Quote:
Originally posted by Ruth
I am against censorship, and agree that it is used as a tool to oppress people.
At it's most basic form, it really annoys me when people say, 'this or that should not be on tv/radio, etc'. There's an off button. People should be able to make their choice, and we are extremely lucky that we live in a country where we don't get punished for speaking up for what we believe.
Officialsuperstar - it's quite astounding to people in the UK that censorship takes place. You say that nobody would dare ban your opinion...in some countries, you wouldn't dare express it.
One of my closest friends is a black guy who grew up under the apartheid system in South Africa. Some of the things that were banned there are crazy - one example is the album The Wall, by Pink Floyd. Banned, because of it's content, and it's themes. They didn't people to get ideas into their head. The amount of books that were banned....it makes me count my blessings that we live in a country where we are allowed relatively free speech (I'm not fooling myself that we have completely free speech anywhere in the world).
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Have to mention South Africa - just a comment based on personal experience. I lived there from ages 8 - 13, and I remember going to see the movie Blazing Saddles, was early in 1976 - it was part of a double bill and the version of Blazing Saddles in South Africa had all scenes where Cleavon Little was "winning" or getting "one-up" as it were - were cut' along with huge chunks of his dialogue.
Now if anyone isn't familiar with Blazing Saddles [there may be some] - Cleavon Little is, along with Gene Wilder the star, and he is black.
the film that remained was less than an hour long and is why it was shown in a double bill - and just about the only scene in the movie that wasn't touched was the "farting" sequence.
It wasn't until I was about 18 that I saw the movie again, here in the UK and before vhs was widespread, and realised just what had been changed - that was my first realisation as to the power of political censorship .
Made even stranger as when I saw it again it was on a double bill with "Scum"