Term paper on Censorship

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Censorship
During the last decade, our society has become based on the sole ability to move large amounts of information across great distances quickly. Computerization has influenced everyone's life in numerous ways. The natural evolu

cell phones
English Essay Honors English Pd. D October 12, 2000 When cellular phones and pagers first hit the market in the early '80s, customers were mainly businesses. Now, families are the fastest-growing segment of wireless customers, according to Cellular One’s homepage. Springing from this trend is the bo

Censorship!?!

The freedom to read is essential to the democratic way of life. But

today, that freedom is under attack. Private groups and public authorities

everywhere are working to remove both books and periodicals from sale, to

exclude certain books from public schools, to censor and silence magazines

and newspapers, and to limit "controversial" books and periodicals to the

general public. The suppression of reading materials is suppression of

creative thought. Books and periodicals are not the only ones being

suppressed by pressures to the political and social systems. They are also

being brought against the educational system, films, radio, television, and

against the graphic and theatre arts. However or whenever these attacks

occur, they usually fall at least one of the following categories:

Religion

War & Peace (Violence)

Sociology & Race

Language

Drugs

Sex

Inappropriate Adolescent Behaviour

What is Obscenity? Clearly something hard to talk about

constructively. "Obscenity" is difficult to discuss honestly. After all,

what makes a thing obscene? It is Something too vague perhaps to be

defined. It's an elusive term we use, but can't explain. Different people

often see things differently. Some see obscenity in nude pictures, statues,

paintings, etc. While others find less obscenity in these things. All the

same, "obscene" isn't the same as "wrong" or "bad". Clearly obscenity is

not identical with evil. It only covers a single segment of it. But what is

that segment? A look at the words "obscenity" and "pornography" suggests

that it is a segment that didn't worry people very much till relatively

recently.

Though censorship was known in english law quite early on, it wasn't

for obscenity but for heresy and sedition."Undue" exploitation of sex" is

what criminal law in Canada prohibits. This is how criminal law defines

obscenity. But it is rather vague. It doesn't differentiate between

"ordinary obscenity" and "hard-core pornography." The first denoting the

ordinary run of "girlie magazines and the second denoting pictures ,

literature and so on that deal with rape, sadism, masochism, bestiality,

necrophilia and other perversions. People tend to object far more to

"hard-core pornography." Another distinction unfortunately overlooked by

our criminal law is the distinction between isolated instances of obscenity

and the products of vast commercial enterprise.

There has been an increasing trend towards children's literature that

reflects a more realistic approach to the life both fiction and

non-fiction, with subjects that include sex, homosexuality, divorce, child

abuse, drugs, violence, etc. And they are these realistic books that have

people outraged. In school libraries, the most frequent complaints come

from parents about the school's selections. And in public libraries,

parents were once again the single greatest source of challenges to

materials.

The world is filled with "obscene" things. And it would seem that

those parents are just trying to protect their children from the outside

world. But does it really help? These day,...

The Censorship Iceberg: The results of a survey of challenges in

school and public libraries. By Dr. David Jenkins. School Libraries

in Canada. Fall, 1985. v.6 n.1 p19-22

Sanitized textbooks reflect a pious paradise that never was. By

June Callwood. The Globe and Mail. March 18, 1987. pA2-A3

Suffer the little children. By Janet Collins. Books in Canada.

October 1991. v.20 n.7 p25-27

Court bans 'humanist' books from Alabama public schools. By Robin

Toner. The Globe and Mail. March 5, 1987. pA10

Censorship in the children's library. By Rupert Colley. The Junior

Bookshelf. June 1990. v.54 n.3 p121-123

Censorship News. Spring 1985. n20

Limits of criminal law - obscenity: a test case. By The Law Reform

Commission: working paper no. 10. p7-9

Censorship: stopping the book banners. By the book and periodical

development council. August 1988. p1-17