscenity in any form 8)encourage the use of illegal drugs, alcohol and smoking materials 9) include subliminal political messages or overt political statements. Actually, the same rules are to be followed when creating cartoons and movies for small kids.

Surprisingly, in every country censorship is associated with one particular sphere of life. For instance, in Belarus we most commonly associate it with politics, in Western European countries with politically correct language which would not infringe the rights of women and national minorities, in the USA with combating any racist actions towards black people.

Religion is another sphere of life which should be censored. Religion is something that people have had since long time ago, it is something that they respect and want to keep. For many religion is the holiest thing which they have in life, it is their spiritual value and for some of them a sense of life, but not for all. In this connection, the goal of censorship it to blot out dissident mood in society. Anti-religious booklets are destroyed, people who print them are punished. People who are especially aggressive are sent to prison.

Speaking of other spheres of life, which are censored, censorship of show business cannot go unheeded. Though, I have to admit, it is still very insignificant. The problem is that in our country it is closer to ideology or propaganda. Radio stations should transmit 75% of Belarussian music and Belarussian songs, in their turn, should demonstrate an idea of patriotism. If it were possible, the government would exclude all foreign music from radio broadcast, referring to censorship. In reality, it is not censorship, it is ideology, which sometimes come inseparable from each other. If it were censorship, we would not listen to songs of Russian singers which contain offensive and extremely rude language, we would not be shown video-clips with half-naked women making obscene movements. Judging by all this, we can conclude that censorship has not yet dealt with show-business, and what small kids will not see in forbidden films or in the Internet, they will soon be able to see in absolutely innocent video-clips of, say, Viagra.

Summing up, censorship exists in every sphere which concerns human interests, which can be expressed in sometimes absolutely unnecessary freedom of speech, dissident ideas which people tend to reveal in literature or publicly; peoples’ sometimes rather morbid interest in sex and desire to try everything illegal. In some spheres censorship is necessary and helpful, in some — it is helpful in theory but in practice cannot help, in some — it is rather inhuman and deprives a person of his human rights. Censorship is a very contradictory phenomenon, but, as I have already mentioned, it has one interesting peculiarity: everywhere, where there is upper power, censorship will exist anyway, no matter if people approve of it or object to it. The reason is that censorship is that unique support that any government will always need to strengthen its position.