Should Books, Films and Plays never be censored?
Answers
No.
Under no circumstances should any medium of art ever be censored.
But why?
Why shouldn’t we censor films like Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will? The former is KKK propaganda, and the latter is Nazi propaganda, why should we allow these films to exist and spread their hateful bigoted messages? And why should we tolerate films like Grotesque or The Human Centipede 2 which only exist to shock and horrify audiences with their disgusting imagery, is that something you want your children to see? Do we really want films like these out there, influencing people? Wouldn’t it be better just ban them?
Well those are some very good questions and points, and pretty much cover the basis for why people advocate for censoring art. And now I’ll explain why they are all terrible ideas, and mostly counter-productive.
First of let’s deal with political propaganda films like Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will, the reason people would want to ban films like this is because they disagree with the messages and ideas in these films. The problem with banning films for political reasons, is it then sets the precedent that whatever someone dislikes or disagrees with can be banned. This might sound like the slippery-slope fallacy but it isn’t. Once you allow people to ban things that they disagree with, they then have the ability to ban anything they want, including your political opinions if they disagree with them. It also prevents people from expressing their political views which is totalitarian and unjust. You can’t censor something just because you disagree with it or it offends you.
But what about censoring films with horrific and graphic violence? Do we really want films like Grotesque and The Human Centipede 2 falling into children’s hands? Well the first problem with censoring films with graphic content is that it just doesn’t work. The second a film is banned or censored by a country because it’s deemed too graphic, people immediately seek out that film at all costs, the censorship acts as free publicity for the film, because people then desperately want to know what was in the film that caused it to be banned. And now that the internet exists, there is no hope of stopping people from getting a hold of this movie if they really want to. So censoring films like these, creates the exact opposite of the intended effect. More people see the film after it was banned, than if it had never been censored.
This is exactly what happened with the infamous film Grotesque in the UK. The government tried to censor the film because it was deemed to sadistic and brutal for audiences. But this than caught a lot of peoples attention, and thus more people saw it, then if it had just been released regularly.
But the real main problem with censoring books, films, plays, or any other medium of art, for their content, is that it completely defeats the purpose of art. Art is meant to be human expression, and sometimes its going to have to get a little ugly if it want’s to express humanity. Saying that certain things can’t appear in art because “they’re too graphic” completely defeats the point of having art in the first place.