THE ANTI-CENSORSHIP MANIFESTO Calls for censorship worry me. To me they are threats. Threats to my personal freedom, to my rights as a citizen of a democratic country and to that democracy itself. But it can be oh so hard fighting them. I mean, try convincing someone not to call for a ban of say Cannibal Holocaust when they have just summed up every single violent act depicted in that film. Then try telling them you actually enjoyed watching it. I am truly glad to be living in The Netherlands. We are a free country, as opposed to immediate neighbours Britain and Germany where cutting, outright banning and even prosecution still exist. But even in Holland there are calls for censorship from time to time. Recent scares include Faces Of Death 4 and the computer games Carmageddon parts 1 and 2. So even we aren't safe. It makes you feel powerless. But you aren't powerless. These calls got me thinking. I studied as many arguments in support of censorship as I could find and came up with a remarkable conclusion. All arguments pro censorship can be divided into three categories and with that also be denounced. And when I say all arguments, I do mean ALL arguments. And if you feel that you should challenge these categories or my views on censorship, then by all means challenge them. Write to me and I'll reply. Tom Mes 1. Fear of a new medium People are unfamiliar with the possibilities (and the impossibilities) offered by a new medium and as a result have more worries than necessary. After all, one of the oldest fears is fear of the unknown. An prime example of this can be found in the call for more monitoring of e-mail messages and communication via the net. This with the intent of flushing out child abusers. But the function of e-mail is no different than that of your regular mail. Still, no one's asking for closer monitoring of the mail or the opening of letters. And if they were, they wouldn't hold the mailman responsible. A cry for censorship has followed the introduction of many a medium. Remember the video nasties scare? Remember how people had found out through supposed scientific research that comic books were harmful to children? Scientific research is still one of the main arguments of the censors. It wasn't true in the case of those comic books and it still isn't true now. 2. Don't confuse shape and content Content is not important. Violence in film is not violence. Violence in film is acting, special effects; dramatisation. They are not the acts themselves. Bruce Lee did not commit violent acts, he made films. I once found a wonderful metafor describing just this point. It goes like this: a poor family live right next door to a very rich family. And every night around dinner time, the poor family stands outside on the lawn to enjoy the smells of the rich family's copious dinner. Somehow this makes their own frugal meals seem a lot more pleasant. But the rich neighbour will have none of it. He decides to drop by his poor neighbours to ask for money as a ways of compensation. After all, if the food is his, then so is the smell. They use it, they have to pay for it. But the poor family refused to pay and the case had to be settled in court. The judge listened to the rich man's story and subsequently asked the poor family to surrender all the money they had on them. All they could gather were a few coins. The judge took these, held them in his hands, then shook the coins, filling the courtroom with the sound of jangling money. He then returned the money to the poor family, looked at the rich man and said: "You have recieved your damages. The only appropriate price for the smell of food is the sound of money". Making a film that depicts violent acts, is therefore not the same as commiting those violent acts. Interpreting a film as violent is a purely personal interpretation of the actual physical event. And that event basically is no more than light shining onto a screen through a piece of celluloid. Artist René Magritte once made a painting entitled "The Treachery of Images". It pictured a pipe. Below it was written the following sentence: "This is not a pipe". He was right. It is not a pipe. It's a painting. A thought on the words "films are getting increasingly violent". What's worse: the old depiction of violence where a victim would grab his chest and neatly fall over when shot, or the current depiction of death in all its pain and gruesomeness? A thought on the words "repeated watching of violent images will make the viewer immune to violence". If this were so, how come we are still outraged about violent images? If viewing violent images would truly make us immune and dull our senses, then these days, after a hundred years of film, forty years of comic books and nearly fifty years of television, no one would be bothered about violent images in the slightest, let alone spark controversy over a single "violent film". Cause and effect. The sentence "someone commited a murder after watching a particular film" implies that the idea for the murder was suggested by the film. But what if that sentence were to read "someone commited a murder after visiting his their grandmother"? No one will even think that the image of granny might have suggested the idea for that murder. There is a big difference between realism and reality. 3. Underestimating the masses The real thought in a censor's mind is this: "I am a civilised human being and therefore viewing violent acts does not influence my behaviour. But they (ie: the poor/the unemployed/the lower classes/the children/the young people/the foreigners/the uneducated) will be influenced - they will most likely attempt to imitate. I must therefore take measures to insure that this doea not happen, because they themselves are not able (ie: rich enough/intelligent enough/adapted enough/civilised enough) to do this themselves." This thought is elitist, racist, totalitarian and undemocratic. The use of censorship implies that a governing body is a more capable judge of a child's emotional capacity than that child's own parents. In other words: the state is a better parent than the parents themselves. Beside the fact that the state-led raising of children was one of the foundations of nazi-Germany, consider the following thoughts: if parents are incapable of dealing with mass media, why would they be capable of electing their own government representatives? or of driving a car? or of crossing the street? The easiest excuse for taking drastic measures is saying that they are in the interest of the children. After all, who would oppose the best interest of children? Oppose a drastic measure and you oppose the children. After Britain's notorious James Bulger-case (two boys aged ten murder a toddler, supposedly after watching violent films), a whole slew of measures were taken. oddly enough, every single one of these measures effected adults, not children. Yet no one complained or protested. Because it was all "in the best interest of our children". "Through the images and messages they bombard us with, mass media form a threat to society". We have lived in a society of mass media for over a hundred years. In those one hundred years, only two events happened that threatened or destroyed the fabric of society. Those are world war one and world war two. And neither of these was caused by mass media. Let's get back to the point that scientific research has shown that violent images have a negative effect on people. If it is true that viewing violent acts makes people violent, then it must also be true that watching musicals turns people into singers and watching comedies make a person funny. Conclusions Censorship is a tool used by totalitarian states and does not belong in a democracy. The Soviet Union and nazi-Germany are two examples of states who used censorship as a tool of government. How long did these two states last? A broad scope of opinions, thoughts and viewpoints form the basis for democracy. It's easy to say that something should be banned when you detest it. It's harder to understand that someone else may get enjoyment from the very same thing you detest. Censorship is reactionary and backwards: to shield or barricade people from certain media means striving for a society without media. This is an impossibility. The media form a central point in our daily lives. To shield children from certain media would mean a lacking in education and problems in dealing with these media in later (adult) life. Classification by way of age is too selective and ultimately too narrowing. "Classified for ages eighteen and over" implies that one has more mental capacity on their eighteenth birthday than they had the day before. The current criterium for classification is whether something might be damaging for people of a certain age. A better criterium would be to ask if something were on the whole understandable for or would fit the mental capacities of people of a certain age. This would not solve the problem outlined above, but would put the emphasis on content as a whole and not merely on the violent or sexual parts. Instead of making the media safe for the children, we should make the children safe for the media. Education should lead to a better understanding of media and to critical and independent viewing and decision making. Tom Mes