RESPONSIBILITY

by

Mike Crowl

When I spoke about censorship in another column, I said I was puzzled at some of the comments made by New Zealand's chief film and television censor. The problems with censorship in our generation, however, go further along the line than the people dealing with the end product; the problems go back to the creators of films, books and plays themselves. The responsibility of the artist is a factor with which censors deal only by default. Much of our problem in the entertainment, literary and artistic world is the way in which artists appear to set no limits upon their own creativity. Worse, there always seems to be a producer or publisher or gallery owner willing to present material to the public that the artist has not self-censored. The theory is they're only giving the public what it wants. Like the spectators at the Roman gladiator displays. Like people who flocked to public hangings. Or perhaps even to public executions on television. We humans do have a taste for the nasty - as long as we're not personally involved. There's no doubt, given half the chance, we run towards evil. Civilised and all as we are, I don't doubt that everyone of us is capable of evil if we allow ourselves to go that way. Often it's merely a case of "there but for the grace of God, go I." But evil begets more evil: in the end, like the Nothing in The Never-Ending Story, it sucks up everything. Some artists appear to forget this. So sure are they of their own view of the world, they forget that not every reader or viewer sees things as "clearly" as they do, or with an equal understanding of their worldview. What may be a serious attempt to portray evil, on their part, can turn into the destruction of someone else's soul. Furthermore, there are many artists who have no morality at all when it comes to portraying evil. Enjoying evil themselves, they delight in taking others down with them. Our chief censor was quoted as saying, last week, that there was no right or wrong classification when it came to movies. It was simply a "judgement call." For many artists it's not even a matter of classification: there's no right or wrong when it comes to art, full stop. Tolerance of any sort of behaviour or action or writing or artistic work is taken to the extreme, until finally the artists can rightly say: you let another one away with "murder," how can you judge what I'm doing? When Muslims around the world rose up in anger at Salman Rushdie's written blasphemies, his Western publishers, self-appointed critics, and artists of all kinds cried out that artists should be allowed to write as they please. Such tolerance isn't everyone's view. Several people have died in connection with The Satanic Verses, and Rushdie is in ongoing exile. What has he gained by writing as he pleased? Complete toleration of the artist's viewpoint has opened up such a can of worms that censors in the West don't really know how to classify films anymore, television breaks through any restraining barriers as it sees fit, and magazines and newspapers compete with each other in the gossip of garbage. In other societies and periods of history, artists have been condemned for speaking out, or going beyond the bounds. Today artists portray almost every conceivable blasphemy, immorality and evil in books, movies and on television while we puzzle over how to deal with it. Our tolerance level is so high society can no longer deal with its effects. I don't believe we want Western society to be subject to the kind of thinking that puts Salman Rushdie's life at permanent risk. On the other hand, if artists will not take responsibility for the effect they themselves are having on society, we may finally have no other choice.

Copyright 1997 Mike Crowl

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