A Brief History
In February 2014, the headlines were of censorship, the enemy of free people.
Digging Deeper
In Australia, censors had banned the Swedish film Children’s Island because it contains scenes of naked children. Far from pornographic, the film was first released back in 1980 and had won the most prestigious Swedish movie awards and was even submitted for consideration at the Academy Awards. The threat of 10 years imprisonment for anyone showing or selling the film sparked animated debate in Australia.
On the Internet, Muslims applied enough pressure to have the YouTube video of Katy Perry’s song “Dark Horse” edited to remove an image of the word “Allah” that appears on a pendant a man is wearing whom Katy Perry’s character turns into sand. A wildly successful song about a witch who warns a guy not to fall in love with her, the song is in no way anti-Islamic or intentionally disrespectful to Islam. Popular nonetheless, 8 million copies of the song were sold, and it reached #1 in the U.S. and in many other countries. The video itself won major awards, such as Video of the Year from American Music Awards and VEVO.
In Japan, a 36-year-old, unemployed goof was arrested for vandalizing books about Anne Frank, one of the most famous victims of the Holocaust. He apparently attempted to destroy hundreds of copies of her famous diary and other books about her in an effort to affect his own brand of censorship. This effort was seen by some as part of the move to the right in Japan, where there is renewed nationalism and denial of war crimes relating to World War II.
As we say at History and Headlines, we believe in free speech whether we agree with the message or not. Censorship and book burning are acts of weakness on the part of the censors, not strength. Je suis Charlie.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: When is censorship appropriate?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Bald, Margaret, Nicholas J. Karolides, and Dawn B. Sova. 120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature. Checkmark Books, 2011.
Huff, Mickey and Andy Lee Roth, eds. Censored 2015: Inspiring We the People; The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2013- 2014. Seven Stories Press, 2014.
