So, my chapel talk was today.  I was happy with the way that it went, although you can never really tell when you are the one that was doing the speaking.  I've heard a pretty positive response from most people who were there.  I'm happy to say that my parents, Erin F, Mary Helen, Emily D, Emma W, Julia Ramsey, and Nancy H were all able to make it today.  It was good to have at least a few people on my side in the audience.  Mr. J gave me a flattering intro...very nice.  All in all, besides my nervousness which translated into banging on the podium and talking a mile a minute in the first minute or two, I was very happy with the way that the talk went.  Good stuff.   Here's a copy of it, if anyone is interested:

Censorship:  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I was stoked. I was pumped.  I was ready to go.  I had just finalized my cast for the GPS Winter One-Acts.  I was directing a show called The Birthday Present and it was gonna be good.  And hilarious…I mean a show about the world’s last fertile man in a world filled with other fertile women, come on guys, that’s comic genius.  So we had our first rehearsal, and then we broke for Thanksgiving.  I was simply ecstatic over the potential of my cast and the show.  But that was all going to change. 

I got the call Friday after Thanksgiving…it didn’t sound too good.  My mom reported to me the news that she had been informed of that morning: My show, The Birthday Present, would not pass the GPS Fine Arts Committee, and therefore I would not be directing said show.  In short, I got punk’d.  P-U-N-K-‘-D, punk’d.  Guys, I got more than punk’d, beyond punk’d, I got censored.

            That brings me to what I’m talking about today: Censorship.  So here’s how we’re gonna do this.  First, what is it?  Next, why do it?  Is it Good?  Is it Bad?  When is it good? When is it Bad?  And finally, what can we conclude from all of this. 

            Alright, let’s start by turning to the trusty dictionary.  What is censorship?

censorship

n 1: counterintelligence  achieved by banning or deleting any information of value to the enemy 2: deleting parts of publications or correspondence or theatrical performances

Well, since I know that went right in one ear and out of the other, at least it did for me (too many big words for a second semester senior), let’s see what we’re really dealing with.  Whenever you’re watching The Daily Show on Comedy Central and you hear the beeps kick in…that’s censorship.  Whenever you’re watching the Super Bowl and the halftime performer’s breast pops out and is quickly blurred…that’s censorship.  Whenever you’re walking down the street and you pass a towering inferno of flaming books…that’s censorship.  Or in my case, whenever you’re doing a one act play and you get punk’d out of doing it…that’s censorship.

            Now that we all know what censorship is, why censor?  What motivates people to censor?   It seems to me that there are two main categories that censorship falls into: Protection and Control.

            Alright then, protection.  Here’s the image that I get for protection: A 1st grader is channel surfing and watching TV and he stumbles upon a commercial for a Girls Gone Wild video.  Perplexed by the crazy music and scandalous amounts of skin being shown in this commercial, little Tommy decides he’ll finish watching, after all, who knows what will come on next.  Uh-oh, here comes Mommy, who sees that little Tommy has inadvertently tuned into a commercial for a porn video on TV.  Reacting with her gut parental instincts she quickly puts one hand over his eyes, takes the remote with her other hand, and turns off the TV.  It is pretty clear that Tommy never should have been able to watch the Girls Gone Wild commercial in the first place, and no one doubts his Mommy’s decision or authority to turn off the TV.  At age 7, Tommy’s parents have the right to censor the material that their little boy is exposed to, and very few people would argue with their decision.  Censorship used by a parent to protect a child is a good thing.

            But what happens when little Tommy grows up?  What if little Tommy’s Mommy went haywire and decided after that little incident with Girls Gone Wild she was going to protect her little boy from everything she didn’t want him to know about in the world?  What if she continued to put her hand over Tommy’s eyes when he was…say…30 years old?  What would this mean?  Well , first off, it would mean that Tommy has turned into a huge Mama’s boy who probably hasn’t amounted to much in his life.  Secondly, I would argue that Tommy hasn’t amounted to much in his life because he has been censored under the guise of protection by his Mommy.  Mommy’s censorship has gone from well-intentioned protection of her innocent 1st grader to over-bearing control of her 30-year-old loser of a son.  At some point, Mommy has crossed this line of censoring to protect and censoring to control. 

            What if we expand this image?  Let’s say that Mommy is the government and all of the citizens are little Tommys.  Where do you draw the line between protection and control?  Can you draw a line between protection and control?  We can look at examples of controlling governments throughout history.  For example, in Nazi Germany, Hitler and the Nazis were censoring books, art, and even their race.  In Hitler’s search to purify his country and create a “master race” he essentially censored, or terminated, the lives of 6 million Jews and countless others.  Our former president, FDR, commented on the Nazi’s censorship campaign, “If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free.”   So what does all this mean?  Well , we’ve discovered why it is, at least two big reasons, that motivates censorship:  Protection and Control.  But we’ve also seen that sometimes, as in poor Tommy’s case, that protection can get out of hand and lead to overbearing control.

            Hmmm….well,  back to my initial story.  Why was it that my One Act play was being censored?  I was told that it was due to the play’s “inappropriate” content.  Was this censorship to protect or to control?  Well, either way, I was hacked off about being censored because I saw the GPS Fine Arts Committee as Tommy’s overbearing Mommy, and I was not going to turn out to be like 30 year old Tommy.  So, I thought through my options:  #1  I could whine and complain and kick and scream until they let me do it cause they were being way too unfair.  But that wouldn’t achieve much and was a tad immature.  #2  I could get down on my knees and grovel and beg to let me do the play.  Naw, that probably wouldn’t work either and would be a little degrading.  #3  I could fight it.  Yeah, I could take GPS to court for violating my 1st amendment right of free expression and free speech.  Yeah, that’s what I would do, yeah, I’d fight it, but first I should probably think this through a little bit more.  So, being the HUGE NERD that I am, I promptly looked in the Encyclopedia of U.S. Supreme Court Cases.  Here’s what I found, here is what the Supreme Court thinks about our rights as high school students: 

1)                  Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) – Essentially, the court ruled in favor of two students’ freedom of expression to wear black arm bands at school in protest of the Vietnam War.  Strike up one for students’ rights!  Next Case:

2)                  Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988) – Journalism II students at Hazelwood East High School were publishing their school paper, “The Spectrum”, and submitted it as usual to the principal for a final approval.  The principal censored the paper by cutting out two pages of “The Spectrum”.  The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Hazelwood School District citing that the students’ rights were not violated by the removal of the two pages from their newspaper because the newspaper was part of the school curriculum, not a “public forum”.  What does that mean?  Well it means that this decision restricted students’ First Amendment rights by giving school officials wide latitude to control student expression that might be seen as sponsored by the school.  Basically, as students, we “leave most of our First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate.”  Well, that didn’t look too pretty for my case against GPS, yeah, maybe fighting it wasn’t the best choice.

Well, I guess I did have one last option:  I could get over it, pick another play and move on with my life.  Maybe that was the answer.

            Yeah, maybe after thinking about it, it was for the best that I got censored.  Maybe censorship wasn’t so bad after all.  It was at least a possibility.  So, what is good about censorship?  1) Censorship is an effective means to maintain the innocence of childhood, which should be maintained up to a certain point.  If Tommy’s Mommy had only censored her son’s life until he was 13 or so, then maybe Tommy would have turned out to be a functioning member of society.  2) Another good thing about censorship is that it sets a moral standard in our society.  Although we will argue with one another about what that standard is or should be until the end of time, it is nice to know that there are laws against obscene behavior in public, such as streaking.  I mean, honestly, nobody wants to see that.  We are living in a society, and censorship is an important tool that helps maintain what society says is appropriate vs. what society says is inappropriate. 

            The problem with Censorship is when it is abused.  Whenever that moral standard starts getting too tight or too loose, censorship starts becoming a serious problem.  So this brings us to another question: When is censorship bad?  1)  Censorship is bad when it crosses the line from protection to control.  2)  Censorship is bad when it breaches our 1st Amendment Rights and Freedoms, even if it is done in the name of protection.  The famous Marxist thinker, critic, and author, Granville Hicks made an interesting comment on Censorship, or rather the one doing the censoring, “A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.”  3)  What about Censorship in education?  Is censorship good for education?  I would argue that Censorship has a dangerous potential to breed ignorance when applied to education.  Here is an example:  Banned Books.  Controversial books have been banned by states, counties, and schools all over the country.  Surprisingly, some of these books are mainstays here at McCallie.  Let’s see what our English classes would be missing if McCallie banned some of the most widely banned books in America:

1)                  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – No Boo Radley, no Jem, no Tomboy Scout, no Dweeby Dill, and no Atticus Finch.

2)                  The Lord of the Flies by William Golding – No conch shell references, no pig’s head on a stick, no state of nature scenario for young boys.

3)                  Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger – Even my boy Holden Caulfield would meet the censor’s disapproval.  

4)                  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain – The epitome of an American classic would be censored as a racist novel, even though it is well known as one of the greatest literary triumphs against racism and slavery.

5)                  Death of a Salesman and The Crucible by Arthur Miller - McCallie would miss the insights of Mr. Miller on father/son relationships and the unforgettable Willy Loman, not to mention the Salem witch trials.

6)                  The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare – Not even my buddy Bill Shakespeare is immune to the power of the censor.  Because of it’s “anti-Semitic” themes, McCallie students would miss out on debts that have to be paid with a pound of flesh.

And perhaps my favorite novel that I’ve read as part of the McCallie school curriculum:

7)                  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey – No Chief, No Big Nurse, and no rebellious Randal Patrick McMurphy.  Bummer Dudes!

I think I’ve made my point, these are only a few examples and that’s without even mentioning the countless novels that are on the McCallie Recommended Summer Reading List.  The books I just mentioned are some of the most popularly banned in our history.  That does not mean that they are still banned today.  Nowadays it is hard to find a school where To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huck Finn are still banned, but they do exist.  However the fact that many of these bans did exist at one time begs us to make an intriguing observation.  If these books that are now classics were at one time censored due to their inappropriate content, does that mean that books that are banned or material that is censored now will be the norm 50 years down the road?  2, 500 years ago, Greek Philosopher, Heraclitus said, “There is nothing permanent except change.”  That of course means that our standards change as well…what does that say about censorship?

            So when is censorship bad?   Censorship is bad when it gets in the way of education.

            Well what does all of this boil down to?  All of the stuff about my one act, Tommy and his Mommy, those court cases, and the list of banned books.  What have we found out?  We all know what censorship is, we know what motivates censorship (Protection v. Control), we know that censorship can be good, but can also be very bad, and finally we know that censorship should never get in the way of education.  So, what can we deduce from all of this?  Well, you can decide for yourself, and I hope you do.  But this is what it means to me.

            #1) Be smart – As a student, censor yourself so that others don’t have to.  It’ll make things a lot easier on everybody including yourself.  This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t stand up for something that you believe in, but rather that we can censor ourselves on the clear cut issues and save a lot of time and energy.  #2) Never let censorship get in the way of your education.  Never let censorship lead to ignorance.  Never let censorship be an excuse for closed-mindedness.  When it comes to censorship, use the brain that God gave you…know your audience and pick your battles.

Kind of an odd title for a journal entry, I know, but it's true. 

So tonight was incredible...which is odd to say about a Wednesday night...but it's true.  I got to hang out with Erin all day after school, from four until about 10:30 or so tonight.  She is awesome.  We went to a used bookstore downtown, Greyfriars, and then came back to my house where my dickey little brother was waiting.  I gave her a tour of the house and then, among other things, we watched the State of the Union Address...Bush is still a bad public speaker.  

The real reason tonight was so awesome is combined with the fact that I spent the entire afternoon with Erin, when we got home I had a little piece of mail.  It was from Rollins College.  I opened it thinking it was an invitation to the theatre audition weekend.  I read the first word and it said Congratulations!, which isn't what I was thinking a confirmation from the theatre scholarship auditions would say.  In short, I've been accepted to the school, awarded 17,000 in merit based scholarship (excluding Fin. Aid) + free laptop, and am being asked to compete among 40 other finalists for 10 full tuition scholarships March 5, 6.  I didn't think this was possible because the requirements to be invited are a 3.5 GPA min. and 32 ACT or 1400 SAT, and I had a 31.  In fact I even emailed my counselor to see if she could make an exception and she said no.  I was caught completely off guard by this, and I am so excited about Rollins now.  It's awesome to finally see how all of my hard work with apps this past fall is paying off, well my hard work from all of high school really.  It's a very exciting time for Dickey Bromfield.

On another smaller note, I was cast in the Musical, but the parts have yet to be disclosed, so maybe we'll find out more tomorrow at the first cast meeting.  We'll see I guess...

Now I need to get to thinking about my chapel talk.  Here's hoping for the best.