Considering censorship - Essay Example

of a community uses in order to maintain community’s values and ideals against real (or imagined) “bad” effects caused by media and thought to impact negatively on community’s core values and ideals. Typically, media censorship is controversial. That is why one finds strong opponents as well as staunch advocates on both sides. But when has censorship – of whatever form – ever managed to subdue rights to thought, information, and freedom? Indeed, censorship may not only impact, for example, on quality and meaning of a performance in an entertainment show but also on how people think – or made to think – of how and when community’s values and ideals should be, well, protected.

Precedents are abundant. The Ed Sullivan Show, a well-known American entertainment show over thirty years (1940’s – 1970’s) provides more than illuminating examples on how censorship can impact on people’s perception of community’s values and ideals. Perhaps Bob Dylan’s response to Ed Sullivan Show’s producers speaks persuasively of an artist’s expression of community’s at large accepted values as opposed to censors’ control on meaning and perception: We fought for the song [“Talkin John Birch Society Blues"] .

I said I couldnt understand why they [John Birch Society, an extremist right-winged group] were being given such protection. But the network [CBS, where Ed Sullivan Show is aired] turned us down. They told us they understood and sym­pathized . but insisted they had previously handled the Birch Society on network news programmes, and couldnt take the subject into entertainment. (qtd. in Inglis 561) Another good example from same show is how producers’ censorship forced The Rolling Stones to drop “Night” from “Let’s Spend The Night Together,” making song’s tag line sounds odd given song’s overall meaning.

Interestingly, entertainment – of all media shows and programs – impacts human mind in many different ways.