Republic

Censorship: A Purifying Ritual

Linda McKay Writing Workshop II

Dr. Julia Keefer October 10, 1998

The analysis of historical deviations is no longer the historian's sole bailiwick, for social science academicians have uncovered that society's radical dilemmas inflame radical cognitive conflicts which reshape society's culture. War is one such radical dilemma, for from its bowels explodes individual and family upheaval with physical demolition, economic disturbance and governmental instability. In 404 BC, these were the defilements owned by Plato's Athens in Greece. For twenty-seven years, artistic Athenians suffered the defeating Peloponnesian War, and the chaotic turnover of governments rotating 360 degrees from democracy to oligarchy to tyranny, reverting again to democracy. A philosopher, Plato felt these internal blights keenly and sought to establish a more perfect Union for his countrymen. In The Republic, Plato addresses forty-seven purging recommendations for the new Athenian State. Book Three, Plato's censorship treatise regarding the educational curriculum of the State's Guardian, is worth reflection, for his attempt to purify Athenian morality is a drive which has been duplicated throughout American history as well.

Plato's counsel to create guardians of the State stems from an honorable desire for defense of the purest nature. These guardians comprise that section of the Republic's society which would equal American civil servants, military and police. Plato compares these guardians to watchdogs, and elaborates that their characteristics should be two-fold: devoted protection of their citizens and combative conduct toward their aggressors. Therefore, he precisely orders the guardian's educational curriculum whose central core is morality instruction. Plato strongly advocates censorship of storytelling by mothers and nursemaids as the guardians' earliest instructors. His first attack is waged on the poets' fiction representing quarrelsomeness as an admirable quality.

Secondly, Plato condemns the misrepresentation of god's or the hero's goodness as an immoral teaching. "If the state is to be run on the right lines, every possible step must be taken to prevent anyone, young or old, either saying or being told, whether in poetry or prose, that god, being good, can cause harm or evil to any man." Literature which represents god as anything other than perfect will be censored. He subscribes that truth and beauty will be the heart of the guardian's instruction.

For a guardian to be fearless while protecting his State and risking possible death, Plato decrees that poetry representing the terrors of the after-life will be censored. "When any catastrophe of the kind overtakes him, he will lament it less and bear it more calmly than others."

Likewise, Plato recommends music education censorship and analyzes three elements: words, mode and rhythm. He declares parallel commandments for musical lyrics and literature content. He contends that dirges and laments with their relaxing modes are unacceptable; and rhythms which express meanness, insolence or madness must be eliminated.

While reviewing Plato's recommendations, familiarity rings like the proverbial liberty bell throughout the text. Similar censorship attempts have been perpetrated after every violent struggle in American history in an attempt to recapture morality and place goodness at the purified citizens' core. Prohibition, book banning of Little Red Riding Hood and Grapes of Wrath, and the McCarthy hearing terrorism stalked the Suffragette Movement, the Great Depression, and World Wars I and II. Post World War II in the 1950s, purists blitzed legislators to ban rock and roll music targeting Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Billie Holiday. The hue and the cry were the sensual lyrics which would soil the morals of young Americans. With the advent of the Vietnamese War and the country's social rebellion, music banning surged in the 1970s with Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin postered as prime movers of the country's drug culture. On their tail rode the feminist rebellion which brought its own species of censorship, as mothers sanitized the minds of their baby girls. Chauvinistic nursery tales and music were scrubbed from family libraries. Barbie dolls and baby dolls were tossed into the garbage and non-gendered toys saturated retail markets. Twenty years hence, a binge of adolescent violence has riled censorship zealots railing against rap music and violent television and movie scenes. Readers are indoctrinated with a flood of teenage violence statistics bolstering the censorship pulpit. "A recent British study supports that violent lyrics and scenes will prompt aggressive teenagers to commit vicious crimes." Another study calculates that "a base of 996 movies contains 40,686 characters violently annihilated."

Ambiguity lies at the heart of the dilemma, for censorship masquerades in many disguises. From a child's birth, purification rituals are practiced by parents, school administrators and lawmakers as the high priests. A formidable responsibility, the proper morality content of literature, music and movies is determined by an array of guardians. Educational specialists dictate literature and grade level curriculum, while movie and television production companies ordain the audience viewing rating. Censorship advocates prey upon marketing crusades. Calvin Klein can attest that his commercial advertising has been cleansed by powerful legislative hands

Throughout centuries, activists and antagonists have wrestled with resolutions to educational censorship. At the crux of these efforts is the solemn task to mentor a minor's actions and demonstrate the principles of good and evil. Plato, as the purification pioneer, had honorable intentions in dictating morality standards for future Athenians. However, although his mission was driven by Athens grime and a desire to decontaminate, even his most ardent advocates would agree that he required a gatekeeper to bridle his zest. Perhaps his critics would have recommended an American watchdog: a heel-nipping schnauzer owned by the First Amendment who answers to A.C.L.