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The right to say even the unsayable must survive |
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DURING Margaret Thatcher's time as British prime minister, the international advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi combined with director Nick Lewin and actor Anthony Hopkins to create a five-minute play for the anti-censorship group, Index on Censorship. Called The Censor, it was set on a dance platform in an old theatre with a young ballerina being assessed by a judge.
The dancer does a pas de deux and a couple of frappes before Hopkins intervenes, saying, ``No, not like that,'' quickly followed by a ``Not that either'' and ``No, that's not allowed.'' Looking more and more like Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins soon reduces the girl to a quivering wreck as his ever-increasing demands for control, totally ruin her performance. In the end she can't even move. Such is the power of censorship by increment. A pall of censorship and political correctness hangs over the nation. Everywhere you look someone is taping someone else's mouth shut and handcuffing their freedom to express non-violent views. Two Queensland academics from Queensland University of Technology, John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, were recently suspended for six months without pay and removed from university internet access because they objected to a PhD thesis entitled Laughing at the Disabled. They didn't break legs or slash tyres, they simply wrote, as academics are wont to do, a strident critique in the Higher Education supplement of this newspaper arguing that laughing at the disabled was ethically impaired.
As it happens, both have children with disabilities. And if that wasn't bad enough, one reason proffered for the decision to punish Hookham and MacLennan was that they offended the freedom of expression of the PhD student! So why haven't we heard from federal Education Minister Julie Bishop or Labor's spokesman, Stephen Smith about this outrageous interference with academic freedom?
On the other side of the country, University of Notre Dame students in Western Australia are echoing calls from colleagues in other universities that their student newspapers are being leaned on by authoritarian administrators. The editor of Quasimodo recently complained that her paper was being ``censored to death'' with regard to articles on sex, contraception or indeed any criticism of the university itself. Other student papers such as Rabelais at Victoria's La Trobe and Tharunka at the University of NSW are voicing similar concerns. This straitjacketing of what has traditionally been one of the most uncensored segments of the Australian media is unfortunate in the extreme. The spreading wave of censorship is not limited to student radicals. There has even been an attempt by a NSW Greens MP to muzzle the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, for daring to instruct NSW Catholic MPs that therapeutic cloning and stem cell research are morally wrong and suggesting that there might be ``consequences'' if they voted in favour of stem cell research. While many of us think that Pell's views on this issue are dangerous nonsense and that he is trying to control others, it is nevertheless a dreadful invasion of freedom of expression to try to silence him and bring him before what is in effect a parliamentary star chamber. The present stoush between federal and state attorneys-general over the censorship of ``terrorist'' books and magazines shows just how censorious both state and federal politics have become. Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock wants to create a new banned category for these publications, even though our national classification scheme already prohibits material if it promotes, incites or instructs in matters of crime or violence. The problem is that if you ban, for example, Islamic books that praise terrorist acts, or if you prohibit people from reading Mein Kampf, how then can we debate the horrors of Islamic and Christian fundamentalism or Adolf Hitler's evil influence in world history? Some have even suggested that, under Ruddock's new vision for a threat-free Australia, books about Ned Kelly might be regarded as ``terrorist tomes''. On the other hand, state attorneys such as Rob Hulls from Victoria have accused Ruddock of ignoring free speech and artistic expression on this issue.
Yet this is rather rich coming from someone who presides over a state system of censorship that, in turn, bans Ruddock's X rating for non-violent sexually explicit material. In fact, all state attorneys who object to Ruddock's upcoming terrorist book legislation preside over a system which provides two years in jail for selling X-rated films which are legal at a commonwealth level and in the ACT and the Northern Territory. If the censorship zealots have their way, they could always take note of what Iran's parliament did recently. The Iranians passed a bill that legalises the death penalty for porn stars and the distributors of adult movies, magazines and webcam clips. In that case, the officers of our federal Attorney-General's Department would not have to make up their minds about whether or not to pursue adult publishers in the future. Instead, they could simply line-up ``offenders'' and have them shot for lunchtime entertainment! The problem is that if we, with all the best intentions in the world, suppress one form of speech or utterance, the way is wide open to suppress another. These days, few and fewer people actually believe in freedom of speech. While they believe in freedom of speech for themselves, they do not afford the same luxury to others who contravene their own deeply held beliefs, values and prejudices. It takes courage and commitment to stand up for unfettered free speech and freedom of expression, but the truth is that free speech is the linchpin of any fully functioning democracy. |
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Sexy Girls Seeking...
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Hello, I'm a hard working woman with goals and desires. Yep, I'm horney, but I keep it in good proportion and don't tolerate fools, flakes, asses, assheads, damfools, donkeys, doodles, idiots, imbeciles, jackasses, jerks, madmen, mooncalfs, nincoms, nitwits, pinheads, birdbrains, featherheads, pushovers, ho-hos, laughingstocks, dingdongs or of course any twinkees what so ever. Are you still with me? I like a good work out; hope you do too! |
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