OP/ED: Censorship under the veil of libel;
Or, my way is our way, so hit the highway
The other evening I was discussing the subject matter of "Gypsy," the Broadway musical/movie based on the memoirs of famed striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, born Louise Novick.
The original script included some mild swearing - words like hell and damn, and one scene in which three strippers sing a number called "Gotta Get a Gimmick," which spoofs burlesque theater.
No clothes are taken off and the costumes themselves were more comic than come-hither and, in fact, revealed less skin acreage than those worn by junior high boperettes out on the Saturday stroll at the local shopping mall.
Many in the cast report themselves to be Christians, the capital 'C' kind who are aggressively reverent and very certain of what the community's standards are, or should be. All are nice enough people and a few even manage not to sound mock-pious when they get going on the topic.
One piano player quit the show early on, though not before she was able, with the support of the assistant director, to get all the nasty “hells” and “damns” bowdlerized from the script.
The chance conversation I’m talking about came after the show was in performance.
An actor and a stage mom were discussing what grave moral reservations they had to overcome before agreeing to appear or assist in the production of a musical that included strippers. They also talked about the lack of taste shown in the “Gimmick” number and amazement that it continued to be the one that got the biggest hand from the audience.
We’re not talking about mock cluck-cluckery here. These people were quite sincere in their concerns – albeit they did display a certain logical inconsistency in their moral rationales. But none more noticeable than usually evident whenever morality is discussed.
Though they did not use the specific term, “community standards” was the subject they were grappling with.
They spoke of a theater to be constructed at a an area Methodist church, which they highly approved, the community not having many decent theater venues to choose from when mounting a production. Good thing, too. The theater would be big enough to put on “Joseph,” (a religiously themed musical), but the blessed board of directors would be small and dedicated enough to guarantee that -- while the theater would probably be open to public rental – no risqué numbers like Gypsy’s strippers (not to mention the works of Mark Twain and Tennessee Williams would ever be allowed to play there.
To be honest, these two were getting on my nerves. I saw and heard in them the latent and overt hypocrisy intrinsic to the notion of “community standards” as invented by the U.S. Supreme Court, and actively imposed by right-wing born-agains nationwide.
As a measure of the community, consider this: a quick scan the yellow pages listings for the twin cities of Marysville and Yuba City shows the metropolitan statistical area has about 25 gas stations and some 125 churches of all denominations and non-denominations.
Editor’s Note: A non-denominational church is a church where you can talk about Jesus all day long and collect as many untaxable dollars as you can unfettered by creed or dogma. Kind of a free-form, postmodern religion not unlike the unpunctuated, uncapitalized, vers free poetry of e.e. cummings and backhatwards teenagers chatting on the Internet.)
So with five times more churches than gas stations this must be a pretty pious lot living around here.
Well, these decent folk discussing the strippers number and how advisable it was to keep things out of the reach of children and adults in the area were testing my spleen.
“Have you ever heard of Gogol’s wife?” I interrupted. Blank stars.
“Nikolai Gogol? Famous Russian author? “The Overcoat?” “Dead Souls?” “Diary of a Madman and Other Short Stories?” More blank stares.
“Anyway, Gogol was a brilliant writer, but his output was relatively small. Being a perfectionist he was holding a lot of it back as he fiddled with it for publication. He kept his unpublished manuscripts in a trunk somewhere. Maybe in the attic.
“The moment he did and couldn’t do anything about it his wife rushed to the trunk, took out all his manuscripts and burned them. She didn’t approve of what he had to say. She regarded it as heretical. More to the point, she feared the possibility that, if published and read, her husband’s works might diminish her reputation in the local community.
“That’s how Russia and the world were robbed of a brilliant writer’s whole body of literature.”
More blank stares, so I dropped the subject. If these people couldn’t reason by analogy and example then there was scant chance of persuading them to think twice before imposing personal standards on anyone else.
For that is what “community standards” are: the personal opinion of the loudest and whiningest imposed on any dissenters who may live there. The 125 churches over the 25 filling stations.
So he come to the story in today’s NY Times about a prison warden bringing a libel suit in Virginia against newspapers in Connecticut for libel.
If he prevails the concept of community standards could very well be extended to the Internet.
While the actor and the stage mom may not be able to reason by analogy, lawyers around the world are and we’ll pretty soon have Islamic authorities in Iran suing weblogs in Indiana for mocking mullahs and publishing pictures of girlfriends without scarves on their heads.
Gogol’s wife – who read the works, disliked them and therefore felt empowered to determine that no one else ever should -- will have triumphed once again over art, thought and free expression for all.
Hallelujah! Praise be. Amen. And "God Bless America" (at 22.9 APR).
Or, my way is our way, so hit the highway
The other evening I was discussing the subject matter of "Gypsy," the Broadway musical/movie based on the memoirs of famed striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, born Louise Novick.
The original script included some mild swearing - words like hell and damn, and one scene in which three strippers sing a number called "Gotta Get a Gimmick," which spoofs burlesque theater.
No clothes are taken off and the costumes themselves were more comic than come-hither and, in fact, revealed less skin acreage than those worn by junior high boperettes out on the Saturday stroll at the local shopping mall.
Many in the cast report themselves to be Christians, the capital 'C' kind who are aggressively reverent and very certain of what the community's standards are, or should be. All are nice enough people and a few even manage not to sound mock-pious when they get going on the topic.
One piano player quit the show early on, though not before she was able, with the support of the assistant director, to get all the nasty “hells” and “damns” bowdlerized from the script.
The chance conversation I’m talking about came after the show was in performance.
An actor and a stage mom were discussing what grave moral reservations they had to overcome before agreeing to appear or assist in the production of a musical that included strippers. They also talked about the lack of taste shown in the “Gimmick” number and amazement that it continued to be the one that got the biggest hand from the audience.
We’re not talking about mock cluck-cluckery here. These people were quite sincere in their concerns – albeit they did display a certain logical inconsistency in their moral rationales. But none more noticeable than usually evident whenever morality is discussed.
Though they did not use the specific term, “community standards” was the subject they were grappling with.
They spoke of a theater to be constructed at a an area Methodist church, which they highly approved, the community not having many decent theater venues to choose from when mounting a production. Good thing, too. The theater would be big enough to put on “Joseph,” (a religiously themed musical), but the blessed board of directors would be small and dedicated enough to guarantee that -- while the theater would probably be open to public rental – no risqué numbers like Gypsy’s strippers (not to mention the works of Mark Twain and Tennessee Williams would ever be allowed to play there.
To be honest, these two were getting on my nerves. I saw and heard in them the latent and overt hypocrisy intrinsic to the notion of “community standards” as invented by the U.S. Supreme Court, and actively imposed by right-wing born-agains nationwide.
As a measure of the community, consider this: a quick scan the yellow pages listings for the twin cities of Marysville and Yuba City shows the metropolitan statistical area has about 25 gas stations and some 125 churches of all denominations and non-denominations.
Editor’s Note: A non-denominational church is a church where you can talk about Jesus all day long and collect as many untaxable dollars as you can unfettered by creed or dogma. Kind of a free-form, postmodern religion not unlike the unpunctuated, uncapitalized, vers free poetry of e.e. cummings and backhatwards teenagers chatting on the Internet.)
So with five times more churches than gas stations this must be a pretty pious lot living around here.
Well, these decent folk discussing the strippers number and how advisable it was to keep things out of the reach of children and adults in the area were testing my spleen.
“Have you ever heard of Gogol’s wife?” I interrupted. Blank stars.
“Nikolai Gogol? Famous Russian author? “The Overcoat?” “Dead Souls?” “Diary of a Madman and Other Short Stories?” More blank stares.
“Anyway, Gogol was a brilliant writer, but his output was relatively small. Being a perfectionist he was holding a lot of it back as he fiddled with it for publication. He kept his unpublished manuscripts in a trunk somewhere. Maybe in the attic.
“The moment he did and couldn’t do anything about it his wife rushed to the trunk, took out all his manuscripts and burned them. She didn’t approve of what he had to say. She regarded it as heretical. More to the point, she feared the possibility that, if published and read, her husband’s works might diminish her reputation in the local community.
“That’s how Russia and the world were robbed of a brilliant writer’s whole body of literature.”
More blank stares, so I dropped the subject. If these people couldn’t reason by analogy and example then there was scant chance of persuading them to think twice before imposing personal standards on anyone else.
For that is what “community standards” are: the personal opinion of the loudest and whiningest imposed on any dissenters who may live there. The 125 churches over the 25 filling stations.
So he come to the story in today’s NY Times about a prison warden bringing a libel suit in Virginia against newspapers in Connecticut for libel.
If he prevails the concept of community standards could very well be extended to the Internet.
While the actor and the stage mom may not be able to reason by analogy, lawyers around the world are and we’ll pretty soon have Islamic authorities in Iran suing weblogs in Indiana for mocking mullahs and publishing pictures of girlfriends without scarves on their heads.
Gogol’s wife – who read the works, disliked them and therefore felt empowered to determine that no one else ever should -- will have triumphed once again over art, thought and free expression for all.
Hallelujah! Praise be. Amen. And "God Bless America" (at 22.9 APR).
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