Censor

“ Still, with all this acceptance of ethics, the nature of the censorship has to be recognized—the true character of the censor is so often not taste or conscience in any clear condition, but an uninstructed agency of herd instinct, an institutional bully. In the censor as he appears in psycho-analytic literature there is something of the archaic, the irrational and the ritualistic—all just as likely to ask for decorum for themselves as is the thing in us which is against license and anarchy. ”

“ Every one who condemns the principle of censorship must also condemn the Lord Chamberlain's control of the drama; but those who approve of the principle do not necessarily approve of the Lord Chamberlain being the Censor ex officio. ”

“ In the censor for whom I am groping, the censor of whom Eminent Victorians is so subversive, there are particularly these irrational and ritualistic characteristics, these remnants of outgrown institutions, these bondages of race and sex, of class and creed. Most biography, especially official biography, is written with such a censor in mind, under his very eye. Where Eminent Victorians was refreshing and stimulating was precisely in its refusal to keep him in mind. ”

“ In order to sanction a system of censorship I would have to say that 'no law' does not mean what it says, that 'no law' is qualified to mean 'some' laws. I cannot take that step.
In this Nation every writer, actor, or producer, no matter what medium of expression he may use, should be freed from the censor. ”

“ What may be to one viewer the glorification of an idea as being 'desirable, acceptable or proper' may to the notions of another be entirely devoid of such a teaching. The only limits on the censor's discretion is his understanding of what is included within the term 'desirable, acceptable or proper.' This is nothing less than a roving commission in which individual impressions become the yardstick of action, and result in regulation in accordance with the beliefs of the individual censor rather than regulation by law. ”

“ What the censor is chiefly interested in is, let us say, edification. He aims by no means to give us access to the facts. He aims not at all to let us judge for ourselves. With all his might he strives to relate the facts under his supervision to the end that he thinks desirable, whatever it may be. And so, when facts come to light which do not chime in with his prepossession, he does his best either to discredit them or to set them down as immoral, heretical or contrary to policy. ”

“ Your people have been taught to believe from precedental prejudice, founded upon the selfish arrogance of ancient exemplars, that the word censor signifies an arbitrary agent for the restriction of liberty under the rulings of tyrannical power. But as with the tribunes of Heraclea, who act as censors under the direction of the prætor, our privileges extend in an advisorial capacity through all the gradations of life, from the child to parents, and in their collective capacity, styled the people. ”

“ In some respects the life of a censor is more exhilarating than that of an emperor. The best the emperor can do is to snip off the heads of men and women, who are mere mortals. The censor can decapitate ideas which but for him might have lived forever. Think, for instance, of the extraordinary thrill which might come to a matter-of-fact individual living to-day in the city of Philadelphia if he happened to be the censor to whom the moving-picture version of "Macbeth" was submitted. ”

“ Whenever, for any reason, the censorship is relaxed, the censor is off guard, whenever we are day-dreaming and give way to our idle thoughts, then the unconscious bestirs itself and rises to the surface, gives utterance to those embarrassing slips of the tongue, those "tender playfulnesses," that express our covert intentions, slays our adversaries, sets our fancies wandering in pursuit of all the ideals and all the satisfactions upon which our customary life has stamped its veto. In Mark Twain's books, or rather in a certain group of them, his "fantasies" we can see this process at work. ”

“ A strange incident preceded the performance of the Clerc et le Théologien. The play, written in collaboration by MM. Scribe and d'Épagny, and accepted by the Odéon Theatre, had been stopped by the censor of 1830. Good old Censorship! It is the same in all ages! There indeed come moments when it cuts its fingers with its own scissors; but censors are a race of polypii,—their fingers merely grow again. The censor had, then, stopped MM. Scribe and d'Épagny's drama. ”

“ As long as a censor is a censor, he cannot endorse by his licence opinions which seem to him dangerously heretical.
We may, therefore, conclude that the more enlightened a censorship is, the worse it would serve us. The Lord Chamberlain, an obviously unenlightened Censor, prohibits Ghosts and licenses all the rest of Ibsen’s plays. ”

“ Some public censor, a Stoic having a heart, and perfect control of it, should be appointed, in every township, to kill off whatever is uselessly doleful, in the egg, and spread abroad the right idea of what is fit to be uttered in this valley of tears. ”

“ Genius would be required to predict accurately the reaction of the general public to any set piece which seems immoral to the censor. For instance, why was Mr. Sumner so certain that Jurgen, which inspired him with horror and loathing, would prove a persuasive temptation to all the rest of the world? Censorship is serious and drastic business; it should never rest merely upon guesswork and more particularly not upon the guesses of men so staunch in morals that they are obviously of distant kin to the rest of humanity. ”

“ And the worst of them are the filmy, the vague, the subtle subordinations that take away the opportunity of truth. Life is in itself a sufficiently difficult picture-puzzle, but what chance have we if the turnip-headed censor confiscates some particularly indispensable fragment that he chooses to dislike? On reading Eminent Victorians, how we rejoice to escape from those wax effigies that we once believed to be statesmen—the kind of effigies of which text-books and correct histories and correct biographies are full! ”

“ The idea that the content of a message and its potential impact on any who might receive it can be divorced from the words that are the vehicle for its expression is transparently fallacious. A given word may have a unique capacity to capsule an idea, evoke an emotion, or conjure up an image. Indeed, for those of us who place an appropriately high value on our cherished First Amendment rights, the word “censor” is such a word. ”

“ He sees that we enjoy the privilege of doing and saying whatever we please, so that we infringe no law. If he write a book, it is submitted to the censor, and if it be marked by any boldness of opinion, it is suppressed. ”

“ Although, surprising to relate, no steps were taken against the conspirators at Harmony, they soon noticed an extraordinary increase in the vigilance of the censor, so much so, that the most harmless [62] communications failed to reach their destination, and when by chance anything was allowed to pass through it was mutilated beyond recognition, whole sentences being smirched with printer's ink or pages cut away by the ruthless hand of the censor. ”

“ The normal censor apparently knows nothing of that world where motor-reactions are cut off, that house made without hands, whose doors are closed on desire, eternal in the heavens. The censor is not for the moment a persona grata, but let us give him his due. He acts according to his lights and these often quite adequately represent the average darkness. A normal audience contains many “practical” men whose standard is the same as that of the normal censor. ”

“ Sometimes a tense public itself raised definitely labeled rumors to the rank of official communications. In a few instances war correspondents have deliberately faked.
The censorship, generally unintelligent, sometimes incredibly stupid, is responsible for a great many myths. "Beating the censor" was a gleeful [Pg 257] game for some correspondents until it became clear that the censor always held the winning hand, and that he could even suppress their activities altogether. ”

“ In rank the censor occupies an anomalous position. Although lacking the imperium and the right of summoning people and Senate, he is reckoned amongst the majores magistratus, he has the “highest auspicia,” [1020] he sits in the curule chair, wears the purple-striped toga, and (an honour accorded to no other magistrate) is buried in the full purple of the king. [1021] Politically the censorship was the apex of a career. ”

“ If Censorship of the Drama be in the real interests of the people, or at all events in what the Censor for the time being conceives to be their interest—then Censorships of Art, Literature, Religion, Science, and Politics are in the interests of the people, unless it can be proved that there exists essential difference between the Drama and these other branches of the public being. ”

“ It seems the rule with the censor’s office to let all the books pass that are likely to increase the demoralization of the nation, such as the detestable novels of Eugène Sue and Georges Sand, the vicious works of Paul de Koch, and so on, and to exclude all those that would tend to its enlightenment, or would contribute to forward true and solid civilization. ”

“ But let me make the point clear; for it is the crucial point in the discussion of the modern Pg 274Bookstall Censorship. A great deal may be said against setting up a censorship of literature. A great deal may be said in favor of a censorship. But if a censorship there must be, the censor should be deliberately chosen for his office, and, in exercising his power, should be directly responsible to the public conscience. If a censorship there must be, let the community choose a man whose qualifications have been weighed, a man in whose judgment it decides that it can rely. ”

“ What is more, one must have taste inherently to select, a brain and a heart to understand. With all these safeguards and a double score of capable critics in every land to praise or blame, what need really is there for a censor, or a dozen of them, each far less fitted than any of the working critics to indulge his personal predilection and opposition, and to appeal to the courts if he is disagreed with? ”

“ I think, too, we may add to the great honor of science and the arts, that their natural effect is, by illuminating public opinion, to erect it into a censor, before which the most exalted tremble for their future, as well as present fame. ”

“ The leading men amongst the patricians, though disapproving of the limitation imposed on the censorial jurisdiction, were shocked at this instance of the harsh exercise of its power, for each recognised that he would be subject to the censors more frequently and for a longer time than he would be censor himself. ”

“ Either this or an unwise desire to pose as literary censor, mixed with and marred by immedicable envy of the men he singled out for reprobation, seems to us the secret source of irritation lying back of the entire controversy. ”

“ But even this barbarian is preferable to the apathetic repressed human beings by whom he is surrounded. Harnessed to the right interests, he is invaluable because “creative.” And he should never be blocked in: he should at most be canalled.
The evil of the censor, at any rate, is never illustrated in his rational subordination of impulse, but in those subordinations that violate human and social freedom. ”

“ The function of the censorship is to secure the repose of con- sciousness and to keep at a distance all psychic creations which would cause pain or disturb rest. And like the censor of political absolutism, who sometimes works at night, the psychic censorship is kept in activity during sleep, though its red pen- ciling is not so strongly in evidence as in waking life. ”

“ Thus, if the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and press is to mean anything in this field, it must allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of the day sets for the community. In other words, literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor. ”

“ When a censor wants to kill a story he usually says, "Don't you know that your story may possibly give information to the Germans?" The correspondent then withdraws his story in confusion. Of course what he should answer is, "Very well, that story may give information to the Germans, but it will also give information to the Americans and just now that is much more important." ”

“ More dangerous, however, to art, than any popular craving for "human interest" or for the comfort of amorous voluptuousness, is the unpardonable stupidity of puritanical censorship. Such censorship, in its crass impertinence, assumes that its miserable and hypocritical negations represent that deep, fierce, terrible "imperative" uttered by the soul's primordial conscience. ”

“ The most rigid censor could not but make great allowances for the faults into which so young a man had been seduced by evil example, by the luxuriance of a vigorous fancy, and by the inebriating effect of popular applause. ”

“ She was an American widow, bright, dashing and vivacious. She had heard of the ogre of a censor; she would conquer him through his susceptibility. I'll admit that the censor in question was susceptible of some things—but not in business matters. One day she filed an innocent little telegram to her paper, saying, "For ice cream read typhoid." The operator glanced at it and said, "You'll have to get Captain B——'s O. K. on that message before I can send it." ”

“ It is shown that the censorship will conduce "to the discouragement of all learning and the stop of truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the discovery that might be yet further made, both in religious and civil wisdom." ”

“ Under the systematic, though arbitrary and capricious, persecution of the censorship, writers have evolved the art of telling a bitter truth by means of satire which by its outward appearance generally escapes the scrutinising attention of the usually dull censor, but the esoteric meaning of which is quite comprehensible to the whole class of readers. ”