Not surprisingly, the creators of the National Youth Theatre’s cancelled production of Homegrown smell a rat.
The official explanation given by the London-based company is that the play was not ready and would have failed the meet the theatre group’s high standards. The fact that neither director Nadia Latif nor playwright Omar El-Khairy were given prior notice of this decision means that this seems more a case of censorship than quality control. Continue reading
The late, lamented Frank Zappa preached about the need for constant vigilance against the repressive, self-righteous, bigoted forces who censor what we can see, hear and read.
Zappa was an articulate and outspoken critic of religious fundamentalists who seek to restrict our freedom claiming they are saving us from the devil’s work.
He explained his views during an interview with Larry King which you can see below.
As a way to counteract the Parental Advisory stickers on rock albums, Zappa wrote his own ‘Warning Label’ for a Mothers of Invention album.
In the 1970s, I recall listening to a radio interview with the ‘beat’ writer William S. Burroughs in which he was asked if he thought that censorship was ever warranted.
Obviously, this was a question that the author had more than a passing interest in since his uncompromising accounts of hard drug use and gay sex meant that his novels constantly fell foul of obscenity laws.
His answer to the question was a categorical ‘NO’. In his view, censorship was never justified.
At the time, I thought his was an overly extreme position. Surely there were some instances where censorship was needed to protect the public from words or images which, to use the words of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act, “tend to deprave or corrupt persons”. Now, I am inclined to agree with Mr Burroughs. Continue reading
I am only just in time to post during Banned Books Week (which ends today) but I applaud this initiative against blinkered individuals and groups who have sought and still seek to dictate what people should be allowed to read.
Recent challenges to popular teen fiction titles like the Hunger Games trilogy and the Twilight saga (for being sexually explicit and unsuited to the age group) indicate that this battle against bigotry and narrow-minded thinking is still raging.
What we are talking about here has nothing to do with simply outlawing books that are poorly written or manipulative (although they may include such titles).
According to the Office for Intellectual Freedom, at least 46 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts.
What often makes a book controversial is the fact that it challenges perceived norms and conventions. This is what makes them so valuable and so vulnerable.
There is no place for such censorship in any society that claims to stand for freedom of speech and to value democracy.
One of the key principles here can be summed up by the quote widely attributed to Voltaire: `I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.
The current controversy about the TV watershed in Britain looks destined to be a footnote in television history.
As Guardian critic Mark Lawson has argued, even if such a watershed were to be strictly imposed, the principle is ultimately meaningless now that viewers young and old are able to watch shows on their computers whenever they want.
In the UK, since the days of Lord Reith, the BBC has always taken the moral high ground and stood for their notion of decency and good taste. If they slipped up crusaders like Mary Whitehouse were on their backs.
Nowadays, what Lawson calls the on-screen “slaying, swearing or shagging” may still occur after 10pm but anyone from the age of 9 to 90 with an internet connection and an ounce of curiosity can be ‘corrupted’ the following morning. Continue reading
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