|I've not seen the Lord Horror book, so I can't speak with authority, but
|what I've gathered (from Index on Censorship and elsewhere) is that the
|book presents a luridly exaggerated racism - without authorial comment,
|treating the audiences as grown-up enough to realise how horrible it is.
|I don't know how artistically successful it is. I don't know if the
|unenlightened might take the ranting literally. I do know that
|censorship is a dangerous thing.
Nor I but I do know if audiences *were grown up enough to realise how
horrible racism is then there would be less racism. Unfortunately, any sort
of bonkers rubbish will be quite heavily supported. And authorial comment is
taken as *gospel by many
You see, I worry about phrases like _luridly exaggerated racism_ - isnt
racism lurid exaggeration? It often builds on something that is either true
or could be true - the point being _so what_ - and then gets itself worked
up in the minds of the inadequate.
I am both against censorship and for it. I have come to the conclusion that
until I grow up, and I see no sign of it, I cannot come to a clear
conclusion. If I had *any faith in the police, the courts, the MPs, even a
bus timetable, I might find it easier to come down for censorship; on the
other hand, reading the newspapers, listening to conversations, just
observing my fellows on the last train out of London gives me no confidence
in our ability to conduct ourselves without censorship in some form to some
degree - I am including in this laws against racist abuse etc - I am *glad
that people get grief for racist abuse, for instance; I wish there was more
of that
but we have to guard (against) the guardians because the guardians always
will be thugs
there are *easy answers but they are wrong
there are no reliable answers because we are neither very nice or very
consistent or very sincere, but sometimes some of us are
L
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|