Censorship - Who Decides?

When I really think about it I realise how very important censorship is. Censorship is a good thing, there is no doubt about that, but what should be censored and by whom?

I suppose we would all pretty much agree on the censorship categories in which movies are placed but why does the criteria change over time? Young children can now officially watch and listen to material that would have been given an ‘X’ certificate 50 years ago. Why? Does it mean our children are less prone to corruption now or does it mean our values have been degraded by a gradual desensitising of our moral compass until it can no longer point the difference between what is seemly and what is debased. Or is it something else?

I am prone to using the odd expletive because I am common and not particularly well educated so I do not have the skill to express myself strongly enough, when I feel the need, in any other way. But I am also conscious of a sense of “freedom to express” that simply wasn’t there when I was young. The satisfaction of being able to write “fuck” when I feel like it is, therefore, strangely invigorating. However, I don’t believe this means we should allow the very young and impressionable to experience the same invigoration and freedom of expression – because they won’t.

Freedom may only be truly experienced by those who have been restrained at some time and we can only be invigorated by a new or uncommon experience. Let children be free with their paints and clay but restrict the hell out of their interaction with others (e.g. “You do NOT tell Kirsty to fuck off!” or “You do NOT beat Fabia to a pulp for not noticing your Dora the Explorer sunhat!” and “If you insist on doing these things you will get a well deserved slap on the backside.”).

Mind you, it’s become easier for me to claim the high moral ground in some things. At my age, sex has thankfully become a boring subject and has totally lost its appeal. Not that I don’t find the ladies attractive but it is different from the time of my youth when sex obsessed my yobby mates and I. Now I can look at a beautiful woman and truly appreciate the glorious wonder of beauty for its own sake.

For instance, I was watching the movie ‘Entrapment’ last night - the one with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery. During the part where Catherine Zeta-Jones is performing her dance of stealth around the laser beams, I was enraptured. For me it was like looking at an original Rembrandt while a full orchestra played and Kiri Te Kanawa sang to me. I could have wept not tears of longing but of pure joy that there are some things too beautiful to be damaged by the crude sexual exploitation so rife in most of what is thrown at us and called ‘information’.

That still leaves the question of who decides what we should and should not do and see. Maybe we need someone totally outside of our society to make these judgements for us but I’ll come to that in another post.