Response to Lisa Chun’s article
In a message dated 10/9/2005 5:38:36 PM Eastern Standard Time, mcclaineg@vcu.edu writes:
Dear ????
Lisa Chun is obviously against censoring certain movies and books. So what? She states no reasons to justify her feelings. Censorship exists. GET OVER IT LISA! Try and publish vulgar speech in the newspaper. Who should be the one to determine what gets censored? Lisa Chun censored herself. Some words should not be used in public because they can offend some people. Some words can be spoken within a close group of friends without offense being taken, but when those words are spoken into a crowd there might be a high number of offended people. When you offend someone they stop listening to what you are saying. Vulgar speech is not good communication.
Reading ?Screw the Children? by Lisa Chun, I saw that some of the vulgar words were censored. Why did Lisa Chun censor her own words, especially in an article putting down censorship? The reason is, is that she knew the words would be offensive to others in the public reading the editorial. Since she censored her own words she should not be upset that other people want to censor other things. Lisa Chun wrote her opinion against censorship, but censors herself.
Strong words can be powerful. If speech and art can make you better, that is, if words can improve you they can also corrupt you too. Some words can make people virtuous and the same words can lead others into error. For example when you look at Germany with the Nazi party or Russia with the communists, one can see that both countries were corrupted by powerful speech. The Jews did not bring Germany down and history is not a struggle between classes. But when do words cause damage? Should people be protected from them? Many lives were taken because of the emotional power of speech that hid lies. Both vulgar and false speech can do great harm towards others.
Censoring movies is also an issue. The only people who should be censoring movies are individuals who are making the films. Those individuals have a sense of responsibility towards the audience, and that will determine to what degree the movie is censored. If individuals watching the movies don’t approve of the content then they can leave. If a movie gets a bad reputation then few people will go to see it. The people who make money by making movies know this and censor what they make. This activity is called being a director or editor.
In society there will always be different degrees of censorship. All individuals are different in the sense of what is taken in offense and what is not. The best type of censorship is self-censorship, a good judgment of standards that you and your audience to whom you are showing the film or handing out a book have in common. If self-censorship does not work then society will make censorship standards. I think censorship is best done by the individual herself but if she lacks good judgment society will protect itself.
Ekaterina McClain
Cassandra McClain
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