Content Warnings & Censorship

What are you going to do about it?

Recently there have been several stories where one reads about classic books and stories being “corrected” to be less “offensive”.

What kind of world would it be if we were never offended?

Pretty boring if you ask me.

I got annoyed with “content warnings” when I was writing a recent newsletter A Friend You Can Visit Anytime. I wanted to include a footnote that clarified the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ is often incorrectly attributed to Darwin. In looking at this Darwin Correspondence Project at Cambridge University, I came across content warnings attached to several of the correspondences.

Here’s this letter in full.

Is it offensive?

If you’re told you’re going to be offended, won’t you be?

Why do I need to be warned about content in the first place?

Don’t I get to decide what offends me?

Is a content warning training you to be offended?

If you erase all historical language/attitudes, one wonders if future audiences will ever understand the real difference between being offended and not being offended. Or why content was ever flagged in the first place.

Especially when it comes to historical content.

Won’t softening and limiting language make people more easily offended?

Aren’t content warnings a form of soft censorship (censoring or classifying work out of fear it might offend)?

Content warnings are controversial for good reason. Done poorly, they moralize, stigmatize, and reinforce assumptions about the identity of the museum visitor. But trauma is real and it's fair to expect museums to try not to retraumatize people. Here are some guidelines I use for crafting and employing content warnings in museums.

When to use a warning

When considering whether to include a content warning, I recommend centering the wellbeing of the people most likely to be negatively impacted by the content and taking into consideration the role of systemic oppression. Museums and content warnings

A gallery view of The Perfect Moment, Mapplethorpe’s exhibition. Photograph: Rare books and archives library at the University of Cincinnati

In the spring of 1990, the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati, Ohio, held an exhibit of photographs by the late artist Robert Mapplethorpe.  This exhibit titled, The Perfect Moment was was a collection of 175 images from the provocative photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

The images included nude children and explicit depictions of gay sadistic and masochistic (S&M) culture. There was a great deal of negative public reaction and an attempt to close the exhibit citing the Ohio obscenity statute, which made it illegal for any person to “Promote, display…or exhibit… any obscene material.”

Hamilton County prosecutors pressed obscenity charges against the CAC director – Dennis Barrie and the CAC, the first such charges against a museum in the United States.

Of the 175 pictures in the exhibit, 7 were extremely controversial making them the focus of the trial.  Two of the pictures were of naked minors, one male and one female, with a “lewd exhibition or graphic focus on the genitals.” 

The other 5 objectionable pictures were of 5 men posing in unusual sadomasochistic poses.

Cincinnati was once a very conservative, Catholic city.

‘Obscenity’ was forbidden. (Remember Larry Flynt? Larry Flynt Jr. produced pornographic magazines, Hustler and pornographic videos. Charged in 1977 with obscenity and organized crime ties, he was tried in Cincinnati and convicted of all charges, although the verdict was later overturned.)

I attended the Mapplethorpe exhibit.

Guess what? There were no content warnings.

Should there have been?

Absolutely not.

The images left some pretty graphic marks on my then 30 year old brain.

Attending that exhibit forced me to grow as an individual, I drew my own conclusions about what I saw.

I didn’t need a warning that may have prejudiced what I saw.

The late artist Robert Mapplethorpe.

Raised in a strict Catholic family, Mapplethorpe was influenced by the rigidity of his religion. 

Religious imagery is a recurring theme in his works.  He was very conscious of the religious undertones in his pieces and once was quoted in an interview as saying, “I was a Catholic boy, I went to church every Sunday.  A church has a certain magic and mystery for a child.  It still shows in how I arrange things.  It’s always little altars.”

The show ran and was an unqualified success. Nearly 80,000 people came to the CAC in 50 days, a far greater number than in an average year then and now. Pornography or art? Cincinnati decided.

What’s amazing is you can’t find any of these images on the internet today.

At least I couldn’t.

Why do you think that is?

After the closing statements from the lawyers, the jurors were given the case at 1:05 pm, then spent an hour at lunch, returning to the jury room at 2 p.m. At 4:10 p.m., they told the bailiff they had a verdict.

Dennis Barrie and the CAC were acquitted on all charges.

The Mapplethorpe exhibit was not obscene. Pornography or art? Cincinnati decided.

I wonder what the Social Justice Warriors of today would say about this exhibit.

Would it need a content warning warning?

Or not?

Debauchery* good?

*Debauchery - extreme indulgence in bodily pleasures and especially sexual pleasures : behavior involving sex, drugs, alcohol, etc. that is often considered immoral.

Circa 2003

In 2000 I lived in Utah.

Like the predominant Catholicism in Cincinnati, most culture in Utah was ruled then by the Church of Latter Day Saints, or Mormons. The church was headed by a president whom they believed was a modern “prophet” of the church.

CleanFlicks was a company founded in Utah in 2000 that rented and sold commercially-released DVDs and VHS ((Video Home System) was a widely-adopted video cassette recording (VCR) technology developed by Japan Victor Company (JVC) and put on the market in 1976.) tapes from which they had edited content.

Similar to Blockbuster Video (a store where you could go to rent VHS and DVD movies) except CleanFlicks cleaned up what they thought was inappropriate for children or that viewers might otherwise find offensive.

Some short while after I accepted a professorship to teach communications in Utah, a strange business opened its doors around the corner from my new home and horrified me. It was called “CleanFlicks,” and the service it provided was to edit out the “dirty” parts of Hollywood movies for conservative Mormons who wanted to watch them but didn’t want to look at naked breasts or hear the word “fuck.” Scrubbed to Death: A Utah County professor thinks ‘clean’ movies are a dirty shame.

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Talking about CleanFlicks and R-rated movies became a regular ritual of perspective exchange in my introduction to media studies classes. It was a way for all of us—professor and students—to examine our assumptions about our relations to media. Inevitably, a familiar argument would play out.

“The prophet tells us not to watch R-rated movies.” Scrubbed to Death: A Utah County professor thinks ‘clean’ movies are a dirty shame.

So far, I have given two ‘I bet you forgot, or didn’t know about’ instances where wide ranging censorship occurred in the past.

What do you think about these instances?

Who were the censors trying to “protect”?

Why?

How about another ‘I bet you forgot, or didn’t know about’ instance where censorship occurred in the past.

The Catholic church sought to censor sculptures of the past.

Each carved figure has their butchered manhood covered by a decorative fig leaf, no doubt to hide the shame of the person who took a chisel to these ancient works of art. It was part of a Medieval campaign to protect modesty that was still going under the reign of Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) in which statues from antiquity were desecrated to serve the sensitivities of the modern age. Sensitivity readers: no better than Medieval statue butchers.

Sort of similar to CleanFlicks?

We all gasp, (well it depends on the groups, and what’s being censored), when it comes to censorship.

The kinds of censoring I have described so far was being done because of religion or religious beliefs.

It’s also pretty clear why the attempts were made to censor.

But how are they different?

The first example, it took a jury to decide the fate of the exhibit.

The second two examples, the censoring was just done.

Is this a trend?

Did you know Elementary and High School textbooks have been censored for years?

Each state chooses the textbooks for use in the public schools, and because of this, publishers cater to the edict of elected officials and school board leaders in the biggest states that buy the most books, Florida, California and Texas.

These states vary tremendously when it comes to morality, politics and popular culture in general.

March 2020 to March 2021, California ($3.9 million), Florida ( $8.5 million) and Texas ($2.3 million ) spent millions in purchasing textbooks for schools in their states. This is about one-quarter of pre-K-12 resources revenue for publishers that year.

It’s why publishers, and others outside of the State of Florida are so disturbed with the books being banned from the schools in Florida.

One example from a rejected math book:

This is an example of ethnomathematics I wrote about in a previous piece. It demonstrates how easily Critical Race Theory (CRT) is woven into current mathematics classes: “you will be working with models that measure bias”.

To an elementary or high school student looking at this in his math textbook, which is more disturbing, the mathematics or the idea he’s probably racist?

Is this kind of horse hockey the reason as a nation we’re falling behind in STEM?

Ethnomathematics is the study of the relationship between mathematics and culture. The term “ethnomathematics” was introduced by Brazilian educator and mathematician Ubiratan D'Ambrosio in 1977. He considered his Program Ethnomathematics just a research project that did not reject the importance of modern academic mathematics.

Distilled in America, it means removing the part where D'Ambrosio did not reject the importance of modern academic mathematics. Ethnomathematics apparently blends beautifully with Critical Race Theory (where children are taught there are oppressors and the oppressed and they must identify as an oppressor or oppressed and move forward with that label) and so therefore, it is a legitimate basis for corrupting something that is considered a universal language.

54 out of 132 math books (41%) recently submitted for review in the Florida were found to be "impermissible with either Florida's new standards or contained prohibited topics," per a Florida Department of Education (FDOE) statement Friday.

“It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “I’m grateful that Commissioner Corcoran and his team at the Department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.” Florida Rejects Publishers’ Attempts to Indoctrinate Students.

Are you you aghast (struck with terror, amazement, or horror: shocked and upset) by this development in Florida?

If yes, why?

New editions of legendary works by British author Roald Dahl are being edited to remove words that could be deemed offensive to some readers, according to the late writer's company. Changes to new editions of Roald Dahl books have readers up in arms.

The Roald Dahl Story Company controls the rights to the late author’s books, worked in conjunction with Puffin, the books’ publisher, to make children’s literature more inclusive. They describe the changes “small and carefully considered” to ensure Dahl’s books “continue to be enjoyed by all children today.”

These have apparently included changes to language regarding things like weight, mental health, gender, violent behavior, and race, and whole extra sentences added about topics such as why it’s OK for women to wear wigs, in The Witches.

(I had no idea wigs were bad.)

They’re also coming for the Ladybird series which includes Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, Pinocchio, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk.

And to be fair, the Church has absolutely nothing on today’s censors. Sensitivity readers (along with other digital moderators and entertainment revisionists) are far more extreme, unhinged, and insidious.

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The purpose of the Ladybird series is to help young children learn how to read while sharing pieces of European culture as told through traditional fairy tales such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, Pinocchio, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk etc. Sensitivity readers: no better than Medieval statue butchers.

How is it that plenty of generations before “all children today” could enjoy and learn from these classics?

But there’s more.

They’re coming for James Bond too.

Each book will carry the disclaimer, “This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set,” The Telegraph said. James Bond Novels Edited to Remove Racist Content.

Kind of sounds like the content warning that originally annoyed me doesn’t it?

Wokeism™ (promotion of liberal progressive ideology and policy as an expression of sensitivity to systemic injustices and prejudices) is the new religion and it is ruthless (not thinking or worrying about any pain caused to others; cruel).

It’s™ more insidious (spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner) than the Hamilton County, Ohio prosecutors who condemned Mapplethorpe, the objections to CleanFlicks in Utah and Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) “doctoring” classic art.

We’re living in a culture where people are afraid to offend, but more importantly where people are afraid to be offended, or to see, hear or read anything they don‘t want to.

These latest examples of censorship reflect that shift in our culture.

My original three original examples illustrated one reason to censor, to protect the citizenry from obscenity.

This new unsolicited, contemporary censorship is inflicted on all of us, while it caters to a minority of people who are afraid to be offended, or to see, hear or read anything they don‘t want to.

Another piece that discusses how we are being encouraged and in some instances forced to alter our language:

How Big Tech Is Influencing Our Language Towards Becoming “Inclusive”

And here’s the Michigan State University‘s Inclusive Guide. It’s what you’d expect, however, the resources where the guide points were drawn were also of interest. There’s mountains of this kind horse manure at your universities. I can’t imagine, as a student trying to remember all of this stuff on top of studying the subject that tuition actually covers.

And, Cornell University’s recently introduced student’s resolution for Mandating Content Warnings for Traumatic Content in the Classroom.

Fortunately, Cornell president Martha Pollack and provost Michael Kotlikoff rejected the resolution responding “it violates our faculty’s fundamental right to determine what and how to teach”.

It’s all Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) Ministry of Truth kind of stuff isn’t it?

(In the Novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, The Ministry of Truth was created by the Party (the bad guys) to control what the people saw, heard, read.)

If you haven’t read Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, it might be time.

It’s not difficult to find examples of content warnings and censorship, they are everywhere these days.

The question here: What are you going to do about it?

Censorship, in any form, alters the world you live in and if you can, refuse to participate, because eventually it’s the world you’ll have if you don’t stop it.