Category Archives: Censorship

Nostalgia is not a new phenomenon in the horror world, and it's not going away anytime soon. Whether we're talking about the genre's ongoing love affair with '80s throwbacks or the increasing number offilms influenced by the '90s, it's easy to see why the appeal of going retro with scary stories has such a grip on us, and I'm not just talking about using the past to erase the plot inconvenience of cell phones. For the right audience, that little warm ache that comes with nostalgia calls to mind a time in our lives when we were perhaps more innocent, more vulnerable, even easier to scare. Put us in that frame of mind, then hit us with the horror, and you've got a recipe for midnight movies that are both spooky and warm and fuzzy.

But there's more to nostalgia in horror than just using the right needle drops and wardrobe choices to pull us back into another time and place. When it's properly wielded, it's not just a charming piece of the background or a way to riff on a classic plot. In the right hands, nostalgia becomes a powerful tool for examination, picking apart not just the horror storytelling of the era in which the story is set, but our own preconceptions about that era. A good nostalgic horror film reminds us of what came before and makes us question it, while also questioning where we are now, as horror fans and as moviegoers.

We're living in a golden age of good nostalgia horror at the moment, whether we're talking about the genre mash-ups of the Fear Street trilogy or the meta deep dive of The Final Girls, but if you're looking for films that scratch that nostalgia itch while also sending a particularly icy chill down your spine, I've got a new double feature for you. It begins in the 1980s with Censor, then leaps into the 1990s with The Last Matinee, both films arriving in front of American audiences this year, and both films that pack serious style, stakes, and narrative smarts into their respective brands of retro horror.

So, what makes them effective? For one thing, both films have their own very specific perspective on the horror viewing experience. Directed by Prano Bailey-Bond, Censor takes place in the United Kingdom amid the video nasty panic (when censors were cutting apart and banning gory horror films left and right) of the 1980s, and follows a particular effective film censor (played with icy fire by Niamh Algar) as she begins to unravel after an unsettling recent viewing experience rekindles past traumas. The Last Matinee, directed by Maxi Contenti, moves its action from censor screening rooms and dingy video stores to a fading movie palace in Uruguay in the early 1990s, and follows a small group of characters as they watch (or talk through, as the case may be) a horror film even as they're living out one of their own, thanks to a hooded killer in their midst.

It might seem a small thing, but the attention to detail pulsing through both Bailey-Bond and Contenti's films means that by setting their respective stories in settings directly tied to the act of watching a horror movie, they've invited us to interrogate our own past horror experiences. For me, Censor called to mind not just what it was like to comb my local video store as a teenager, searching for the most gruesome slasher film on the shelves, but what it was like to take that movie home and slide it past disapproving parents. The Last Matinee took me not just to the cool darkness of movie theaters, but to very specific theatrical experiences in rundown auditoriums where the audience was either glued to the screen or completely disinterested in the film itself. If you've ever watched a movie in a theater with only a half dozen other people and felt like you could sense the conflicting energies of every single one of them, then you know the kind of atmosphere this film evokes.

But of course, these are just the setups, the laying of the table for the meal to come, and in both Censor and The Last Matinee, the meal comes with style to spare. Like its title character, Censor spends much of its runtime in reserved, patient contemplation, slowly sliding pieces into place with the practiced, deft hands of a horror scholar building out a thesis not just on the rise of splatter films in '80s horror, but on the prudish response to it. It's a restraint so delicate that you know it can only hold on for so long before it unleashes, and when Censor finally lets it all go, it's devastating. The Last Matinee, on the other hand, goes full-tilt operatic almost right away. There's a reason you can see Dario Argento posters in background shots. This is an homage not just to the most stylish slashers of the 1980s, but to the most brutal giallo films of the 1970s. There are gore shots in this film, which I wouldn't dare spoil here, beautiful enough to make Argento himself weep.

There's a third key ingredient to each of these films, though, that pushes them out beyond stories that simply evoke an effective rush of nostalgia, and that's a thematic resonance that makes the retro appeal linger beyond the style and setting.

Censor is about the ways in which one woman begins to come undone after her job gets under her skin, yes, but it's also about our relationship to screen violence, both individually and in a broader, cultural sense. It's an exploration not just of the video nasty panic's skewed sense of morality and reason, but of our own existential fears about what effective art might do to us, that voice lurking in the back of our minds going "What if our parents were right and this really will mess us up?"

The Last Matinee's own thematic concerns are perhaps a bit more ambiguous, though that feels more like a product of deliberate filmmaking than a missed opportunity. It's hard to dig too deep into what that means without spoiling the whole film for you, but by its very nature making a horror movie about someone who murders people while they watch a horror movie opens up some very interesting doors in terms of our relationship to scary stories and the voyeuristic aspect of violence on a screen.

Censor and The Last Matinee are, in many ways, very different films, beholden to different kinds of nostalgic aesthetics and concerns, but in the end, they both had the same effect on me because they are both, in some form, about the transgressive nature of the horror genre. Each reminded me what it felt like to be a young horror fan, searching for the limits of my local video store, whispering to my friends about how far these films might take me into realms that the adults in my life might not want me to go. With a couple of decades of scary movies under my belt now, that's a hard feeling to recapture, but the part of me that still relishes the idea of existing in an outsider fandom still chases it, and these films gave it back to me, each in their own way.

Censor is now available on VOD. The Last Matinee arrives on VOD on Aug. 24.

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'The Last Matinee,' 'Censor,' and the power of retro horror done right - SYFY WIRE

YouTube just froze Sen. Rand Pauls YouTube channel.

Thats just wrong. Small-minded. Counterproductive.

YouTube says Paul violated their COVID-19 misinformation policy when he told an interviewer, Most of the masks you get over the counter dont work ... virus particles are too small and go right through.

Paul didnt make that up.

Properly worn N95 masks are effective, but two peer-reviewed studies suggest that simple masks might not work at all.

But the studies arent perfect, so Paul shouldnt use phrases like no value. But give him a break; thats how people talk! Its good if he tells people not to trust cloth masks.

Unfortunately, YouTube bans any video that contradicts pronouncements of the World Health Organization. The rule makes it impossible to criticize WHO policy, even though one WHO video says wear a mask regardless of the distance from others.

WHO bureaucrats arent perfect. They made many mistakes during COVID-19. Other health experts once rejected germ theory and told people with ulcers to drink milk.

Such mistakes got corrected through criticism and debate. But YouTube now forbids that!

Last month, Paul got into a heated debate with Dr. Anthony Fauci over money the National Institutes of Health gave to Chinese scientists. Paul asked if it was used to do gain-of-function research (science that makes diseases deadlier to learn more about them).

Paul didnt suggest that the experiment the U.S. government funded created COVID-19. It didnt. We know that because of COVID-19s molecular structure.

But gain-of-function is still risky science that deserves public discussion. The NIH did fund pre-pandemic experiments at Wuhan that combined Coronaviruses to see if they could infect humans.

Does Fauci respond and explain to us in a reasonable fashion, why he thinks its not gain of function? No! He calls me a liar, says Paul in my new video.

Fauci did once write that even if a pandemic did occur from such research, benefits ... outweigh the risks.

Sounds like incredibly bad judgment, says Paul.

Yet the media attacked Pauls judgment instead, smirking at what they called his conspiracy theories. Social media companies even banned suggesting that COVID-19 was man-made!

Never before could a couple of companies just shut conversation off, I say to Paul.

Thats a real danger to scientific and journalistic inquiry, he replies. The advancement of knowledge requires skepticism ... debate on both sides. (But) these monolithic social media companies are determining what the truth is.

Well, what they say truth is.

Maybe they banned the Chinese lab-leak idea because former President Donald Trump expressed it. But Trump lying a lot doesnt make everything he says false.

There was actual evidence of a lab leak. American diplomats warned of risky experiments at the Wuhan lab before the pandemic. Three workers there got COVID-19 symptoms before the disease appeared elsewhere.

Only when that became public did Fauci say, It could have been a lab leak. Then President Joe Biden ordered an investigation.

Suddenly, Facebook unbanned the theory. Its previous censorship relied on its sloppy and biased fact-check group, Science Feedback, which has smeared me twice in the past.

Paul helped create a site called Liberty Tree, where libertarian-leaning politicians share ideas. He and I are both on YouTube competitor Rumble.

Those sites are good. The problem with them is that most participants are already knowledgeable about liberty.

We lose something by not talking to the other side, I tell him.

Paul says he worries less about that because his Twitter feed is full of idiots (and) imbeciles.

My newsfeeds arent as crazy. At YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, I often learn things. Theres some thoughtful discussion.

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Censorship only gives us one side of the story - Antelope Valley Press

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Cartoons are a powerful tool of political speech. Combining journalism, art, and often satire, political cartoons are all the more powerful because of their accessibility. That also makes them a threat to politicians in democracies and autocracies alike. In their new book, Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle Against Censorship, Cherian George, a professor of media studies at Hong Kong Baptist Universitys journalism department, and cartoonist Sonny Liew illustrate (literally) the power of political cartoons by explaining the various motivations and methods of cartoon censorship across the world. In the interview below, George share insights about how censorship differs across political contexts and why cartoons are so powerful.

What is unique or special about the political cartoon medium?

Political cartoons are a cross between journalism, art, and satire. At their best, political cartoons combine the public purpose of journalism, the emotive impact of art, and the democratizing effect of satire. Of course, not all political cartoons reach these levels. As with other forms of journalism, many are mediocre. Some are toxic.

The impulse to cartoon seems universal, even if the freedom to do so isnt. Its such a basic and low-cost medium for commentary that you can find it everywhere. And it has a long history. So if, like me, you are interested in censorship, political cartoons are an illuminating type of journalism to study.

Governments of all stripes engage in different forms of censorship. What are some of the myriad reasons or motivations for censorship?

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Well, lets start with reasons that dont apply to cartoons: to block exposs of corruption or state secrets. Unlike investigative reporters, political cartoonists arent really in the business of unearthing things that people dont know. Instead, cartoons often crystallize what the public already knows or feels, or make people look at known facts in a new way.

What seems to irritate leaders with an authoritarian disposition is that cartoons embolden citizens. Its like the fable of the boy who points out that the emperor has no clothes. You cannot unsee it. Confident leaders know that satire comes with the territory, and is a strength of an open society. But there are also many self-important leaders who really cannot abide being laughed at.

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There is of course a quite different category of censorship, which is about protecting the dignity of various identity groups racial, religious, gender, and so on. Under international human rights law, states actually have an obligation to prohibit expression that amounts to incitement to discrimination or violence against communities that are too weak to protect themselves in unregulated debate. We could call this good censorship. But although the moral and legal principles are quite clear, implementing them in a just manner is an extremely complex and controversial exercise. Around half of our book focuses on such controversies.

How does censorship differ in authoritarian, semi-authoritarian, and democratic societies?

There is problematic censorship everywhere, but the agents and methods of censorship differ depending partly on the political system. Liberal democracies have checks and balances to stop governments from censoring public discourse, so cartoonists there almost never have to worry about the state. In more authoritarian settings, governments can and do use repressive laws against cartoonists. Even more intimidating is the use of extra-legal tools by various groups, ranging from violence by paramilitaries to harassment by online mobs. In many settings, cartoonists cannot count on the rule of law to protect them from peoples outrage.

Cartoonists everywhere also contend with market censorship. This refers to the biases of capitalist media. The most obvious form is when news organizations refuse to publish something critical of a major advertiser or investor, or something that they fear will generate a strong consumer backlash. When editors exercise purely independent judgment, and decide that a cartoon does not meet the publications standards, I wouldnt call that censorship. Its editorial judgment. But if they go against their own better judgment because they fear the market, thats a problem. Another kind of market censorship is when good public interest media shrink or die, leaving fewer outlets for professional cartoonists.

People who are ideologically wedded to the idea that free markets equal media freedom have a hard time accepting that market censorship is a thing. But it is a universal concern of political cartoonists indeed, of all professional journalists regardless of the political system they work within.

What role did Malaysian cartoonist Zunar play in the downfall of Najib Razak? What does his story tell us about the power of cartoons?

It takes a village to keep democracy alive, and many brave individuals and groups played a part in challenging Malaysias former premier, even when it seemed like he was too rich to fail. In the media sector, Sarawak Report and The Edge come to mind. Their investigative journalism helped to expose the massive corruption that was taking place.

But the struggle was never about just facts and figures, or hard evidence. UMNO was a hegemonic party, the only rulers Malaya had known since 1957. They were the natural, taken-for-granted leaders of the Malay majority. Making their ouster thinkable required years of counter-ideological work by politicians, activists, artists, humorists. Zunar contributed to this effort.

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Its not just that Zunars cartoons were so clever and on-point. Our book presents Zunar as a performance artist, because he is exceptionally talented in the improvisational art of making censorship backfire on his censors. There was nothing that Najib and his government did to Zunar that the cartoonist couldnt turn into an opportunity to mock his oppressor.

Ive seen this happen with other cartoonists as well. Often, its not really about the power of their cartoons. It is more about their own relative powerlessness. When the public sees these defenseless individuals stand up to the most powerful men in the land, it can be very inspiring; and when these powerful men lash out against a cartoonist, that is not a good look.

Unequal battle: Malaysias former Prime Minister Najib Razak versus cartoonist Zunar, as depicted in Red Lines. Credit: Cherian George and Sonny Liew

In discussing China, you mention political scientist Margaret Roberts as saying that modern Chinese censorship uses a blend of fear, friction, and flooding. Can you explain those three tactics?

We normally associate despotic media control with the use of state coercion to create a culture of fear. But researchers looking at China and other modern authoritarian regimes have found that this is not their only or even main form of control. Instead of attempting total bans, which are rarely watertight anyway, states can just make it harder for citizens to access the unapproved content.

The Great Firewall is the classic example. Chinas walled garden is not totally impervious, but it creates enough friction to make it not worth the while of most citizens to look for taboo content. Another example of friction is when governments, in cahoots with internet service providers, slow down speeds during sensitive periods to make it harder to share videos. Users often cant be sure why they are experiencing difficulties, which suits the authorities fine. Governments normally prefer their interventions to be invisible.

Flooding, meanwhile, involves pumping propaganda, or just irrelevant content, into cyberspace to distract from oppositional messages. This strategy suits what some call the attention economy a world where the resource that is most scarce is not information as such but peoples attention. In an environment of attention scarcity, states dont need to apply traditional censorship to manipulate public opinion. They can just drown messages they dont like in a sea of other content.

Art is incredibly powerful, and some would argue that with such power comes responsibility. Where does the responsibility lie to not cause harm through political cartoons? What kind of restrictions are reasonable? Can this question even be answered or will cartoonists always be pushing boundaries even as societies continue to evolve?

The cartoonists I interviewed have an ethos similar to other journalists. They absolutely accept that their responsibility to society is more important than whatever ego gratifications they derive from their art. They exercise self-restraint when they think its necessary. Its not as if all cartoonists have this irrepressible urge to draw the first thought that comes to mind. There are professional cartoonists who will agonize over whether an idea for a provocative cartoon crosses the line into gratuitous offense, even if they have the freedom to draw whatever they like.

There are of course always people who will disagree sometimes violently, unfortunately with the cartoonists judgment. And there are many cases where it is very, very difficult to come to a consensus. Drawings are more open to interpretation than words. This is a strength as well as a liability.

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Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle Against Censorship - The Diplomat

A few weeks ago, PayPal and the Anti-Defamation League announced a joint project focused on uncovering and disrupting the financial pipelines that support extremist and hate movements. As the ADLs CEO Jonathan Greenblatt explained, after first looking into how these movements use services like PayPal, the collaboration will aim to ultimately bar them from these platforms and starve them of funds, focusing on everyone from those who marauded through the Capitol to those who were beating up Jews in broad daylight just a few months ago. Sounds pretty uncontroversial. Who could possibly be against that?

Except the trouble, as it always is when it comes to measures like censorship, is that the people doing the censoring usually have a very different definition of what an extremist and hate movement is than you, the reader, does. For them, it might be someone who talks about revolution or eating the rich, someone who protested against police brutality last year, or simply groups and people that fight for the rights of Palestinians.

In fact, this exact thing has already happened once before with PayPal, which has been banning and cancelling the accounts of various groups and individuals over the last few years. In 2018, the company came under fire when, alongside its ban of the far-right Proud Boys, it also threw in the accounts of several anti-fascist groups for good measure. Just like when Reddit included a host of left-leaning subreddits in its purge of violent and hateful content last year, these platforms have a commercial interest in appearing to be equally opposed to extremists on both sides, even when one of those sides is violent racists like the Proud Boys and the other is people who oppose and confront those racists.

But PayPals partnership with the ADL threatens to go even further down this worrying road. The ADL, which was founded in 1913 as the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith, has been on the right side of many issues related to racism and intolerance, but it also has a long history of acting as essentially an informal lobbying group for the Israeli government, and in the process conflating opposition to Israels apartheid policies with actual antisemitism as well as attacking the Left and skirting dangerously close to bigotry itself.

This history goes all the way back to the 1960s, when the ADLs then-leader attacked the famed civil rights group the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee over its anti-Zionist stance, charging it with extremism and ties to the Chinese-Soviet and now Arab propaganda machines, and putting it in the same league as the Ku Klux Klan. In the words, in 1961, of its national director, the ADL for many years has maintained a very important, confidential investigative coverage of Arab activities and propaganda and an information-gathering operation since 1948 focusing on Arab state organizations and groups. By 1993, a police raid on its California headquarters found this surveillance went much, much further, encompassing more than six hundred mostly liberal organizations, including the NAACP, ACLU, and the International Indian Treaty Council.

But thats ancient history by now, right? Unfortunately not. Under its former president Abe Foxman, with whom the ADL was virtually synonymous for years, the organization began increasingly embracing Washingtons Islamophobic war on terror and subsuming its stated principle of ensuring a world in which no group or individual suffers from bias, discrimination or hate to the more central goal of defending Israeli apartheid and maintaining the government connections to do so.

When the Right freaked out over the intentionally misnamed Ground Zero mosque a classic case of right-wing cancel culture, targeting a planned Islamic cultural center with a pool and basketball court that was to be built two blocks away from where the Twin Towers had stood Foxman sided with them. Just as survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational, he said to widespread condemnation, September 11 victims families anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted. On the ADLs one-hundred-year anniversary, Foxman claimed that Jews had it worse than Muslims and that anti-Muslim hatred didnt happen after September 11, before explaining that Rep. Peter Kings call for more surveillance of Muslims was a natural response, and blaming Muslim communities that have been brought in and are not assimilating.

Fittingly, the ADL never said a thing about the NYPDs outrageous spying on Muslim New Yorkers, and actually bestowed an award on the man who had overseen it. He was one of the officers who had been trained in the counterterrorism exchange program with Israel that the ADL has sponsored since 2004, educating US police in the tactics used by the countrys abusive security services. For the ADL, a commitment to the defense of the Israeli government came to supersede all other considerations, as when Foxman opposed a congressional resolution to finally label the Turkish slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians a genocide a stance the ADL reportedly adopted to protect Israels strategic relationship with Turkey.

During this period, the ADL often set its sights and energies not so much on white supremacists and neo-Nazis but on liberal Jewish organizations critical of Israel and various college campus groups that organized around Palestinian justice. Among its semiregular list of the Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups in the U.S., it listed institutions like J Street, New Israel Fund, Code Pink, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a coalition of 380 organizations opposing Israeli apartheid, some of them Jewish, charging they were fixated with delegitimizing Israel and pushing a misleading narrative about the country.

It praised a 2010 Education Department decision to use the 1964 Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish college students from anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiment that crosses the line into anti-Semitism, compared a talk at Brooklyn College about boycotting Israel to the Ku Klux Klan holding an event about maintaining a white-dominated America, and denounced a Harvard conference on the idea of a one-state solution in which Jews and Palestinians would live together within a single state as the elimination of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

This regular conflation of Israel with all Jews everywhere, and the implication that the distinct interests of each were really one and the same, somehow coexists with the organizations practice of lobbing accusations of antisemitism at left-leaning targets over poorly phrased statements that could be interpreted as advancing the racist idea of dual loyalty. To wit, when former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he would be trying to torpedo Barack Obamas nuclear deal with Iran by delivering an outrageous speech to Congress as a representative of the entire Jewish people, the ADL didnt condemn this clearly antisemitic trope. Instead, it criticized J Street for asking Jews to sign a petition saying that Netanyahu doesnt speak for me, which Foxman called inflammatory and repugnant. Note that at the same time the ADL fixated on criticism of Israeli policies, and kept a laser focus on pop culture and obvious satire, it was deathly silent about the many, many stunningly racist things that actual Israeli officials regularly said out loud.

All of this was, of course, closely tied to Foxmans personal influence as the longtime, defining leader of the ADL. Perhaps it went away once he passed the torch to Greenblatt in 2015? Unfortunately, the record of the past few years hasnt borne this out. Sure, there were some shifts, like the Leagues belated acknowledgement that the Armenian genocide was, in fact, a genocide. But old habits die hard.

The ADLs often wildly inconsistent standards over who deserved condemnation remains. When Trump made a series of patently offensive statements to a group of Jewish donors in 2015 Im a negotiator like you folks; Is there anyone in this room who doesnt negotiate deals?; This room negotiates a lot. This room perhaps more than any room Ive ever spoken to Greenblatt declared that we do not believe that it was Donald Trumps intention to evoke anti-Semitic stereotypes. When asked point-blank a year later if Trump was an anti-Semite, Greenblatt replied: Absolutely not. In fact, hes been a very strong supporter of the State of Israel and of Jewish charitable causes generally.

Compare this to how Greenblatt and the ADL have led the charge against left-wing (and, incidentally, Muslim) members of Congress over phrasing that it construes as approximating antisemitic tropes, such as over Ilhan Omars demonstrably true point that oodles of money from pro-Israel groups have an impact on US policy in the Middle East. The League later played a leading role in getting college professor Marc Lamont Hill fired from CNN, dishonestly claiming his UN speech calling for a free Palestine from the river to the sea was calling for divisive and destructive action against Israel.

Or look at their campaign against Keith Ellison, now Minnesotas attorney general, when he was running for chair of the Democratic National Committee. After reporters dug up Ellisons 2010 comments that US foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people, meaning Israel, Greenblatt called them deeply disturbing and disqualifying. Tellingly, he also referenced Ellisons positions on Israel-Palestine and the Iran deal, and charged that his words raised doubts about [his] ability to represent traditional Democratic support for Israel, suggesting that the ADLs concerns were about something other than antisemitic tropes. Greenblatt would later cite various left-wing groups criticism of Israel including a line in the Black Lives Matter platform written by a Jewish activist accusing it of genocide to charge that anti-Semitism is creeping into progressivism.

The ADL still regularly conflates activism against Israeli policies, especially on college campuses, with antisemitism, as when it accused Jewish Voice for Peace of increasing anti-Israel radicalism, or when it called the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement modeled on the boycott of apartheid South Africa an anti-Semitic movement motivated by irrational hatred of the Jewish people. When public sentiment toward Israel soured this year over the countrys shocking land grab and subsequent bombing of Palestinians, the ADL put out a widely cited report claiming an increase in antisemitism, which listed swastika graffiti and praise for Adolph Hitler alongside anti-Zionist slogans and comparisons of Israeli policies to Nazi Germany.

And it still veers away from its stated mission into nakedly representing Israeli interests, as when it condemned a UN resolution criticizing the countrys illegal settlements on Palestinian land in 2016, while later praising Trumps inflammatory move of the US embassy to Jerusalem. Fittingly, given its partnership with PayPal, at one point it even urged police to infiltrate and surveil antifa activists, before scrubbing the advice under criticism.

In short, the ADL is far from a dispassionate fighter against hate movements, and has consistently twisted or folded that mission into pro-Israel advocacy while conflating left-wing criticism of Israel and US policy toward it with far-right hatred and white supremacy. Greenblatts statement that its work with PayPal will look at groups across the ideological spectrum suggests pro-Palestinian and pro-BDS groups and individuals have much to fear from this partnership, the potential of which we saw eleven years ago, when PayPal froze the account of WikiLeaks under pressure from an irate US government.

Various political forces will continue to push for more and more censorship of the internet, and theyll cite white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other widely reviled groups and figures to justify it, though they will only be some of the targets. And the more this push picks up steam, the more the Left has to fear from them.

The rest is here:
PayPal and the ADL: A Match Made in Censorship Hell - Jacobin magazine

Horror films are so often about women, but, historically, horror stories on film have rarely been told by women. That has started to change in the last decade, with directors like Jennifer Kent (The Babadook), Anna Biller (The Love Witch), Karyn Kusama (The Invitation), Alice Lowe (Prevenge) and Rose Glass (Saint Maud) making eerie films about women who do much more than scream and cower. Joining that list of great female horror directors is Prano Bailey-Bond, whose feature debut, Censor, is one of the most striking British horrors in years.

Set in the 1980s, Censor takes place amid the furore over the Video Nasties. This broad group of horror films were banned by the British Board of Film Classification for being too obscene for the public. These days, many of those films Evil Dead, Suspiria, Dawn of the Dead look relatively tame (while some are even considered classics), but at the time it was believed that merely watching them would be enough to warp peoples minds and inspire copycat crimes.

Censor follows Enid (BAFTA-nominee Niamh Algar), an apparently level-headed censor who is shaken after she watches a movie that seems to echo the events that led to the disappearance of her sister. As Enid obsessively tries to find out more about the film, the line between reality and fantasy starts to blur.

Niamh Algar in Censor. CREDIT: Maria Lax / Magnet Releasing

I had the idea for Censor around 2012, Bailey-Bond tells NME. I was reading an article about Hammer Horror [the British studio that made the likes of Dracula, The Mummy and Curse of the Wolfman] which looked at how film censors worked in that period. It made me think, If violent images are meant to make us lose control, what prevents the censor from doing that? It was that hypocrisy of thinking, I can watch this, but if you watch it youre going to go out and shoot someone.

Censor could have been set at any time, but Bailey-Bond settled on the Video Nasty period because that era is fascinating and rich when it comes to our relationship with horror. The UK had one of the most conservative censorship bodies. This was a time when VHS was taking off: as more people than ever could watch films at home, prudish types were worried children would be taken over by something evil from the TV set. It was also a time of extreme conservatism in government: Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and the country was deeply divided as blame and fear pervaded.

The films 80s setting gives Bailey-Bond a fractious backdrop for her horror story. Enids own mind starts to fall apart as fear overtakes her, but the world around her is almost as irrational. There was a convenient scapegoating of anything terrible happening in the world, says Bailey-Bond of that era. Lets not look at the government or what theyre taking away from society Lets blame it all on a bunch of horror films.

Censor director Prano Bailey-Bond. CREDIT: Maria Lax / Magnet Releasing

Bailey-Bond was too young to be aware of Video Nasties at the time (she was born in 1982), but the 80s was also when she began her horror education. I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Wales, with my parents VHS shelf as my way into cinema, she says. They had really good taste, fortunately. There were lots of John Carpenter and David Lynch films. The youngest of three siblings, she was always keen to see what her older brother and sister were watching. I remember when I was in primary school they watched Twin Peaks and it was mind-blowing. Its not necessarily horror, but it was surreal and uncomfortable and bizarre and scary. I think that was a big influence on me. That influence took Bailey-Bond into an early career of directing short films and music videos, all with the same sinister beauty she brings to Censor.

If horror directed by women has only recently become more commonplace, Bailey-Bond says she was always aware that there were women in horror if you looked. One of my favourite films when I was a teenager was American Psycho, which at the time I didnt know was directed by a woman [Mary Harron]. And then there was Near Dark [Kathryn Bigelow]. There werent masses, but they have been there.

Bailey-Bond has watched on as the landscape has changed, with more and more women making horror films. When it came time for Bailey-Bond to shop around her idea for her directing debut, it wasnt so unusual anymore. The way were talking about gender and representation [now], that feels like its allowed a platform where were actually celebrating and lifting up female directors working in the genre more than we have in the past.

A meeting of the films censorship board. CREDIT: Magnet Releasing / Press

For the role of Enid, Bailey-Bond chose, by both fortune and accident, an actress who is ascending as quickly as her director. She and Niamh Algar actually met well before they started on Censor: in 2018 they were both included in Screen Internationals Stars of Tomorrow list, and were put on the same table at a dinner celebrating the honourees.

We just kind of hit if off, sitting and talking about movies, says Algar, who is nothing like Enid in real life. Where Enid is brunette, English and quiet, Algar is blonde, Irish and gregarious. About six months later, my agent sent me a casting and I saw Pranos name and immediately thought, Oh thats someone I want to work with.

For Algar, Censor caps a very strong couple of years career-wise. Shes played a lead role in the Ridley Scott TV series Raised By Wolves (and has already shot the second season) and she was BAFTA-nominated last year for her role in Calm With Horses. Although it wasnt strategised that way, adding Censor to her CV is a good way to show she has great taste in both big budget projects and indie movies. I always want to play characters that I suppose people wouldnt put me in the same box as, she says. The best compliment Ive had was when Mark Kermode said, Niamh Algar is a character actor. Yes! Theres certainly no doubting that Enid is a role that asks a lot of Algar. We wont spoil where the film goes, but Algar has to show a lot of different shades to Enid. It will be no surprise if it brings her a second BAFTA nomination.

One of the most striking things about Censor is that even though its set nearly 40 years ago, it could take place at almost any time. Censorship is something that always exists: there will always be people trying to police what others watch, out of fear dressed up as concern. On the day NME speaks to both Bailey-Bond and Algar, Twitter is aflame with pearl-clutching types objecting to Lil Nas X kissing his male back-up dancer at the BET Awards and doing a pixelated nude prison dance in his Industry Baby video.

I think there are parallels you can draw right now with the 80s, says Bailey-Bond. Weve seen these moments of hysteria happen over the years. In the 50s, it was comic books and people worried about their effect on little boys. More recently, weve had video games, Marilyn Manson videos and rap music.

There will always be someone insisting that we must think of the children. And hopefully there will always be someone like Prano Bailey-Bond to hold a mirror up to them and scare them into self-reflection.

Censor is out in UK cinemas on August 20

Originally posted here:
Censor: behind the screams on 2021s most striking horror film - NME

Everyone has a problem with platforms. If youre on the left, youre worried about unmoderated speech. If youre more like me, youre worried about limitations on speech. And most people get annoyed or creeped out by the massive, personalized datasets for ad targeting that keep the whole thing financially afloat.

Democrats want to impose more speech guidelines on platforms, whether managed by government bodies or non-profits. Republicans want to fight back against existing content controls by removing liability protections from platforms or imposing legal counterweights to the types of speech that may be removed. The latter group is missing the point.

So long as the platforms that most people are centralized by design, there will always be a single administrator for powerful groups, public or private, to target. Control the administrator and you can control the platform.

This arrangement works very well for political actors with enough power to exert control over the administrator. Republicans are almost never among them. The bills that they do manage to pass are only as strong as the judge that will inevitably decide their legal fate.

Spending time and energy to pass unconstitutional or merely controversial anti-censorship bills that eventually get thrown out by some judge wastes precious political momentum. To achieve the goals of free speech and freedom from control on the internet, liberty-minded policymakers should think about ways to encourage and use decentralized alternatives.

Decentralized technologies have no central administrator that can be captured to effectuate the goals of powerful groups. They are either federated, like email, and allow people to connect freely through a third-party service or with their own personal servers, or they are distributed, like Bitcoin, and are fully peer-to-peer.

There are many working decentralized alternatives for the platforms that draw the most controversy, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Critics of these companies should learn about and use these decentralized technologies. Policymakers should think about how they can encourage their development.

This conversation dives into my recent James Madison Institute study, Deplatforming and Freedom: A Primer for Policy. We talk about how technology can be both a tool for resistance and control, the difference between centralized and decentralized technologies, and why people on the right should familiarize themselves with decentralized platforms that have freedom built into them by design.

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It's The Centralization, Stupid! - beacontn.org - beacontn.org

MONTGOMERYAlabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry Tuesday launched an initiative aimed at addressing censorship on social media platforms. As part of the initiative, the official website of each attorney general now provides a Social Media Censorship Complaint Form for the public to report abuses by Big Tech.

Attorney General Marshall and Attorney General Landry are encouraging the public to enlist in the fight against Big Tech censorship, calling on all persons who have been censored online to file a formal complaint. The information provided in these complaints will be kept confidential, in accordance with each states laws, and will be actively reviewed and thoroughly analyzed to determine whether the reported conduct by social media companies constitutes a violation of federal or state law.

Big Tech is not the Ministry of Truth. It should concern us all when platforms that hold such tremendous power and influence over information wield that power in contradiction ofand with undisguised disdain forthe foundational American principles of free speech and freedom of the press, said Attorney General Marshall. The censorship campaign currently being waged by giant corporate oligarchs like Facebook and Twitter is, in a word, un-American.

I encourage anyone and everyone who has been censored on social media to file a formal complaint with my office, Attorney General Marshall continued. The process is simple and straightforwardand will provide us with important information to fight the growing menace of censorship by the great malefactors of tech.

From political speech to healthcare research to economic activity, Big Tech has censored content to fit their ideological bentsviolating users rights to silence opposition. Social media platforms have altered and deleted content, blocked and restricted access, removed and banned accounts, and more, said Attorney General Landry. I encourage all who have been impacted to file a complaint, and I hope this initiative will expose just how far-reaching the suppression has been.

Complaints can be filed with the Alabama Attorney Generals Office using the Social Media Censorship Complaint Form on its website at AlabamaAG.gov/Censored.

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Alabama AG teams up to launch initiative to address social media censorship - The Madison Record - themadisonrecord.com

Its an attack on the teaching of Black history, womens history, and history around being impoverished in this country anything that will challenge the current status quo.

Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead, associate professor of women and gender studies at Loyola University and president of the National Womens Studies Association

In late 2020, the Idaho Freedom Foundation released two reports condemning college administrators and faculty at the University of Idaho and Boise State for promoting social justice ideology in higher education.

Using red, yellow and green color-coding, the reports labeled academic departments as indoctrination majors, social justice in training majors, and the foundations preferred professional majors depending on how much they emphasized social justice. The list of indoctrination majors included womens, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS), Africana Studies and Latin American Studies.

Not long after, Idaho enacted a ban on teaching critical race theory (CRT) in public schools and universities in the state.

CRT is a legal framework developed in the 1970s and 1980s to examine the ongoing effects of slavery and how racism has shaped U.S. laws and institutions. But Idaho lawmakers used the phrase to refer to discussions of racism, sexism and social justice issues in the classroom. After the Idaho legislature passed the ban on CRT, the lieutenant governor created a task force to review university programs and faculty syllabi for banned content.

Its a pretty intimidating environment for teaching, said Leontina Hormel, a sociology professor and former director of the WGSS program at the University of Idaho. Theyve really created a hostile environment for open thinking.

The current WGSS co-director and English professor Alexandra Teague told Ms., Ive heard a lot of conversations among faculty who are concerned about whether there will be ramifications for their teaching or whether they need to rethink what classes are titled in order to reduce scrutiny on them.

The Idaho ban is part of a conservative wave of bans on discussing social justice issues in American schools and workplaces.

Shortly after condemning CRT on Twitter in September of 2020, Donald Trump signed an executive order prohibiting diversity and inclusion training for federal workers and contractors.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund challenged the equity gag order, describing it as having a chilling effect on free speech and the dissemination of truthful information about systemic and structural inequalities, which undermines workplace equality for people of color, women, and LGBTQ individuals.

On his first day in office, Biden revoked Trumps order, but U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) have introduced in Congress a billcalled the END CRT Actto reinstate the ban.

Meanwhile, conservative states are banning CRT in public schools and universities. In the first six months of 2021, 26 states have tried to limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism in their classrooms, according to an Education Week analysis. These bills often use the exact language of the Trump executive order.

Nine states so far have enacted these bans. Rhode Island, for example, banned teaching of divisive concepts that might make students feel uncomfortable based on their race or sex, and a new Ohio law bans teaching about unconscious bias. A North Carolina law prohibits public schools from teaching Nikole Hannah-Jones 1619 Project, a New York Times series about the ongoing impact of slavery and racism on American society.

At the federal level, Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) has introduced the Saving American History Act to ban federally funded schools from teaching the 1619 Project. These anti-CRT laws restrict how educators can teach social justice issues.

According to Media Matters, Fox News mentioned the phrase critical race theory nearly 1,300 times between February and May of 2021. This coverage characterized CRT as an unpatriotic and divisive form of indoctrination that perpetuates racism against white people.

Smith College professor Loretta Ross argues that while conservative commentators and lawmakers bemoan cancel culture and the supposed liberal threats to free speech on campus, they are at the same time trying to shut down discussions about inequality and injustice in American society.

The Republicans falsely claim that the purpose of critical race theory is to teach people of color to hate white people. They believe that white people are the real victims of reverse racism, said Ross. The attack on critical race theory says we should only teach patriotic education. In other words, only white history should be taught.

Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead, associate professor of WGSS at Loyola University and president of the National Womens Studies Association, says CRT has become a catchphrase for any discussion of how race, class and gender function in society.

I think people confuse critical race theory with culturally responsive teaching. Both of them are CRTs, said Whitehead.

A lot of teachers are being penalizedlosing their jobs or experiencing other punitive action for these types of dialogues, said Jalaya Liles-Dunn, director of learning for justice at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center has received multiple reports of teachers punished for teaching their students about racial injustice, says Liles-Dunn.

Even before the Florida State Board of Education banned critical race theory in public schools state officials were scrutinizing teachers who addressed race in their classrooms. In May, the Florida Department of Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran fired Duval County teacher Any Donofrio for discussing Black Lives Matter in her classes. In early June, the Sullivan County Board of Education in Florida voted to dismiss social studies teacher Matthew Hawn after he led a class discussion on white privilege.

This is censorship, said Liles-Dunn. Its no different than any other dictatorship that is trying to censor a population from knowing the truth so that they can maintain power.

While some anti-CRT laws apply only to K-12 schools, several apply to public universities as well, including in Idaho, Oklahoma and Iowa. In Oklahoma, after politicians passed a law in May banning teachers from making students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex, Oklahoma City Community College canceled Professor Melissa Smiths fully-enrolled course on race and ethnicity because of concerns the class ran afoul of the law.

Our history of the United States is uncomfortable and it should make us uncomfortable and we should grow from that, Smith told the Washington Post. And I tell my kids all the time, get comfortable being uncomfortable. And if I dont make you uncomfortable in class, then Im not doing my job.

Whitehead is concerned about the impact of anti-CRT laws on the ability of educators to teach students to think critically about the world.

This attack on critical race theory has gone beyond a black and white issue with the law. They brought gender into this, and now they are also bringing in poverty, said Whitehead. Its really an attack on the teaching of Black history, womens history, and history around being impoverished in this country. They dont want us to critically engage with anything that will challenge the current status quo.

Another impact of anti-CRT laws is they can further encourage harassment experienced by faculty who teach racial and gender justice courses.

I have two people who stalk my email, said Professor Katie Blevins, a WGSS co-director at the University of Idaho. I have never met these people. They send me deeply disturbing messages a couple of times a weekyou know, incredibly graphic emails. Its disconcerting as a junior female faculty member.

Whitehead worries that anti-CRT laws will negatively impact WGSS departments, where teaching about racial and gender justice is central to the curriculum.

It is a concern because we talk about the way in which women are abused in this countryphysically abused, emotionally and mentally abused, financially abused, said Whitehead. We talk about the wage gap and the subservient position of women.

Many WGSS programs teach the work of Kimberl Crenshaw, a founder of critical race theory who also coined the term intersectionality for analyzing how race and gender intersect in the lives of Black women. Laws banning CRT could put WGSS faculty and programs in the crosshairs of government officials seeking to enforce them, says Whitehead.

CRT-bans in K-12 schools have prompted teacher protests across the nation. The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association have pledged to resist the bans. They passed several measures that explicitly support the use of CRT in curricula, and allocated tens of thousands of dollars to those efforts.

Culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism or discrimination as CRT to try to make it toxic. They are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history, said American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. The backlash [to teaching about race] that you see in these radicalized circles is going to hurt kids.

The African American Policy Forum, BLM at Schools and Zinn Education Project has issued a national call to educators to hold eventsAugust 26-28th to pledge to teach the truth. They have developed a toolkit and are organizing to prepare educators in the impacted states for civil disobedience on October 14thGeorge Floyds Birthday.

University professors are also speaking out against laws limiting discussions of racism and sexism, arguing that these laws infringe academic freedom and open inquiry on university campuses. In June, over 135 scholarly associations issued a joint statement condemning state laws that seek to substitute political mandates for the considered judgment of professional educators, hindering students ability to learn and engage in critical thinking.

Despite efforts to shut down discussions of racism and sexism, Teague says students are more eager than ever to have these discussions.

The students Ive talked to are the most impassioned about the value of having very open discussions, about the value of critical thinking, about the value of the humanities, said Teague. At the end of the semester, her students told her how much it mattered to them to hear voices that were not like their own, how much they were learning about themselves and others, and how crucial that was in a world that so often gets reduced to sound-bite thinking and binaries.

Just at the point when confederate monuments are finally coming down, conservative politicians are trying to erect barriers to students learning accurate and inclusive history of the United States to the detriment of young people, says Liles-Dunn. Education should not be the battlefield for political issues and political agendas. We are using our most vulnerable and our most precious as bait in this fight and its not okay.

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Critical Race Theory Bans Target Feminist Professors: "This Is Censorship" - Ms. Magazine

"Ban video sadism now!" screamed the cover of the Daily Mail in July 1983, at the height of the furor over so-called "video nasties". With home video in its early days, not subject to any official control, enterprising independent labels coined it in distributing low-budget horror films using the twin draws of gruesome gore and lurid cover art.

The ensuing moral panic saw a total of 72 films at one time or another deemed liable to contravene the Obscene Publications Act, and placed on a list by the Director of Public Prosecutions, putting them at risk of seizure by the police. In 1984, legislation was passed requiring all videos to be officially certified.

Censor takes place the following year, when the British Board of Film Classification became responsible for awarding those certificates. It centers on one of the examiners tasked with the job: Enid (Niamh Algar), whose tragic backstory makes her especially concerned about the possible effects of screen violence. The initial spark for first-time director/ co-writer Prano Bailey-Bond related to horror of an earlier era, though.

"I was reading this article about Hammer horror," Bailey-Bond tells SFX. "It said that during that period, censors would cut images of blood on the breasts of a woman because they believed it would make men likely to commit rape. I was like, Im sure there were lots of male film censors. If this actually is what these images do to us, what protects the film censor from losing control of themselves?

"It was quite a childish thought, and it grew from there, really. I quickly placed the film in the video nasty era, because what was going on in the UK during that period spoke to this idea perfectly," she adds.

Though Bailey-Bond always had a full-length feature in mind, she tested out the idea first in 2015s Nasty, a 15-minute short about a 12-year-old boy whose nasties-watching father has mysteriously vanished. "That allowed me to create the world of the film: this idea of taking a character from grey, bleak, suburban 80s Britain into this colorful, vibrant, gory world of video nasties. I was trying out a lot of the ideas I was exploring for Censor. But also there were ideas from Nasty where I went, Oh, this works like the idea of a family member going missing."

In Censor, Enid is haunted by her sisters childhood disappearance, and gradually becomes obsessively convinced that its connected to the trashy oeuvre of horror director Frederick North.

Bailey-Bond did her homework when it came to Enids job, beginning by speaking to current examiners with a knowledge of the period, and booking out BBFC files on the nasties. "Anybody can do that: you can book to go and read the file for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and see what they were saying, which is a lot of fun! Even just being in the BBFC helped. The fact that lots of their offices are in the basement, and theyre pokey little rooms that dont have windows, all fed into the creative wanting to make this space feel quite claustrophobic."

Bailey-Bond also tracked down a couple of examiners from the 80s and interviewed them about their former occupation. "One said it felt very seedy sometimes, sitting in these dark rooms watching essentially soft porn. Shed leave work feeling a bit grubby.

"Other examiners told me that they had to watch these films both with a subjective brain and an objective brain. So youre watching things in duality; youre trying to recognize how its making you feel, but also how it might make this person feel, which is a strange way to watch a film."

Horror fans who lived through the 80s or the following decade, when the nasties debacle was still casting a long shadow may still hold a negative view of the BBFC, an organization personified for some in the figure of James Ferman. It was Ferman, BBFC Director from 1975-1999, who made sure The Exorcist wasnt given a home video certificate, arguing (with paternalistic logic) that it might find its way into the hands of impressionable girls. Enid, however, is portrayed in a sympathetic way and Bailey-Bond has sympathy for her real-life counterparts.

"I know people who work as film censors who love horror," she says, "and I think its more complex than someone just sitting in a room cutting. It was definitely more complex than that during this period, and they disagreed on things a lot of the time as well. Then youd have to come to a group decision on whats right and whats wrong, and its all very subjective, ultimately. I think its important for us all to try and understand the person who maybe is on the other side of what we agree with, she adds. That happens less and less now, doesnt it?"

Bailey-Bond also went square-eyed watching the nasties themselves. The results of this accumulated research were then channeled to Niamh Algar, at the time working in Cape Town shooting the Ridley Scott series Raised By Wolves.

"I was sending her lots of films and saying, Watch this!; sending her essays on censorship, and people losing family members, Bailey-Bond says. "Then introducing her to the film examiners that Id spoken to, so she could get more of a sense of the role that Enid had. We had quite a few months before we shot the film where Niamh and I would just jump on Skype, about once a week. It was about making sure that we were both on the same page, working through the script psychologically, and then pouring more ideas into it.

"We talked a lot about Enids physicality," she continues, providing one example of this collaborative process. "In my head, Id always imagined her being very controlled at the front of the film; then, as the film goes on, shes unraveling both in her head and physically/ visually. So we worked together with a movement director, and we talked about different things. Niamhs idea was this picking of the fingernail [as a nervous habit]. I really loved that. So I included that in the script and my shot lists."

The heroines mental unraveling means that were presented not only with sequences from films by the fictional Frederick North, but with Enids nasties-inflected dreams, awash with the kind of red/blue lighting popular in Italian horror of the time. Bailey-Bond had great fun with both, drawing on the films shed watched for inspiration.

"For Dont Go In The Church, I was looking at Lisa, Lisa, or Axe its got two titles. Blood On Satans Claw was another really useful one those kinds of folk horror-esque, eerie British films of the 70s. Then for Asunder, Lucio Fulci was a big influence I love Fulci, his aesthetic is wonderful. The House By The Cemetery and The Beyond were things I was showing my director of photography. Then the dreams were a little bit more Dario Argento-inspired."

When it came to the wider world of 80s Britain, Bailey-Bonds search for a suitable location took in Wales and London, and eventually led north. "We were looking for somewhere that could pass for the 80s, and we found some really great places in Leeds. So we all moved up and lived there for about three months when we were shooting."

Bailey-Bond also took pains to ensure this wasnt some artificial, day-glo world of deely-boppers and legwarmers. "I was looking more at [documentary photographer] Paul Graham stuff that was a bit more like tired Thatchers Britain, and the grey-blue palettes of that world. And when I was talking to my production designer and costume person we always thought about period as: not everything comes from the 80s. My house now isnt full of stuff that I just bought yesterday.

"So youre always looking at clothes and things in the space that are more 70s or 60s. Its a challenge, on a low budget. You cant just chuck any old thing in, because youre thinking, Well, did they have Biros like that in 1985? Youre questioning everything! But I love that, because you can design everything."

But the bigger challenge, she says, was the initial one of making the case that the mid80s setting was absolutely fundamental. "In development, I had to really justify to the execs why the films set during this period. People would say, Well, its about censorship. Why cant you just make it about now?. But for me its so interesting to be able to look at this in hindsight somehow you can be more objective about it.

"Also, this is a period of particular hysteria around this stuff within the UK, thatbirthed the horror community that we know now, and inspired so many filmmakers, and I think shifted horror slightly because of the birth of VHS."

Its a period youll shortly be able to immerse yourself in and without having to ask the bloke at the video rental shop to slip you some of the hard stuff , inside a big-box case, concealed in a brown paper bag. As the tagline of The Last House On The Left put it, keep repeating: its only a movie, only a movie, only a movie...

This article originally appeared in SFX Magazine the issue with The Tomorrow War on the cover. Order through that link, or subscribe here and never miss another exclusive feature.

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Censor: The return of the video nasty - GamesRadar+

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Before making their way from a production studio into the hearts and minds of a billion movie-goers, films in India must first take a detour and stop at an office tower in Mumbai. This large, sickly-pale building, covered on the sides in strips of blue glass windows, is the home of Central Board of Film Certification, otherwise known as the Censor Board.

Most countries have some sort of a film-certification authority, set up to categorize films by age bracket so that children arent exposed to adult material. But most of these institutions have moved on from the days of cutting offending material from movies, and now trust that audiences of consenting adults might be able to decide for themselves what to watch.

Not in India. In India a cabal of government-friendly industry types have the final say not just on a films classification, but also the content of all films released in India.

The senior-most figure at the board is its chair, who, like the boards other members, is appointed by the government. The two chairmen installed since Narendra Modis election in 2014 are united by their unabashed sycophancy. The first, Pahlaj Nihalani, was a film producer who is a hard-core supporter of Modis Bharatiya Janata Party and fawned over the prime minister, whom he called his action hero. The second, Prasoon Joshi, declared that hardly anyone could deny that Modi thinks for the country. He does not think for himself.

Stuffing the board with government cronies did not begin with Modi; the board has long been a political tool, malleable and staffed by people close to the ruling party of the day. The boards members, regional officers, and members of its advisory panel in short, everyone charged with classifying films and recommending cuts are all appointed by the government, making it an institution singularly well-suited to the wielding of state authority. In India, where cinema forms the lifeblood of popular culture, this makes the board an entity of enormous power, handing to the government the ability to decide what Indians of all ages are permitted to see.

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But that power is not enough, it seems, for the Modi government, which this year introduced a draft bill to expand its control over the board. The proposed law would allow the government to direct the board to reconsider a certificate it has already issued. It would, in essence, let the government reverse the boards decisions. The proposal comes in the wake of the governments decision in April to abolish the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal, previously the final course of appeal for filmmakers unhappy with the boards decisions.

More than 3,000 film-industry figures, including some of Indias top directors, have written to the minister of information and broadcasting, saying that the bill would endanger freedom of expression and democratic dissent and calling it another blow to the film fraternity. Under a government that loathes and fears all expressions of discontent, the law promises further repression at a time when Indian life is already less free than at any time in the last several decades.

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To understand why this is a problem, it is important to examine what the board itself stands for. This venerable institution, established in 1951, exemplifies the worst of the Indian governing class regressive, hypocritical tendencies. Its cuts are driven mainly by two considerations.

The first is to nurture the rampant moral hysteria that pervades the country it serves. Some of its decisions would not sound out of place in a Victorian pamphlet. A film about drag queens was considered too subversive for release in India; as chairman, Nihalani, whose own films sometimes border on the pornographic, ordered that the word intercourse in a movie be replaced by physical interaction.

The second is even more alarming: an unashamed desire to please its political bosses. The board tried to make a range of cuts to the 2016 film Udta Punjab, which depicts rampant drug use in the state of Punjab, including demanding that the filmmakers remove a shot showing a sign with the states name on it and cut mentions of words including election and MP [member of parliament] because, it said, such questionable content could affect the sovereignty of the country.

Although these clownish commands were later overturned in court, the fact that putative luminaries of the film industry truly believed or, at least, claimed to believe that a work of fiction could truly undermine the sovereignty of the Indian republic is a tragic indication of the mindset of the government and its censors: a state of perpetual victimhood, an tragic obsession with absolute control, an outlook so devoid of humor or a sense of irony as to evoke pity rather than anger or disdain.

And it is pity that I feel for Indias chief censors, and the chronic compulsion they feel to perpetuate, for eternity, the basest aspects of a social conservatism whose erosion would doubtless be hastened by a freer artistic landscape. An approach that would treat Indians like grown-ups, bestow upon them some semblance of respect and agency, is anathema to the board and the state. Changing that would make the country freer: People would be able to make their personal choices on their own; marginalized filmmakers could make artistic choices and depict life as they see it without interference from those who shut their eyes to the world.

That should be the goal that every government aspires to achieve. In India, the opposite is true and with this draft law, we are pitching ever further toward a dismal future. Our movies, the artistic escape of a billion people, are controlled by government cheerleaders, dour moralists, the sort of people who demand shorter kissing scenes in a James Bond film without watching it. We are all the worse for it.

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