Moral Censorship Research Articles

Cenzura obyczajowa w PRL wobec przekładu literackiego: nieprzyzwoity Mario Vargas Llosa

MORAL CENSORSHIP IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF POLAND TOWARDS LITERARY TRANSLATION: THE OBSCENE MARIO VARGAS LLOSAThis article deals with the problem of moral censorship in literary translations in the People’s Republic of Poland, which is rarely discussed as researchers usually focus on political censorship. The case study is the novel The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa. Fragments of this work which contained graphic erotic descriptions were removed from the first Polish edition. They were identified by comparing the original text and the translation, as well as subsequent Polish editions. The author suggests that research on moral censorship in the second half of the 20th century should be continued and indicates possible areas of investigation.

Content of modern social networks today and their psychological impact on spiritual and moral education of youth

The article describes the problems related to moral censorship, moral and ethical standards and their actions on the Internet. It also talks about the preservation and development of the morality of young people in the information society. But it must be emphasized that in order to solve existing problems, young people themselves must be active. Knowledge cannot be made information without losing something of value. Knowledge always has a personal aspect, it is a means of communication. And knowledge turned into information is alienated from the one who consumes this information. Therefore, for us real communication is more important than virtual communication, although the younger generation is increasingly striving for virtual communication.

Research ethics: Realities and perspectives (the case of the Republic of Moldova)

Every scientific research activity involves responsibility on several levels: scientific, moral, social, political, etc. The researcher conducting a research is directly responsible for the results of the research. The central element of any ethics of scientific research activity is the researcher's responsibility towards his work, but above all the results of the scientific activity. The researcher must justify the research, justify the usefulness and validity of the results obtained, try to bring a benefit to society through his research. In view of these aspects, any scientific research should be subject to moral censorship.
 In this context, this article aims to present the current situation in the field of ethics and deontology of scientific research in the Republic of Moldova, identifying the progress made by the country in this respect, the existing deficiencies in the field, as well as designing the solutions for the identified problems.

Wedding Ritual Games of Ukrainians (Typology and Semantics)

The submitted research fills in an essential gap in the study of entertaining and gaming culture of Ukrainians. These problems have been left out of the attention of Ukrainian scientists for a long time under the influence of clerical, ideological and moral censorship. Collected and analyzed folklore-ethnographic materials give a certain idea about a rich gaming repertoire of the second part of folk wedding, called perezva. Mainly the agrarian nature of Ukrainians’ traditional culture explains the fact, that the principal part of this repertoire is formed by the gaming practices, imitating the production activity of grain-grower (from the land cultivation and harvest gathering to the production of foodstuffs). In the context of archaic consciousness the working processes have been associated closely with the productively-erotic magic, called for the support of happiness and welfare of newly-created family. The games with brightly expressed erotic symbolism and attributes, accompanied with a shameful folklore and expressive vocabulary, belong to the most ancient layer of the agrarian rites. In the traditional perezva of Ukrainians this group is represented by the games Tovkty Stupu (To Pound the Mortar), Zabyvannia Kilka (Chopa) (Driving down the Stake), Pokazuvaty Mezhu (To Show the Bound) and others. The games Molotyty Zhyto (To Mill the Rye) or Siiaty Zhyto (To Sow the Rye), Kosar (Mower), Koval (Blacksmith), Melnyk (Miller), Tokar (Turner), Molotarka (Thresher), Kombain (Combine) and others belong to the category of imitative performances. In the patriarchal Ukrainian village, where the owners of another profession, than the grain-growers themselves, form an absolute minority, their figures and activities are imparted with definite sacral features, typical for the representatives of strange world. The way of gaming undressing (nudity), observed by us in the wedding customs, is the antithesis of carnival mummering and masking. Both these gaming practices become traditional ways of people transference into the atmosphere of holiday, where everything is upside-down, not as it is in everyday life. Historical development of wedding ceremonies, which has lasted for many centuries, takes place in different ways. One of them are the most barbarian and archaic. They disappear and are forgotten after the contradictions with new conditions of life. Another have changed gradually into the folk amateur theatre. Humour, life optimism, dramatic improvisation are considered as the typical features of it.

The Circulation of Presence: Rossellini, Fellini, and the Boundaries of Religious Film

As Italian films migrated beyond Italy to the US after World War II, they became absorbed within secularization accounts of American culture. Neorealist films were celebrated for their transgressive qualities, challenging the moral censorship regime imposed upon cinema by the Catholc Church and the Production Code in Hollywood. Movies such as Roberto Rossellini’s Il Miracolo played an important role in loosening the restrictions under which movies were exhibited in America and helped create conditions of a cinematic sphere freed from religious regulation. Yet this secularizing role of Italian movies in American culture has obscured a more complex Catholicism at work in the films of Rossellini and Federico Fellini. This essay draws upon recent theories in religious studies to illuminate how the films of both directors resist the modern reduction of religion to absence and are instead informed by a Catholic sense of religious presence.

Vestígios do silêncio

Neste teatro textual, refletimos sobre o silêncio em três atos: 1. consideramos a significância do silêncio, a partir de Orlandi e em cotejo com outros autores; 2. analisamos o editorial do Lampião da esquina, com o objetivo de compreender como o si dos sujeitos homossexuais é falado em relação ao gueto e como esse dizer constitui resistência à censura moral imposta pela língua-de-espuma da ditadura militar; 3. evocamos asignificância do vestígio (trace) em Ricoeur e da ausculta em Heidegger, para especular sobre a escuta analítica em relação à temporalidade do silêncio. Para nós, o silêncio pode ser interpretado como a terceira margem do Rio Lethe (Ideologia), em relação à base material da língua (primeira margem), em que se dão os processos discursivos (segunda margem).

Translating and Transcending Censors: Modernist Appropriation and Thematisation of Censorship in the Works of Virginia Woolf, Allen Ginsberg, Czesław Miłosz and Bohumil Hrabal

Censorship has often been regarded as the archenemy of artists, thinkers and writers. But has this always been the case? This research paper proposes that censorship is not a total evil or adversarial force which thwarts and hinders twentieth-century writers, particularly those who were part of the artistic, aesthetic, philosophical and intellectual movement known as Modernism. Though the word “censor” originally means a Roman official who, in the past, had a duty to monitor access to writing, the agents of censorship – particularly those in the modern times – are not in every case overt and easy to identify. Though Modernist writers openly condemn censorship, many of them nevertheless take on the role of censors who not only condone but also undergo self--censorship or censorship of others. In many cases in Modernist literature, readership and literary production, the binary opposition of victim and victimiser, as well as of censored and censor, is questioned and challenged. This research paper offers an analysis of the ways in which Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004) and Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) lived and wrote by negotiating with many forms of censorship ranging from state censorship, social censorship, political censorship, moral censorship to self-censorship. It is a study of the ways in which these writers problematise and render ambiguity to the seemingly clear-cut and mutually exclusive division between the oppressive censor and the oppressed writer. The selected writers not only criticise and compromise with censorship, but also thematise and translate it into their works.

Enantiodromia of (un)reality

This paper aims to analyse the auctorial way of outlining the temporary unreality in Max Blecher’s work, which gradually changes its dystopian coordinates, regaining its original status of primary reality, an assumed blamed and accepted one. Using Carl Gustav Jung’s psychoanalytical grid, the enantiodromia of the work can be proved to exist, a principle in which opposites enter an unpredictable game of pole reversal. The psychoanalysed text is an excerpt from the novel „Vizuina luminată” when the police dogs rise against their owners. The critical analysis follows the parable of the human existence translated into psychoanalytical language, where the characters and symbols reveal the ability of the discharged contents of answering the moral censorship at the unconscious level. The next step is the identification of those antithetic forces that lose their energy straining to rectify what has been denied or rejected. Thus, any exacerbated tendencies of the self will be retaliated with visionary acts aiming to re-establish the psychic order, Max Blecher’s text bringing the novelty and the playfulness of the alternative worlds.

Silence in Modern Irish Literature ed. by Michael McAteer

Reviewed by: Silence in Modern Irish Literature ed. by Michael McAteer Ruben Moi Silence in Modern Irish Literature, ed. Michael McAteer, pp. 220. Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2017. $134. How do you articulate silence? And silencing? In verbal and visual arts? And why? Silence in Modern Irish Literature demonstrates succinctly the anatomy of silence, and offers a spectrum of perspicacious essays into its treatment in a large number of Irish authors from the twentieth century. The intriguing subject matter McAteer’s book brings to a wider audience comes from a wider sphere of cognitive speculation and creative activity than the sources of Sontag and pop art. 4′33″, John Cage’s pivotal performance of silence from 1952, might epitomize in music, drama, and intellectual activity the modernist preoccupation with soundlessness that also charaterizes much of philosophy, arts, and literature throughout the twentieth century. The points and play of Cage’s probing of silence on the stage of music probably stunned the country famous for kissing the blarney stone as much as other listeners, if it were not for the fact that considerable work of American and European modernism frequently suffered under the moral censorship and political outlook of Ireland at the time: the Irish index is the best guide to modernist literature. Among writers banned between 1929 and the end of the millennium are Marie Stopes, Aldous Huxley, J. D. Salinger, Liam O’Flaherty, Sean O’Faolain, Frank O’Connor, Sam Hanna Bell, and Edna O’Brien. Joyce was not directly banned, but published abroad in order not to be. Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman remained unpublished until after the author’s death in 1966. His An Béal Bocht (1941) operates on the traverse of silence, silencing, and articulation. In philosophy, the anxiety in Heidegger’s existentialism tends to defeat speech, Wittgenstein prefers silence when facing unspeakable matters; Derrida prioritizes writing over speech; and Adorno’s factoid postulated that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. Relations between poetry, stillness. and silence exist in Irish poetry, too. “Whatever you say, say nothing” and “stones of silence,” Heaney’s verses from the controversial North in 1975, captured the moods of and multiple reasons for muteness during the Troubles. The Government of the Tongue, Heaney’s 1988 essay collection, also highlights one of his main preoccupations throughout his creative and critical career. John Goodby observes the theme in his Irish Poetry Since 1950: From Stillness into History (2000). These are some of the coordinates for silence in modern Irish literature, and many of them appear in this book which focuses on such writers as Yeats, Joyce, Bowen, Beckett, Kate O’Brien, and Flann O’Brien, and in more recent times, Derek Mahon, Dermot Healey, Roddy Doyle, Robert McLiam Wilson, and Brian Friel, but also incorporates a number of slightly lesser known writers. In “The Planter’s Daughter” Austin Clarke wrote “Men that had seen her / Drank deep and were silent.” In his presentation of the fifteen essays and in [End Page 155] his continuous sounding of the interpretational amplitude of these two lines from Clarke—a modernist writer who has always remained somewhat in quiescence—McAteer anticipates how well this anthology understands and discusses the subtle signals of silence in a much wider hermeneutic framework than the “psychological, ethical, topographical and spiritual aspects of silence in modern Irish literature” that the introduction indicates. As McAteer’s exposition of the two lines illustrates, these essays dwell on silence as a reservoir of multiple meanings, as a parallel existence to the dead and forgotten, as a field of unexpressed conflict as much as complicity, a means of resistance, a strategy of suppression, an undefined space of historical loss, and an immalleable dam of desire. The complexities of silence are traced and debated across the many taboos: the gender issues, the religious and geographical divides, and the wars and peace that characterize the becoming of Ireland in the course of the twentieth century. Furthermore, by incorporating historical events and references to the history of ideas, and to the Irish canon, the introduction entails a wider and more complex understanding of the key term “modern” than the rather simplistic parameter of the...

Unexplored aspects of traditional Ukrainian wedding

The article emphasizes necessity to carefully analyze entertainment and game program of traditional Ukrainian wedding, which includes, in particular, the "obscene" rituals, songs, games and dances. The study of these phenomena of popular culture was for a long time hampered due to political persecution, the church and the moral censorship presure. Nevertheless, vivid and original Ukrainian wedding studied several generations of scientists. This case paid tribute to many ukrainian and foreign ethnographers, historians, folklorists, musicologists and other experts. Lack of focus on entertainment and gaming component is an old flaw of our ukrainian ethnology. Censorship and persure of erotic folklore continued inSoviet Uniontimes. Suffice it to recall that even in academic publications “Ukrainian wedding ceremonies and songs”, which were published in 70-80 years of the last century, editors were forced to distort facts, and to escape from publication some of authentic texts because of its "obscene" content. The history of wedding folklore discuss the reasons of disappearing of any rituals. Initial culture was based on a synthesis of philosophical ideas and art forms. But over time, due to the destruction of old ideological foundations of ancient ritual form or phenomena became artistic activities and holiday entertainment, or gradually were replaced by the sphere of life.

The Right to Read: The Book Censorship Abolition League, 1934–37

The Book Censorship Abolition League, a group made up of academics and other public intellectuals that was active between 1934 and 1937, constituted the first sustained and substantial protest against government censorship in Australia. By the early 1930s, Australia had developed the most interventionist political and moral censorship regime in the English-speaking world, with the exception only of Ireland. From 1933, under the federal Minister for Trade and Customs Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Walter White, the political arm of this system was extended to one of its greatest historical extremes. The League, formed around William Macmahon Ball, then senior lecturer in political philosophy at the University of Melbourne, was initiated in response and was successful in forcing some alleviation of government censorship. While the League has been treated in passing in a number of general histories, this article is the first to examine the group in its own right, and offers new perspectives not found in previous briefer accounts.

Tereza Trautman e Os homens que eu tive: uma história sobre cinema e censura

Beyond politics, the moral censorship was widely practiced in Brazil toward films that contested the military patterns of conduct. In the context of erotic cinema, promoted by Embrafilme, a young director saw her dreams sink in 1973 with a censorship act. This article analyses the interdiction of the film Os homens que eu tive [the men that I’ve had], by Tereza Trautman, as a representative element of arbitrariness with its basis on moral and good habits, strongly emphasized from the military coup d’état.

Law Vs Letter. The Evolution of the Cain Figure in US Literature: Transcending Moral Censorship?

As the law breaker, Cain appears as ideally situated to examine the issue of moral censorship. The United States, with its stern history of authoritarian Puritanism, offers a perfect locus for the study of censorship. Thus, the analysis of the evolution of the Cain figure in the literature of the United States cannot but provide a unique viewpoint on the tricky issue of this powerful western country’s evolving stance toward law and authority. Focusing on three American novels from different periods, The Scarlet Letter (1850), East of Eden (1952), and Sula (1973), this study hopes to expose the complexification of the traditional Christian reading of the evil transgressor. In a post-Christian age, Cain has stopped being censured. This means no mere axiological inversion but a complexification of moral matters paradoxically raising fundamental ontological questions in a world supposedly devoid of transcendence. Through the characters of Hester, Caleb and Sula and the evolution from one to the other as specific Cain figures, one may perceive a whole society’s ideological metamorphosis with respect to normative moral thinking.

Censorship and Book Selection in British Public Librarianship 1919–1939: Professional Perspectives

The main theme of the paper is the selection of fiction in British public libraries in the period between the two World Wars of the mid-twentieth century. There is a discussion of the legal background, including the role of socially conservative politicians in influencing, or attempting to influence, what was published and what was made available through public libraries. Against this background there is a more detailed analysis and discussion, based on contemporary professional literature, of the attitudes of professional librarians towards the moral dimension of the selection of fiction. It is concluded that, in general, librarians took a pragmatic line, trying to provide a wide-ranging stock while necessarily taking account of both political and social pressures. It is suggested that by 1939 the moral climate was beginning to change, and that many professionals were coming round to the view that moral censorship was undesirable except in extreme cases.

Why Do Russians Support Censorship of the Media?

This article analyses support for censorship in Russia as part of the democratization process. Censorship has been an important part of Russian history and it was strengthened during the Soviet era. After the collapse of the Soviet system formal censorship was banned even though the reality has been different. Therefore it is not strange that many Russians would like to limit the freedom of the media and to censor certain topics. The views of Russians on censorship have been studied on the basis of a survey carried out in 2007. According to the results, three different dimensions of censorship were found. These dimensions include moral censorship, political censorship, and censorship of religious materials. Support for these dimensions varies on the basis of socio-demographic characteristics and media use. The article concludes that many Russians reject new phenomena, while support for the censorship of political criticism is not as high, but political censorship seems to enjoy more support among elites than among the common people.

Österreich (1945–2000). Das Land der Satire by Jeanne Benay, Gerald Stieg

AUSTRIAN STUDIES, 12, 2OO4 299 While the contours of this argument are familiar, not least thanks to thework of Klaus Amann, Danielczyk's example of Ortner is less known than those ofMax Mell and Friedrich Schreyvogl, and thus adds to our understanding of the so-called 'Br?ckenbauer' phenomenon of writers seeking to curry favour in both Germany and Austria. Compared with those ofMell and Schreyvogl, Ortner's Nazi sympa thies are shown to have been considerably less opaque, a fact reflected by his plays StefanFadinger (1933; reissued as Der Bauernhauptmann, 1941) and Isabella vonSpanien (1939), and by his subsequendy swiftrise within the SA. However, Ortner's very malleability appears to have been his undoing. With abundant reference to hitherto unpublished archival sources, Danielczyk shows how Ortner's 'Vielseitigkeit' was cited as the reason for his expulsion from the SA in 1943, after a series of trials that had begun in 1940.Having campaigned successfully for his reinstatement in 1944, Ortner was then compelled tomake a political volte-face as the tide ofwar turned, and attempted to achieve thisby claiming leadership of a resistance movement in Upper Austria. The laterperiod ofOrtner's career is surveyedmore briefly, concentrating on his attempts to carve out a role in the altered landscape of Austrian cultural politics after 1945, and his struggles to overcome a reputation more tarnished by association with National Socialism than those ofmany contemporaries. A detailed account of Ortner's unsuccessful attempt to found an 'Internationale Musikolympiade' in Salzburg provides an illuminating case-study of cultural politics in the early years of the Second Republic. Danielczyk concludes thatmillions of Schillings of taxpayers' money were wasted on the project, which was designed solely to underscore Austria's image as a nation defined by cultural endeavour. The fact that the incident has effectivelybeen written out of history is instructive, and exposes the prevalent concern with Austria's external image and the impact of negative news on tourism,which arguably persists to the present day. Danielczyk's account of the 'Musikolympiade' raises more questions than it answers about Ortner's involvement: inparticular, how an author with supposedly so tarnished a reputation managed to get as far as he did with planning the project, which involved such illustrious names as Sir Georg Solti and Karl B?hm when it collapsed in 1953.Also, a brief section on Ortner's threemarriages could perhaps have been integrated into the chronological survey given elsewhere, rather than interpolated between the account of his career pre- and post-1945. As examples of his expediency in private as well as public contexts, however, the sketch comple ments Danielczyk's lucid and scrupulously documented appraisal of an otherwise overlooked but, forhis time, sadly exemplary Austrian 'Wanderbursch des Lebens'. Magdalen College, Oxford Robert Pyrah ?sterreich(ig4$-2000). Das Land derSatire. Ed. byJeanne Benay and Gerald Stieg. Bern: Lang. 2002. xiv + 388 pp. SFr 99; 59,50 (excl.VAT). isbn 3-906768 76-7. This volume attempts to assess the role of satire as an element ofAustrian culture in the second half of the twentieth century. It comprises papers originally given at a symposium held inParis, the thirdpart of a four-stage research project on satire in Austria, conducted joindy by the universities ofMetz, Paris III and Rouen. Das Land 3?? Reviews derSatire,with its ironical allusion to theAustrian national anthem, deals with mani festations of satire inAustria from 1945 to 2000? covering a period inwhich the arts, liberated from the repression ofNazism, were gradually also emancipated from the constraints of political and moral censorship. Like most collections of conference papers, it is something of a mixed bag, but among the nineteen contributions from scholars in France, Austria and Switzerland are several essays of outstanding interest. Satire is something of an Austrian prerogative: in a keynote essay which intro duces the volume, Gerald Stieg establishes the credentials of Austrian satire by invoking the tradition ofNestroy, Kraus and Bernhard, that 'trio of satiristswhich is unique in the literaryhistory of theGerman-speaking countries'. Stieg identifies as the common denominator between them the essentially aggressive, even destruc tive nature of satire. He quotes, with relish, Hebbel's bitter aphorism: 'Wenn Nestroy an eine Rose riecht, dann stinkt...

"Prezada Censura": cartas ao regime militar

O artigo analisa a censura de diversões públicas durante o regime militar brasileiro através de documentos administrativos e das cartas enviadas por pessoas comuns à Divisão de Censura de Diversões Públicas.

The 1926 German Law to Protect Youth against Trash and Dirt: Moral Protectionism in a Democracy

TheGesetz zur Bewahrung der Jugend vor Schund- und Schmutzschriften (Law to Protect Youth from Trashy and Dirty Writings) was proposed at the cabinet meeting of 19 December 1923, passed by the Reichstag on 3 December 1926, and went into effect on 18 December 1926. Within ten years it was a dead letter, replaced by the 1935 guidelines of the Reichsschrifttumskammer. The law and the agitation surrounding it had many dimensions; the phenomenon was at once political, legal, sociological, psychological, and cultural. A classic example of moral censorship, it has many parallels with other censorship activity, such as the British campaign to protect youth from horror comics in the 1950s. Yet while it is a case study of censorship, this law is more than illustrative. The debate over its passage further politicized the already controversial issue of culture in Germany, and it can be credited with a small but definite contribution to the political alignments that eventually made possible the Nazi takeover of January 1933.

The politics of moral censorship

The politics of moral censorship

Shoddy and Pernicious Books and Youthful Purity: Literary and Moral Censorship, Then and Now

Though some librarians and teachers believe censorship is a recent phenomenon, it has been a part of librarians' lives for more than a century. Indeed, many late-nineteenth-century librarians regarded themselves primarily as censors, duty-bound to protect the young from shoddy and pernicious books, especially fiction. Some librarians and teachers today carry on this censorial tradition by circulating or teaching only works of high literary merit or the proper moral content. Those censoring on literary grounds often provide only subjective criteria, justifying censorship by their own personal tastes. Those censoring on moral grounds often provide no better criteria, justifying censorship by their own personal morality. Librarians and teachers have no right to impose personal literary or moral standards on the public, young or old. They have a duty to provide materials of all sorts to allow clients and students to search through and seek out ideas.