By N.S. Palmer, Ph.D.
Censorship can be overdone. Everyone understands that. But it can also be done correctly.
Popular entertainment shapes popular morality, and our popular entertainment is sometimes pretty vile. A little censorship wouldn’t be a bad thing.
There are good arguments on both sides of the issue. The problem, I think, is that most people hold few if any explicit moral principles. Instead, their sense of right and wrong tends to be guided by what they see on television and in movies. And what they see these days is unwholesome.
It’s true that that scene-by-scene censorship is prone to abuse. So is censorship of ideas, though I would argue that even censorship of ideas is not always a bad thing. Televised fantasy-dramas such as the Fox Network’s “24” did more to legitimize torture, brutality, and lawlessness than would any number of wonkish policy studies from The Heritage Foundation or neocon preachments in The Weekly Standard.
I’d like a set of broad principles about the kinds of moral values that entertainment should and should not promote. I’ll give you an example from a movie I recently watched: “The Browning Version,” which won an Academy Award as the Best Picture of 1951. It got a “restricted” rating, meaning that only adults could see it.
Why? Because although it contained no nudity, no sex acts, no foul language, and no violence, two characters were involved in an adulterous relationship. The restricted rating, and the way that the movie handled the situation, conveyed the clear message that such relationships are wrong.
One can argue that moral education should be more widespread. However, in modern secular society, that is probably impossible. The most we can get are politically-correct nostrums about avoiding racism and sexism. That leaves us with popular entertainment. The only question is whether it will be a benign or malignant influence.
The usual tendency of corporate capitalism is to seek the lowest, the meanest, and the stupidest common denominator it can find. Carefully designed censorship could tip the scales in a more positive direction.
Copyright 2010 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com) are included.
Nobody ever went broke appealing to the lowest common denominator. Prime example: the online porn industry.
By: Jim on June 8, 2010
at 9:38 am
Very true, Jim!
I think it comes down to the fact that businesses want to exclude as few potential buyers as possible. As Fred Reed remarked, smart people will watch stupid television programs, but stupid people will never watch intelligent television programs. Same principle.
By: N.S. Palmer on June 8, 2010
at 6:43 pm