Case Of Censorship Research Articles

Turning Polemics into Pedagogy: Teaching about Censorship in Art Education

AbstractIn recent decades, the field of art education has seen an increasing interest in issues of social justice and social reconstruction which has led to pre‐service art educators often being encouraged to include potentially controversial topics in their pedagogy. Surprisingly, however, there seems to have been little concurrent discussion concerning the inherent risks involved in introducing polemical themes within the classroom. Indeed, despite its obvious importance, the subject of censorship is often given little attention in art education circles, save for when it has already become an active problem, such as when an instructor is accused of censorship by a student, or when forces outside the classroom seek to involve themselves in pedagogical decisions. In this article, I describe my experience creating and implementing an undergraduate pre‐service art education course on the subject of censorship. I begin by examining my students’ reactions to some of the themes explored, and then explain how discussing cases of art censorship and controversy can serve as a platform for introducing students to the key role that context plays in how we perceive, value and react to artworks. Finally, I make the argument that by including censorship as a subject within their curriculum, teachers can help students better to navigate the psychological, moral and ethical complexities of contemporary art making.

Translating Humor: A Case of Censorship vs. Social Translation

In Turkey, as in the case of other countries, due to developments in technology and the rise of the ‘social translation’ sector, audiences have the opportunity to watch TV shows, including sitcoms, with Turkish subtitles on a multitude of platforms. Although some of these platforms are TV channels, there are also alternatives presented by Internet sites. By virtue of the fact that there are different subtitlers of the same show, it becomes beneficial to study the work of professional translators vs. social translators, to understand their constraints and realities, as well as the differences between them. This study provides a comparative analysis of the two, within the context of the American sitcom Two and a Half Men.

El cine de ficción sobre la Guerra Civil sí construyó una nueva mirada durante la Transición

This article considers what were the innovators elements on the civil war in fiction films during the Transition. While several scholars argue that these films only recovered silent memories, this study aims to show how they dismounted part of Franco's version of the war. To this end, films and their discourse are analyzed using sequences, characters, dialogues that help create new images about the conflict and attack certain pillars of the official version disseminated both in the history books and movies during the francoist period. This study, which takes an historical approach, resorts to film analysis and relies on cases of censorship and classification, reviews published in newspapers, declarations of directors. What appears is that fiction films, despite censorship, began building an unorthodox image of war, in clear disagreement with various points of the dominant discourse. Thus, especially in filmic narratives proposing a broad chronological framework, the socio- economic interests that had motivated the war are largely denounced, the war was presented as a class struggle, nationalist violence was shown as obeying a desire for annihilation of the other. Far from being inconsequential films, certain stories are clearly presented as a rereading of the conflict.

LEXICA MALVAGIA ET PERNICIOSA . THE CASE OF ESTIENNE'S THESAURUS GRAECAE LINGUAE

The paper aims to investigate – on the basis of materials preserved in the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith – the censorship case of Henri Estienne’s Thesaurus Graecae linguae , printed in Geneva in 1572 and forbidden in 1596 with the formula donec corrigatur . Since 1559 other diffused and esteemed Greeks and Latin dictionaries were put on the Index librorum prohibitorum , e.g. the Latinae linguae thesaurus of Robert Estienne and the Lexicon Graeco-Latinum of Jean Crespin, and the Catholics were kept from possessing and reading them. The paper will analyse the principal arguments for the ban and the proposed amendments in order to revise Estienne’s lexicon, and beyond that explore the general impact of the censorship proceedings against the ‘dangerous’ lexicography both on the book production and on the development of philological studies in the Catholic area.

Notes about Censorship and Self-Censorship in the Biography of the Prophet Muḥammad

The study of the medieval literary output about Muḥammad’s life should go hand in hand with the study of his history, for which we have rich evidence in a variety of sources. Ibn Isḥāq’s biography of Muḥammad and its epitome by Ibn Hishām were products of their time. A case of self-censorship applied by one of Ibn Isḥāq’s informants and two cases of censorship applied by Ibn Hishām, who omitted many of his predecessor’s materials, contribute to a better understanding of the social and political context of the biography.

“Censorship is Official Critique”: Contesting the Limits of Scholarship in the Censorship of the Hallische Jahrbücher

While censorship touched upon the careers of every German writer in the nineteenth century, a few cases stood out to contemporaries, defining their era. If the Demagogenverfolgung stamped the early 1820s and the prohibition of Young Germany the 1830s, the assault on left-wing or “Young” Hegelianism in 1842–43 was the major censorship case of the decade. Banning the Deutsche Jahrbücher, Rheinische Zeitung, and Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung was part of a significant, coordinated effort to undermine a small but influential faction of radical social critics. This wave of intellectual persecution radicalized the left, sowing the seeds for Marx's thoroughgoing assault on the foundations of European state and society. Understanding these cases in the context of a broader process of the transformation of censorship practices in modern Germany, however, remains an incomplete project for historians.

Clearing the Smoke to See the Screen: Ideological Manipulation in Audiovisual Translation

In this article, a critical and methodological approach is offered concerning the subject of manipulation and translation in the realm of the audiovisual. Taking the potentialities unleashed by thecultural turnin Translation Studies as a starting point, the paper first provides an overview of the main hurdles and issues at stake when adopting a line of enquiry centred around the realisation that the way in which cultural values are translated depends not only on linguistic asymmetries between languages but also on fundamental decisions based on power, dominance, and ideology. As part of a debate that could prove fruitful in the world of audiovisual translation (AVT), the concept of manipulation is discussed in detail and a distinction between technical and ideological manipulation is put forward. After considering the special case of censorship and some of the new developments in the use of subtitling as a tool for local empowerment, it is suggested that the boundaries of research into AVT should be pushed beyond its traditionally parochial linguistic sphere by focussing more on unmasking the rationale behind ideologically motivated changes and by contextualising them within a wider socio-cultural environment.

From the Editor

This issue of Projections focuses on movie violence, a topic of continuing controversy. Concerns about screen violence are not new. Because of their visceral power, popular appeal, and the seeming ease with which they bypassed established channels and norms of socialization, movies swiftly drew the attention and scorn of social critics and reformers. The city of Chicago passed the nation’s first movie censorship ordinance in 1907. Numerous state and municipal censor boards were established in its wake, and movie violence drove the first court-adjudicated censorship case in American film history. The James Boys in Missouri (1908) and Night Riders (1908) were Westerns that Chicago authorities deemed to be immoral because they concentrated on showing the exploits of violent outlaws. The Chicago reformers felt that the films lacked an appropriate moral balance in failing to devote sufficient attention to law-abiding characters.

Abraham López, un calendarista singular

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo rescatar la figura de Abraham López, editor, impresor, grabador y litógrafo, quien a lo largo de 1838 a 1854 produjo un calendario que llevaba su nombre, y que constituye un ejemplo del quehacer de los publicistas en el mundo de la imprenta de la primera mitad del siglo xix. Año con año se van consignando tanto los contenidos como las ilustraciones que aparecieron en sus calendarios. Desde su inicial interés por temas del pasado prehispánico, hasta convertirse en un cronista de los acontecimientos que se desarrollaron en la capital del país. Así nos ofrece los cambios operados en la fisonomía de la ciudad, en la década de los cuarenta, y relata los conflictos políticos acaecidos, en los que destaca la invasión norteamericana. Ante este hecho, a modo de reportaje, López reseña la valentía y resistencia del pueblo ante la presencia de las tropas invasoras. Además, se documenta un caso de censura ejercida sobre el calendario de 1851, al incluir un crítico artículo sobre la feria de San Juan de los Lagos.

La prassi della censura nell’Italia del Seicento. Tra repressione e mediazione (review)

Reviewed by: La prassi della censura nell’Italia del Seicento. Tra repressione e mediazione Paul F. Grendler La prassi della censura nell’Italia del Seicento. Tra repressione e mediazione. By Marco Cavarzere. [Temi e testo, 92, “Tribunali della Fede.”] (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. 2011. Pp. xx, 263. €38,00 paperback. ISBN 978-8-86372-281-9.) This is a survey of ecclesiastical censorship from the first papal Index of general authority of 1559 (not 1558 as Cavarzere asserts) and ending in the early eighteenth century. The author has done extensive research in the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (ACDF) in Rome, which contains the surviving papers of the Congregations of the Index and Inquisition and other materials. Although the book mentions individual censorship cases, its purpose is to provide an overview of papal censorship in Italy. The book begins with an account of the system of ecclesiastical censorship. Other chapters describe the censors, press censorship, the censorship [End Page 571] of various forms of literature, self-censorship, the impact of censorship on society, and persons who avoided strict censorship. The book is sweeping and well written. It includes references to a considerable amount of recent scholarship, but not always the older scholarship. Unfortunately, the lack of balance prevents this book from being the needed survey. The first sentence of the book refers to the decadence of Italy in the seventeenth century, and page after page leaves no doubt that the “repressive Roman system,” “ecclesiastical censorship,” “omnipresence of Roman ecclesiastical censorship,” “papal repression,” and “internal police” were responsible. Once in a while Cavarzere mentions “the marriage of repression and mediation,” but mediation always failed. Since the opening of the ACDF archive in the late 1990s numerous scholars have published detailed studies showing nuanced and complex stories of attempts at expurgation, compromises, and bureaucratic backing and filling, as well as significant repressive censorship. Moreover, recent scholarship has also demonstrated that ecclesiastical censors recognized that they should not cut Italians off from European scholarly and cultural developments. So they created a system of permissions that enabled thousands of clergymen, scholars, and even ordinary laymen and lay-women to hold and read prohibited books. Cavarzere is aware of these developments, and he acknowledges that seventeenth-century censorship necessitated collaboration between church and state. But he does not see these exceptions as significantly modifying ecclesiastical repression. This is a legitimate point of view. But it is not the only one. Sometimes Cavarzere reaches too far; for example, he sees the censorship of opera as part of seventeenth-century clerical repression. What would he make of the fact that nineteenth-century civil censors forced Giuseppe Verdi to make changes in his masterpieces? In the last chapter Cavarzere surveys the breaches in the wall of Roman repression such as the significant number of books printed in Venice that skillfully propagated libertinism, anticlericalism, and unbelief. In addition, Cavarzere correctly points out that influential clergymen and laymen held prohibited books in their libraries and made them available to others without penalty. Cavarzere argues that these exceptions paved the way for the Italian Enlightenment. But how pervasive could Roman repression have been when such works were printed and read in the seventeenth century? The account also jumps around chronologically, does not provide enough dates, and assumes a considerable amount of knowledge of censorship cases. In short, this is one point of view about the impact of seventeenth-century censorship, but probably not one that will win general assent. [End Page 572] Paul F. Grendler University of Toronto and Chapel Hill, NC Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press

Sabina Guzzanti: From TV satire to political documentary

ABSTRACTSabina Guzzanti came to international attention following the cancellation by the Italian state broadcaster Rai of her satirical TV programme Raiot. Armi di distrazione di massa/Raiot. Weapons of Mass Distraction in 2003, which caused a stir amongst the Italian and international media alike (Boria 2009; Rothenberg 2009). Her documentary Viva Zapatero! (2005), based on her censorship case, became a box-office success and introduced her to an international audience. I discuss Guzzanti's one feature film and her three documentaries to date. I argue that the gradual radicalization of Guzzanti's recent work is only partly a consequence of the ostracism she faced. It is also part of a wider positioning of the artist's persona as an embodiment of anti-Berlusconian values, and her activity is organized and promoted as a militant act of counter-information. Guzzanti's films are quintessentially ‘social texts’ (Allen 1997) as they originate from an osmotic process between events, their representations and a ‘politicised fandom’ (O'Leary 2010). Their strong stance voices the ideas and the frustrations of a well-educated politicized audience, whose space in the public arena has been gradually eroded by the prevailing neocon discourse.

Futz Buddies: The Effect of “An Evening with Futz” on Buddies in Bad Times

Describing the censorship case arising from the 1969 Toronto production of An Evening with Futz , a play depicting nudity and bestiality, DANIELLE I. SZLAWIENIEC-HAW provides the history of the key judgement that opened up artistic choice in Canada, but suggests that other economic and marketing factors affect the programming decisions of today.

Futz Buddies: The Effect of "An Evening with Futz " on Buddies in Bad Times

Describing the censorship case arising from the 1969 Toronto production of An Evening with Futz , a play depicting nudity and bestiality, DANIELLE I. SZLAWIENIEC-HAW provides the history of the key judgement that opened up artistic choice in Canada, but suggests that other economic and marketing factors affect the programming decisions of today.

“You Can't Air That:” Four Cases of Controversy and Censorship in American Television Programming

“You Can't Air That:” Four Cases of Controversy and Censorship in American Television Programming

Visual comparison of search results: A censorship case study

Understanding the qualitative differences between the sets of results from different search engines can be a difficult task. How many links must you follow from each list before you can reach a conclusion? We describe a user interface that allows users to quickly identify the most significant differences in content between two lists of Web pages. We have implemented this interface in CenSEARCHip, a system for comparing the effects of censorship policies on search engines.

"You can't air that": four cases of controversy and censorship in American television programming

In this illuminating book, David S. Silverman assesses four controversial television programs from the perspective of media history, assessing the censorship present at all four networks and the political and intellectual inertia it produces in broadcast television. Beginning with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the sixties, the author also examines The Richard Pryor Show, TV Nation, and Politically Incorrect. Drawing on firsthand accounts by the writers, producers, and performers of these programs, Silverman offers an unbiased view of the ways in which censorship, sponsor intimidation, regulation, and network tampering force all American broadcasters to manipulate creative talent and stifle genuine controversy. Shedding new light on the prevalence of censorship in broadcast television, this book reinvigorates the subject of free speech in American society.

A look at the Bonferroni inequality measure in a reliability framework

In this paper we give an interpretation of the Bonferroni curve (BC) and index (B) from the reliability theory point of view. The close relationship between BC and the Scaled Total Time on Test Transform curve (T 4 ) allows us to show some applications of the Bonferroni inequality measure in a reliability set-up. Criteria for classifyng a survival distribution and an ordering based on the hazard rate function are considered. The study also concerns the case of a random censorship which is usual in lifetesting.

Censoring the Internet: The Situation in Turkey (originally published in June 2002)

Censoring the Internet is quite prevalent, though the extent of this activity markedly differs from country to country. While some prohibit controversial sites such as those with explicit sexual images or blatantly racist remarks, others implement restricted access. Turkey, showing the symptoms of a developing country, has not yet established the jurisprudence necessary for the Internet. The existing Turkish laws, especially the Press Law, are naively applied to alleged lawbreakers on the Internet, resulting in ludicrous outcomes. This paper investigates the Turkish case of Internet censorship, focusing on two publicized cases with some political content.

Os dramas da cidade nos jornais de São Paulo na passagem para o século XX

Este artigo trata das representações da cidade de São Paulo feitas pelo jornal O Estado de S. Paulo em 1910, e da censura à imprensa, através de um Relatório de Justiça, por esta divulgar casos de suicídios no estilo de fait divers, na passagem do século XIX para o XX. Partimos da hipótese de que a postura do relator fazia parte de uma extensa ação disciplinadora de controle da cidade, à qual a imprensa não escapava. Tal ação disciplinadora estava pautada pelas teorias racistas e deterministas de matriz européia e articulava diversas instâncias do poder. Aplicadas de modo particular ao contexto brasileiro em razão do passado escravista, a tentativa de ordenamento da cidade agrega o racismo de cor ao de classe, redimensionado no novo contexto republicano.

Harry Potter and the Witch Hunters: A Social Context for the Attacks on Harry Potter

The following letter, one of many similar letters, appeared in The Roanoke (Virginia) Times on December 9, 2001: don't know if J. K. Rowling is deliberately trying indoctrinate our children in witchcraft and satanism or whether she's simply a deluded tool herself. However, I urge parents listen the voice of God and say no Potter for their children's spiritual welfare. What is it about Potter? What makes a fundamentalist American reading (or nonreading) public, who never got upset over the magic godmother in Cinderella, or Ghnda the Good Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, or Gandalf the Grey, complete with magic staff and wizard's hat, in The Lord of the Rings, book and films, draw the line at Potter? One reason may be the popularity. is everywhere. Bookstores stayed open all night sell the first copies of the penultimate volume in the saga, Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and adults and children alike lined up by the hundreds. A handful of hapless Canadians mistakenly allowed buy the book ahead of its release date were sworn secrecy and threatened with legal action if they did not return the illicit volumes (Canada Newswire par. 3). Fan sites abound on the Internet, including The Potter Automatic News Aggregator, which offers Harry Potter News and Rumors -complete Potter coverage collected from various news sources. Considering Harry, Jack Zipes asks, How is it possible evaluate a work of literature like a Potter novel when it is so dependent on the market conditions of the culture industry?, and maintains that, Today the experience of reading for the young is mediated through the mass media and marketing so that the pleasure and meaning of a book often be pre-scripted or dictated by convention (171-72). So may also be the deploring of Harry, when the Internet gives his detractors as well as fans as wide a scope as the books themselves. Another reason may be a recent shift in the focus of censorship efforts from sex the occult. As Mark West has pointed out, During the 1980s, most of the censorship cases were anything that pertained the body, sex, and swear words. [Now], although books like those written by Judy Blume are still under attack, what has taken over is fantasy stones (qtd. in Dunne par. 4). Complicating this issue is the fact that there are significant differences in what may be considered fantasy from one religion the next (or between differing denominations of the same religion). As an example, Marjone Taylor and Stephanie M. Carlson studied parents' reactions the topic of imaginary companions. While mainstream Christian parents regard imaginary friends as harmless or at worst a nuisance, as when their child insists that the friend must have her own place at the dinner table, Taylor and Carlson note that many fundamentalist Christian parents associate them with the devil, particularly if the companion talks back the child, while in India a child with an imaginary companion is considered be remembering a previous life (248-54). Plainly, the border between what is real and what is fantasy is a shifting line that is culturally dependent. In addition, Deborah J. Taub and Heather L. Servaty's study of Potter notes that another prevailing belief among fundamentalist parents is that fantasy equals deceit, that fantasy and storytelling will lead lying and other deceitful behavior, and this factor combines with the necessity to protect their children from evil forces in the fantasy world (54). However, a great deal of modern children's literature is fantasy, and it is primarily who seems be the lightning rod for these fears. A quick cruise through the Internet produces dozens of Web pages devoted warning parents of the pitfalls awaiting the child who reads Potter. In 2001, exposingsatanism.org saw a satanic S in Harry's scar (Shores par. 9), and demonbuster. …