Design Control Censorship - pt1

This is an immensely large subject full of debate on so many levels, that it will be hard to cover all of them. What would be the best approach is to skim the surface of the main points and mix it with some historic flavouring, in an attempt to make some discursive approach to the post. What must be made as a point at the beginning of this post, in conclusion to the last, is that one of the worst types of censorship, is that of self-censorship. Not stating one's opinion based on some fear or lack of knowledge is not the best approach to creating communication. It may be clear that I may not know what I am talking about in some of my posts, but with a little supportive research and a desire to say what I think, I put in words a viewpoint. After all, this is what I can do and is a right of all individuals, to have an opinion. Not saying something can possibly take away a viewpoint or piece of knowledge that could help in the argument, help an individual understand or even just give counter to the original point. Not saying anything, is nothing at all: no progress forward, no understanding, no communication. So it is better to say something than nothing.

All that said, what can be said about censorship. As it stands in todays society, it is difficult to state that it is hard to accept censorship. It is a very symbolic, double edged sword. On one-side we have the positive moral control that can stop harmful content being thrown on susceptible minds. The other side, the negative side, is the side that restrict people in knowledge and creativity due to regulations that have been designed by people who tend to believe they are right in their political agenda. So, with that starting point, there now follows a (maybe) frank discussion about how the whole approach to censorship has or can effect design. As previously stated, the whole show began thousands of years ago. Well, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Something occurred that made us change from roaming upright animals, naked to the world, to clothed conscious humans. The most logical answer is that we basically migrated from our African origin and moved to more temperate climates and required protective layers to warm us. Nothing wrong in that, so where does censorship change that historical aspect. Well, the simple fact could be argued that there are still more people on the planet these days that still believe in the notion (or reality) of the visualization of Adam and Eve, than having the knowledge of our own natural evolution. The classic representation of a caveman for example is of a loin cloth clad man with his genitalia covered. This image has not occurred from fact maybe, but instead of controlled censorship by a religious body, that has denoted that the human reproductive parts are not conducive to a social empathy to their way of thinking. This has not always been the way, as the Pagan religion was able to see nudity and sexual activity as a key part to their belief and even denoted it in the art. This religious form was eradicated through the stronger Christian belief and therefore was the seeding point to some of the affects of censorship. Before there comes a barrage of criticism believing that I am trying to knock Christian history as a cause to many of the woes of the creative world, I am not. Many other cultures have also depicted human form with the same level of control in art and design, but it is just a simple fact that the religious aspect is a cause and Christian belief has been sustained for over two thousand years now, that it is a good benchmarking tool to aid in the argument of censorship.

As was discussed in the previous post, communication has been an important factor in the development of aesthetics. Mainly because all creative forms can be seen as a communication form. However, more so type and words, along with ideograms and pictograms created the process by which we now communicate and also control communication. The juxtaposition between using the form to saying openly what you liberally want to say and on the other hand finding that it has the ability to restrict you is a very difficult area to control. What is meant by this? Well, to cut a long story short, with the development of alphabet comes the process of words, sentence and then meaning. Someone has then defined what this meaning is. Part of that meaning is controlled. A simple example would be the denotation of what is commonly called blasphemy. Excuse the crudeness of the following sentence, but will use as an example; if you are to say: "What the fuck are you doing?" Then what can be seen in this expression, regardless of how you see that four letter word, is a little piece of emotive expression. In a sense a degree of creativity. Say the sentence without that expressiveness and you are left with; "What are you doing?" It has the same conclusive outcome, but with out any expression. If you were to try to think of other ways to say the same thing with substitution you would be left with; "What the hell are you doing?" Still creative and delivering the correct force in the sentence to make it different to the less expressive question. And this seems to be a key point. The fact that you are saying that is socially taboo seems to give the more force to the expression and therefore a more creative feeling. It has a stronger and more different meaning. So why do we do it? and does this extend further into design aspects?

I remember growing up as a young boy, watching TV with my parents and finding that there was this 'wonderful' invention called the 'watershed'. This is a period by which a governing body would denote suitable content for viewing age groups. In America is is also referred to as the 'safe harbor'. Mainly, any content of adult nature would be shown after 9pm in the evening. This, in my childhood marked the maximum time I was allowed to stay up. When that watershed came it was off to bed. Why? Because it was deemed safer for influential minds to not see such content on TV, but also, because adults wanted to be able to see such material. This can cause a good argument to the whole censorship angle, but the funny thing that I learnt as I grew up, was the fact that this governing body was in fact a Church driven organization, that was intending to describe what it believed to be sound content for the television viewing market. So, it seems that the whole gamut of censorship can be linked to a 'not religious' but religiously controlled attitude to what it seems to be right and wrong. Maybe, this has been developed over may views based on the writings in the bible or some other scriptures. But it almost seems ludicrous, as denoted in Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose", where one of the head monks literally kills followers of one form of expression; "laughter". Because he believed it to be wrong. 

This is the basic notion to what censorship is about. Toscani, in an attempt to make Benetton sales increase clicked on the creative notion of being shocking. His first two ads for the campaign, that has become a historical landmark for the debate, were of the first man to die of aids and a newly born infant fresh out of the womb. These ads, seen here and here, were a censorship nightmare. His argument was to show the truth. Especially concerning the new born, he declared that we are all born naked, and that this image is how we all enter the world, so why be shocked and embarrassed by it. Its a simple case that society has delivered this transcended viewpoint. There was a great deal of art in the development of our social heritage that contains nudity, however the further we go back, the more we find that it was sanctioned by the church. That morals were kept in line via the authority of the people who controlled a great deal of what they believed to be clean or immoral. This maybe a reasoning to how censorship has been evolved into our daily lives these days. It is still forbidden in some media forms to show male genitalia. If you look at a great deal of classic art through the centuries, almost all reproductive organ depiction has a degree control over it. This was through either direct or indirect influence of the church. What we do find is that art that is trying to push the bounds of that thin line of what society determines to be in the bounds of censorship tends to get a great deal of respect for the challenging aspect to its approach, or the counter affect of a great deal of criticism due to its risk in challenging what is morally correct.

So, to conclude the first part of the censorship debate, would society benefit from a less constrictive control of aesthetic form, or has it benefitted from a view that someone needs to deem what is wrong in what we see, hear and say? And does the idealistic notions of a few basically restrict the creativity of the many based on the fact that communication has defined what should be seen as right and wrong?