SHOW TO STUDENTS:

The New York Public Library. Censorship: 500 years of conflict. New York: Oxford University Press; 1984. 144 p. Folio Z657 .C4 1984
 

CENSOR: one of two magistrates of early Rome acting as census takers, assessors, and inspectors of morals and conduct

One who supervises conduct and morals: an official who examines materials (as publications or films) for objectionable matter; an official (as in time of war) who reads communications (as letters) and deletes material considered sensitive or harmful

A hypothetical psychic agency that represses unacceptable notions before they reach consciousness

Censorship:
the institution, system, or practice of censoring;
the actions or practices of censors; esp:
censorial control exercised repressively;
to change or suppress speech or writing that is condemned as subversive of the common good.

EARLY CENSORSHIP

Adam and Eve: clothing: still hot topic; covering decreases interest?

Name of God / Bible

443 BC -  CENSORS (CENSORES):
ancient Rome;  magistrates;
originally registered citizens and assessed property; later supervised senatorial rolls and moral conduct, penalized moral offenders by removing public rights, such as voting and tribe membership.
Always two censors;
judgments only when both agreed
Powers passed to the emperors in 22 BC.

Fourth / Third Centuries BC: Socrates / Plato
Socrates: everyone can come to an understanding of ultimate truth; defended free discussion as a supreme public service; first to formulate a philosophy of intellectual freedom.
His disciple Plato: first philosopher to formulate a rationale for intellectual, religious, and artistic censorship:
Art should be subservient to morality;
art that does not inculcate moral principles should be banned;
censors should prohibit mothers and nurses from relating tales considered bad or evil;
Homer should be censored for "immature readers";
wrong beliefs about God or the hereafter should be treated as crimes

First Century: Caligula: tried to prohibit Homer's Odyssey,
for fear of Greek ideas of freedom
(Emperor Caligula: remembered for his promiscuity and insanity; "Caligula": most loaned porn video)

BOOKBURNING
5th century BC Athenian philosopher Protagoras charged with blasphemy, his books burnt.
213 BC Burning of the Books, China. Pre Ch'in history destroyed, scholars executed
333 AD Emperor Constantine burns books of Greek theologian Arius (twenty years after accepting Christianity)
4th century: Gnostic texts disappear, to reappear 1945 at Nag Hammadi
1650: Meritorious price of our redemption, by William Pynchon, burnt in Boston by public executioner; first book burnt in North America
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Julie, 1761: Emile (youth uncorrupted by society), 1762: censored, burnt by executioner in Paris, but bestsellers.
Nazi Germany: public book-burnings: 20,000 books were burned by students in a square across from the University of Berlin. Overlooking this mass destruction of the works of such well-known authors as Albert Einstein, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Freud and H.G. Wells. (Censorship and Book Banning as Characteristics of Totalitarian Societies and Modern U.S. Society -- Heather Koon
http://www.fc.peachnet.edu/webzine/backbytes/misc4/koon.htm)

1989: Satanic verses by Salman Rushdie burnt in Bradford, England
 

RELIGION AND CENSORSHIP

Name of God / Images /
Iconoclasts, 8th -9th century Byzantium;
Statues etc.: Catholics / Protestants / Islam

Reformation / Printing: new technology / new ideas / social change

1487 Pope introduced prepublication censorship;
work could be printed only after approval
vernacular bibles and their suppression;
1520: Martin Luther: 4,000 copies first printing of some books; also burnt Papal Bull in public
Fear: demands for religious freedom might provoke demands for political freedom
1521: Edict of Worms, Charles V: prohibited printing, sale etc. of Luther's works
1525: Tyndale translates New Testament into English; executed 1536; two full copies survive
http://vincent.bl.uk/cgi-bin/htm_hl?DB=portico&STEMMER=en&WORDS=tyndales+&COLOUR=Olive&STYLE=s&URL=http://www.bl.uk/diglib/treasures/tyndale-bible.html
1530: Edict of Augsburg:
printed matter must identify printer and place of publication;
widespread printing of religious tracts abroad; many tracts issued with false locations
Is something similar happening on the Internet today?
Catholic states prohibited Protestant texts; Lutheran state might prohibit Calvinist texts
or vice-versa; Lutheran or Calvinist states might prohibit Anabaptist (Mennonite, Hutterite) texts
1559: Index Librorum Prohibitorum; final edition 1948; 5,000 books;
reading prohibited books no sin from 1966
 

EARLY PRESS CENSORSHIP

1640-1660: English Revolution: breakdown of censorship
1644: John Milton: Areopagitica: for the liberty of unlicensed printing;
http://www.shu.ac.uk/emls/iemls/resour/mirrors/eshp/areopagitica.html
knowledge of good and evil is complementary;
a person cannot know what is good without knowing what is evil.
1651: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan: government should rely upon a contract with the people; not divine right
1695: Licensing Acts lapse in England;
unnecessary to obtain licence to print books; seditious libel laws remain;
truth became a valid defence in England only in 1843
1791: Thomas Paine: Rights of man: new society: prohibited in England;
could not even be cited, (but courtroom defense of the book could be, being a trial proceeding
http://www.qsl.net/n3yqh/commonsense.html
Prior to French Revolution: numerous vivid accounts of the sexual scandals of the nobility);
France: censorship collapsed 1788; Bastille 1789.
 

CENSORSHIP OF SCIENTIFIC WORKS

1600-1700: censorship of scientific works;
Copernicus: Sun-centered solar system, 1543; put on Index by Catholic Church, 1616
Church believed that hypotheses in astronomy were merely instruments or calculating devices
Did not consider Copernican concepts literally true or attempt to reconcile Copernicus with Bible.
Catholics could use Copernicanism as a calculating device, but could not say it was true system of the universe.
1636: Galileo's "Dialogues", supporting Copernicus, published; also placed on the Index.
Later Copernicus acceptable in Catholic works, when presented as a hypothesis
1637: Descartes: Discourse on method: start from thought; end by explaining universe
1662, England: Royal Society, with license to print books
 

AMERICAN COLONIES, UNITED STATES

1721-26: James Franklin, printed New England Courant in Boston; imprisoned, his half brother Benjamin  carried it on; James moved to Rhode Island; Benjamin to Philadelphia

1734-35: John Peter Zenger, printer of the New-York Weekly Journal, accused of seditious libel for criticizing governor. Defended by Alexander Hamilton on the ground that seditious libel had to be false and "only when free men write and speak truth will the exercise of arbitrary power be exposed and opposed".
Found not guilty. (Sedition revived under John Adams, but soon abandoned)

Cotton Mather complains: Harvard students mostly read "plays, novels, empty and vicious pieces of poetry".

First Amendment (1791):
“Congress Shall Make No Law Respecting an Establishment of Religion, or Prohibiting the Free Exercise Thereof; or Abridging the Freedom of Speech, or of the Press; or the Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble, and To Petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances.”
 

1821: First obscenity trial in US:
Memoirs of a woman of pleasure (Fanny Hill)
by John Cleland, published 1748,
sold slowly, prohibited in England 1749;
prohibited in Boston;
not cited by name in court records;
(Lists of sites banned by Internet filters are secret or hidden today)
relatively few attacks on obscenity mid-19th century; next obscenity conviction 1890s.
Fanny Hill liberated 1963
 

OTHER COUNTRIES

BOWDLERIZATION

Thomas Bowdler, Britain, 1818; family-readable Shakespeare: one hundred cuts in Hamlet, also Romeo and Juliet; censored Shakespeare still found in schools; Bowdler also edited the Bible, Decline and Fall of Roman Empire

1856-57: Trial of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary; became major best-seller; much liked by women, who considered it an accurate reflection of provincial life

1885: Huckleberry Finn excluded from Concord PL; Mark Twain: "That will sell 25,000 copies for us, sure"
 

COMSTOCK

Anthony Comstock, founded New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, 1873;
lobbied for law to enable Post Office
to seize and destroy any
"obscene, lewd, or lascivious, indecent,
filthy or vile ... book"
Obtained appointment as special agent of Post Office
dominated censorship for forty years:
especially sought works by foreign authors
mailed to US:
Balzac, Flaubert, Tolstoy etc.
1905: attacked by George Bernard Shaw
who said that "Comstockery" proved that
America was "provincial, second rate"
 

SEX EDUCATION / BIRTH CONTROL:
Ida Craddock: sex education pamphlet: "The wedding night";
purchased by Comstock's agents; judge said pamphlet too obscene to show jury;
committed suicide 1902 before she could be sentenced
Margaret Sanger: former nurse; 1912 pamphlet "What every girl should know";
term birth control coined to describe her activities; pursued by Post Office; fled to England;
husband arrested for selling her book "Family limitation";
returned to US, opened birth control clinic; advised police decoy;
tried, sentenced but became heroine; ten million copies of Family Limitation distributed
prohibited to speak in public in Boston; but 1929 attended meeting where her works were read
 

BANNED IN BOSTON

Boston Watch and Ward Society,
founded 1878 under Comstock's influence
some books banned
1915: three members of Watch and Ward
three booksellers:
Boston Booksellers Committee:
reviewed new literature;
initiated prosecution of booksellers selling items not approved
Unapproved items not advertised, reviewed in Boston newspapers
Hundred books banned
Sinclair Lewis; Ernest Hemingway;
William Faulkner; John Dos Passos;
1929 Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy
affirmed obscene on appeal;
1929 serious bookseller convicted of selling Lady Chatterley's Lover to an undercover agent;
committee collapsed shortly afterwards
 

ULYSSES
Comstock's successor John Sumner had Ulysses prohibited 1922 on the basis of extracts;
also burnt in England
The Pirating of Ulysses and the Case Against Samuel Roth:
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/pl/exhibits/joyce-nemla/case3.htmlhttp://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/pl/exhibits/joyce-nemla/case3.html
First published on Continent in plain blue wrapper, without title, name of author
pirated copies circulated as James Joyce could not copyright his text in the US

1933: Ulysses test case; copy deliberately imported, confiscated by NY customs;
found not obscene;
judge did not "detect the leer of the sensualist"
used four-letter words but:
books should be examined as a whole,
not just selected passages
700 books banned by US Customs at that time:
almost all quickly released

1948: Norman Mailer's war novel Naked and the dead: "fug"
Dorothy Parker: "You're the young man who can't spell F*ck"

1957: Supreme Court Roth decision: upheld conviction of Samuel Roth, anarchist who had been publishing obscenity for some time and had pirated Ulysses, for mailing obscenity.
Until then a work which described sexual activity could be considered obscene,
But Justice Brennan defined obscenity more closely:
work must pass three tests to be called obscene:
prurient interest; affront to community standards; without redeeming value.
Final result: great weakening of censorship.

Three tests for obscenity in full, as modified by 1973 Miller decision:
1. Would the average person, applying contemporary community standards, find the work as a whole appealing
to prurient interest in sex?
2. Does the work depict or describe in a patently offensive way sexual conduct specifically prohibited in a state's law?
3. Does the work, as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value?
Note that work must fail on all three tests
 

prurient: 1  having an unhealthy obsession with sexual matters.
2  encouraging such an obsession.
From Latin prurire 'itch, be wanton'

Compare with:
pornography:
1  the explicit description or exhibition of sexual activity in literature, films, etc., intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.
2  literature etc. characterized by this.
From Greek pornographos 'writing of harlots', from porn 'prostitute' + graph 'write'
 

1958: Lady Chatterley's Lover: liberated in US
1959-60: six million copies sold in US
 

CINEMA CENSORSHIP

1922 after Hollywood scandals:
Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), headed by Will Hays;
Formal set of rules ("Code") in 1930, strengthened 1934.
1926: Battleship Potemkin prohibited in England during General Strike; remained banned until ?1956;
often cited as best film every made
1952: The Miracle, Roberto Rosselini: Supreme Court determined that films were entitled to First Amendment protection
Ratings: G / PG / PG-13 / R / NC-17 / X (or XXX)

http://www.cep.org/historyratings.html
Paradox of Censorship: most rating systems have had a reverse effect on viewing:
http://www.cep.org/paradox.html
 

TEXTBOOKS AND McCARTHYISM
Texas schoolbooks had to be written and illustrated by persons who had taken the loyalty oath
Alabama required textbook publishers and authors to state that neither they nor "anybody cited" was communist
 

GROVE PRESS
1960s: Lady Chatterley; Fanny Hill; Tropic of Cancer; Naked lunch, Evergreen Review etc.
 

MILITARY CENSORSHIP:
generally accepted in time of war;
disputes about works relating to CIA
in peace time:
1971 Pentagon papers
Frank Snepp, ex-agent, did not request prior approval of "Decent interval";
1980 had to give royalties to CIA
Spycatcher / Mrs. Thatcher 1987-88
 

UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Library Bill of Rights (1948):
"Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval":
http://www.ala.org/work/freedom/lbr.html

Freedom to Read Statement (1953):
“Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove books from sale, to censor textbooks, to label ‘controversial’ books, to distribute lists of ‘objectionable’ books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as citizens devoted to the use of books and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating them, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read”:
http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/freeread.html
 

EUROPE
NAZI GERMANY
COMMUNIST COUNTRIES
ISLAMIC COUNTRIES
CHINA
 

TRADITIONAL CATEGORIES FOR CENSORSHIP

Religious
Sexual
Political
Social (e.g. ethnic groups / drugs / inappropriate activities)
 

CENSORSHIP:
increases interest;
increases sales;
poorly worded laws;
texts frequently banned on extracts;
Move / print publish elsewhere to avoid censor
Find a way around censorship
censored books rarely disappear completely
Censorship problems constantly arise again
two steps forward one step back
 

INTERNET SOURCES ON THE HISTORY OF CENSORSHIP:

History and Definitions of Censorship
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~gjbush/history.html

Banned books on-line
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/banned-books.html

History of censorship in Canada:
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/int02.htm

Censorship and Book Banning as Characteristics of Totalitarian
Societies and Modern U.S. Society -- Heather Koon
http://www.fc.peachnet.edu/webzine/backbytes/misc4/koon.htm

Brief history of banned music in the US:
http://ericnuzum.com/banned/