In Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression, Robert Atkins, the well-known author of the ArtSpeak books and, Svetlana Mintcheva, the head of the National Coalition Against Censorship's Art Program, bring together the latest thinking from art historians, cultural theorists, legal scholars, and psychoanalysts, as well as first-person accounts by artists and advocates, to give us a comprehensive understanding of censorship in a new century in which the media-fueled, culture war-scandal is just a diversion from the real action. Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, the arts may be a barometer for the state of free expression in U.S. society: the methods and mechanisms of censors outlined in this groundbreaking volume already affect each and every American.

Published by The New Press, 2006, U.S.

Introduction:
Robert Atkins and Svetlana Mintcheva, "Censorship in Camouflage"

Section 1: Economics

1. Introduction: Robert Atkins, "Money Talks: The Economic Foundations of Censorship"
2. Ruby Lerner, "Private Philanthropy and the Arts: Does Anybody Want An Artist in the House?"
3. Lawrence Soley, "Private Censorship, Corporate Power"
4. Siva Vaidhyanathan, "American Music Challenges the Copyright Tradition"
5. Hans Haacke, "Revisiting Free Exchange: The Art World After The Culture Wars," a conversation with editors Robert Atkins and Svetlana Mintcheva.
6. Robert Atkins, "On Edge: Alternative Spaces Today"
7. Andre Schiffrin, "Market Censorship"
8. Wallace Kuralt, "Unfair Trade Practices in Bookselling"
9. Dee Dee Halleck, "The Military-Industrial Complex is Dead! Long Live the Military-Media-Industrial Complex!"

Section 2: The Internet

1. Introduction: Robert Atkins, "High Wire[d] Act: Balancing the Political and Technological"
2. Laurence Lessig, "Creativity in Real Space"
3. Douglas Thomas, "Hacking Culture"
4. Giselle Fahimian "How the IP Guerillas Won: ®™ark, Adbusters, Negativland, and the "Bullying Back" of Creative Freedom and Social Commentary"
5. Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker, "Protocol, Control, & Networks"
6. "Power, Politics, New Technology and Memory in the Age of the Internet," Svetlana Mintcheva in conversation with Antoni Muntadas

Section 3: Protecting Children

1. Introduction: Svetlana Mintcheva, "Protection or Politics? The Use and Abuse of Children"
2. Marjorie Heins, "Media Effects"
3. "Taboos, Trust and Titillation: Teens Talk About Censorship," a roundtable discussion with high school- and college students, moderated by Stephanie Elizondo Griest and Svetlana Mintcheva.
4. Seth Killian, "Violent Video Game Players Mysteriously Avoid Killing Selves, Others"
5. Judith Levine, "Censorship, The Sexual Media and the Ambivalence of Knowing"
6. "Not a Pretty Picture: Four Photographers Talk About Their Experiences with Censorship, 'Child Pornography' and the Law":
    • Marian Rubin,
    • Jackie Livingston,
    • Marilyn Zimmerman
    • Betsy Schneider.
7. Amy Adler, "Child Pornography Law and the Proliferation of the Sexualized Child"
8. Mick Wilson, "Invasion of the Kiddyfiddlers"

Section 4: Cultural Diversity & Hate Speech

1. Introduction: Svetlana Mintcheva, "When Words and Images Cause Pain: the Price of Free Speech"
2. Randall Kennedy, "Pitfalls in Fighting Nigger"
3. Michael Harris and Lowery Stokes Sims, "The Past is a Prologue but is Parody and Pastiche Progress?" a conversation moderated by Karen C. C. Dalton.
4. "Beyond Good and Evil," Editors Robert Atkins and Svetlana Mintcheva in conversation with Norman Kleeblatt and Joanna Lindenbaum, about the exhibition Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art
5. John Leanos, "My Memorial to Patrick Tillman"
6. Diane Ravitch, "The New Meaning of Bias"

Section 5: Self-Censorship

1. Introduction: Svetlana Mintcheva, "The Censor Within"
2. "To Discern, to Discriminate and to Decide: A Conversation about Censorship and Institutions," with Tom Finkelpearl, Director of the Queens Museum of Art, Thomas Sokolowski, Director of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and editors Svetlana Mintcheva and Robert Atkins
3. J.M. Coetzee, "Taking Offense"
4. Judy Blume, "Censorship: a Personal View"
5. The Ubiquitous Censor: Artists and Writers on Self Censorship
    • Leeza Ahmadi
    • Guillermo Gómez-Peña
    • Glenn Ligon
    • Barbara Pollack
    • Carolee Schneemann
    • Betty Shamieh
6. Janice Lieberman, "A Psychoanalyst's Perspective on Artists and Censorship"

Censorship has always been a dirty word. (It derives from the Latin for census taker or tax collector; designating one of the most reviled citizens of the Roman Empire.) In the legal sense, censorship is the governmental suppression of speech because of the viewpoint expressed in it. In a broader sense, it refers to private institutions or individuals doing the same thing, suppressing content they find undesirable. The difference is that the former is prohibited by the First Amendment and the latter is not. Regardless of its legality, however, censorship is unpopular. The classic image of the censor depicts a narrow-minded and prudish bureaucrat from a totalitarian regime, blind to the transcendent flights of the imagination we call art, burnishing his red pen or his stamp and inkpad with perverse pleasure. This portrayal renders the censor as the very opposite of the creative artist. But censorship often operates more subtly than that, sometimes disguised as a moral imperative, at other times presented as an inevitable result of the impartial logic of the free market. No matter what the camouflage is, however, the result is the same: the range of what we can say, see, hear, think, and even imagine is narrowed.

Of the many debates about censorship in recent memory, not one has opened with a public official saying, "Let's censor this." On the contrary, the standard initial talking point is "This is not censorship, we do not censor," followed by: "We need to be sensitive to community standards;" "We need to protect children who might see this," "We can't spend taxpayers' money to support work that might offend;" or "We don't consider this censorship at all, because you are free to exhibit your work elsewhere." The censor's current disguises of choice are the moral imperatives of "protecting children" and of exercising "respect for religious and cultural beliefs and sensitivities." Both, in themselves, laudable objectives and, for this reason, perfect disguises for other, less savory motives.

Before something is censored, however, it must be produced and distributed, that is, attain some visibility. A discussion of censorship that only takes into account attempts to repress existing works, misses all those works that never came to life: Perhaps, because this novel didn't seem sufficiently commercial, there was no chance of it being published or, perhaps, because that play might have offended somebody, the playwright censored himself at the outset and decided not to write it at all.

Censoring Culture expands the notion of censorship beyond the acts of removing a photograph from an exhibition or canceling a performance to include a much larger field of social conditions and practices that prevent artists' works of all kinds from reaching audiences or, even, from being produced. The narrow collecting purview of a museum, for instance, might be irremediably problematic for contemporary painters if no museum in their country collected work by living artists. Or, consider the modestly successful, mid-career writer: Although her books have earned back her publisher's investments, at certain houses, she may be ignored, given the all-consuming editorial quest for the Big Book. Finally, the temporal extension of intellectual property rights practically prohibits American artists from working with images from the cultural vernacular of their day, such as Barbie or Batman and Robin. In few of these cases did somebody consciously make a decision in order to frustrate or limit artists' opportunities for expression. Nonetheless, within these situations, we see constraints on creativity and access to needed cultural materials. Such limitations both impoverish our culture and undermine our shared myth of freedom.

The central goal of Censoring Culture is the expansion of the very notion of censorship. The specific disguises, mechanisms, and systemic factors we invoke and which are discussed within the book—with the exception of the Internet—all predate the culture wars of the 1980s and 90s. We make no claim to identifying entirely new phenomena. The fact that a phenomenon has been recognized, however, does not mean that it is sufficiently, or well, explored.

The dire effects on free expression of corporate consolidation, especially in the media for example, have been noted. The self-defeating extremes of political correctness have been subject to harsh criticism. (They are often dismissed as the whining of political "others.") The subtle but powerful force of self-censorship, on the other hand, remains little discussed or understood—although its ubiquity in totalitarian societies and familiarity to artists and writers in every society is hardly a secret.

Our approach is based on the simple assumption that, to paraphrase the old saw about quacking ducks, if something results in limiting the range of what can be produced, exhibited, printed, imagined or thought, we are entirely willing to entertain the idea that this condition or phenomenon is censorship (or is, at least, and often unarguably, censorious.) This includes censorship as we know it—a public official making sure that what goes on public exhibition isn't likely to arouse anybody's concerns about "appropriateness" or other subjective criteria for viewing—and censorship outside of our traditional understanding of the concept.

In general, responses to censorship—whether activist or analytical—have come after the fact. By contrast, Censoring Culture examines systemic factors, which are poised to bear upon free speech now or at a future moment, that is, it identifies those conditions, which present the potential for censorship. This is especially true of new technologies: Just as the Internet promised the unfettered exchange of ideas, copyright laws quickly threatened the Net's potential for the uncensored dissemination of ideas. The ability to identify and address systemic factors prior to overt incidents of censorship suggests the possibility of a proactive approach based on dealing directly with the structural conditions that ensure future censorship.

Censorship has generated considerable attention in recent years, primarily because of interest in the issues raised by the recent, arts-oriented phase of the American "culture wars." Writings about the controversies surrounding Robert Mapplethorpe's Perfect Moment retrospective or Andres Serrano's photograph, Piss Christ, often focused on the divisive question that fueled the culture wars: "Why should so-called average taxpayers fund art that offends them?" Censoring Culture is an effort to get beyond not only this public-funding tug of war, but also beyond the very notion of a culture war. The problem with the media-driven concept of a culture war is that, rather than simply describing a state of affairs, it helps perpetuate an image of a nation in combat, one divided by radically opposed views. And not insignificantly, it diverts the political conversation from class, race, and religion to values, moral codes, and life styles.

The concept of a culture war creates the illusion of millions of cultural warriors at the ready, muskets—or at least PCs—in hand. This illusion helps magnify the thousands-strong campaigns organized by special interest groups into actions that seemingly represent the views of millions. Although the issues might change, the strategy of creating controversy in order to mobilize a constituency is standard operating procedure for many activist groups: Once the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a focal point of emotion in the 1990s, stopped funding individual artists or controversial projects, right wing groups returned to the perennially popular call to arms: "decency on the airwaves." As ever, pundits and politicians can be counted on to exploit—and exaggerate—such cultural fissures. To re-enter the realm of reality, the vast majority of Americans do not, in fact, subscribe to the mediagenic, imaginary extremes of the so-called culture wars; they hold judiciously moderate positions. As the texts collected in Censoring Culture demonstrate, censorship today is a result of multiple factors, none of them directly related to a cultural rift at the heart of America.

Censoring Culture is divided into five parts that progress from background to foreground, from the systemic and institutional to the personal. The first two parts offer portraits of our era of triumphant capitalism as seen through its effects on contemporary expression within the new, global economic order and the brave new world of digital media. The component writings in the next two sections interrogate, analyze, and deconstruct the disguises from behind which today's censors often operate: the moral imperative of protecting children from "inappropriate" material, exploitation or molestation; and the imperative of demonstrating respect and sensitivity towards the beliefs of a diverse population. Together the four parts comprise a multifaceted portrait of the conditions and institutions, attitudes and behaviors that limit expression in the varied precincts of cultural life. Censoring Culture concludes with material devoted to what is likely the most important and least understood topic under consideration—self-censorship. This is the point where public and private, economics and psychology, social sensitivities and political repression, intersect. It is also the point where censorship becomes invisible.

Contrary to what opponents of public funding in the arts claim, the salvation of free speech is not likely to be found in the marketplace. In fact, possibly the largest threat to free expression comes from the widening influence of corporations. Fewer, larger corporations now wield multi-national influence, sharply contrasting with the national reach of previous generations of big business. During the past decade-and-a-half we have seen an unprecedented amount of consolidation within all branches of cultural production. This process of consolidation has frequently resulted in de-facto monopolistic control. Although more books are published than ever, more films are released, and more cable channels seem to go online weekly, quantity should not be confused with diversity, much less quality. Although this anthology focuses on consolidation within the book publishing industry, similar developments affect—and afflict—virtually every other medium.

The pressure corporations exert on expression is also felt in recent, aggressive moves by entertainment and media companies to impose their ownership on material that, by all rights, is part of our shared cultural heritage. Congress has supported this power grab by repeatedly extending the duration of the period of copyright, invariably at the behest of entertainment industry giants such as the Walt Disney Company. But what is a gift to copyright owners, is an impediment to the public-at-large, some segment of which is undoubtedly anxious to see Mickey Mouse enter the public domain.

In recent years, corporations have sued, or threatened to sue, numerous artists for violating copyright or ignoring trademarks. To cite one typical example, Mattel sued a book publisher, a record company, and a photographer for using images of its Barbie doll without permission. Mattel ultimately lost all three cases, but the mere threat of extraordinarily expensive litigation with an unpredictable outcome (Chanel, unlike Mattel, has tended to win suits against artists for trademark violation) is likely to discourage anyone from continuing to use such material in their work or asserting their rights under copyright law's fair use provisions. Ironically, this trend toward stricter control of copyrighted material flies directly in the face of contemporary artistic methods. Postmodern approaches such as "sampling" in music or "appropriation" in art both rely on the strategic use of already existing material to comment about contemporary matters.

For a while it appeared that the Internet was the answer to corporate domination of cultural production. It made low-cost publishing available to anyone with a computer and an online connection; it revolutionized access to international news, independently-produced music, activist networks and non-mainstream art works. Best of all, the rhizomatic structure of the Internet made top down control impossible. However, and somewhat predictably, the Internet's expansion has been paralleled by expanded legal efforts to regulate content.

Those efforts are provoked by both economic and moral motives. Economic concerns have arisen from the ease of disseminating copyrighted material online. Endless rounds of litigation over music file-sharing for non-commercial purposes eventually reached the Supreme Court and essentially put home-grown companies like Napster and Grokster out of business. The morality-derived category of issues ostensibly aims to "protect" children from age-inappropriate material or from pornographers lurking in chat rooms. Instead, these laws have been effective in restricting access of viewers of all ages—especially low-income adults—to constitutionally-protected entertainment and sex sites, as well as sites featuring educational and health information.

Government regulation is not the only problem facing the new medium. The Internet's potentially universal accessibility inevitably clashes with local laws and customs. If a French court could effectively prevent an American Internet Service Provider (Yahoo!) from hosting sites containing hate speech, a Chinese court might well try to suppress information about the Tiananmen massacre. It is possible that new and relaxed international regulations will come into play soon, but it is crucial to be aware of the nature of the Internet as contested turf: the conflicts may variously center on the regulation of speech, the ownership of this virtual "real estate", or the possibility of near-monopoly control of bandwidth by large corporations.

Protecting children, one of the rationales for government regulation of the Internet, is also the most convenient disguise under which the impulse to control speech operates in general. Children—a king-size blanket term covering the range from toddlers barely able to walk to 17 year olds on the verge of enlisting in the military—are rarely allowed to speak for themselves or, when they are, hardly ever regarded as credible witnesses. Transformed instead into blank slates for the projection of adult fears and prejudices, children provide an effective pretext for banning the display of nudes; installing filters on computers in public libraries; or censoring TV broadcasts. The evocation of an innocent child is so politically potent that the lack of credible evidence to back up the claims that sexually-oriented material harms children is almost beside the point.

The moral panic accumulating around childhood sexuality has created collateral damage—perhaps most unjustly affecting those mothers who have innocently taken pictures of their naked kids, only to find themselves criminal suspects. Public officials, including police officers, prosecutors and judges, are mandated to examine photographs of children with a focus on whether these images might appeal to a pedophile, and, whether they might constitute evidence of child abuse. Because federal child pornography law makes no exception for writers, academic researchers, physicians or journalists researching the traffic in sexually explicit images of children, those undertaking such investigations are themselves subject to prosecution. As a result, the only way to gauge the extent of sexual abuse of children in the production of child pornography is to examine court records, which show little evidence of a rampant problem. This conclusion is seconded by sociologists, who have found that most incidents of child abuse are not sexual. Needless to say, the problems most affecting children—poverty, the state of public education, a lack of health care, and, in too many cases, parental neglect—have nothing to do with pedophiles. Hunting for them among middle class mothers, banning drawn or photographed nudes in public exhibition spaces, or bleeping four-letter words from TV broadcasts, is unlikely to solve any of those problems.

Of the disguises worn by censors to mask their generally frowned upon activites, respect for religious and cultural sensitivities is nearly as popular as the need to protect children. Taking its cue from the left-leaning, cultural diversity movement active in the 1970s and 80s, the religious right, a decade later, began to vociferously demand sensitivity and respect for its values. The controversies about Martin Scorsese's film, The Last Temptation of Christ, Terrence McNally's play, Corpus Christi, and Chris Offili's painting, The Holy Virgin Mary, among many others, focused less on the allegedly blasphemous nature of the works, than on the offended feelings of Catholics, who saw, in these works, the "desecration" of their symbols.

Aggrieved sensitivities are not the exclusive property of the right or left; they span the entire political spectrum. Ethnic and sexual minorities, empowered by a growing respect for sensitivity towards cultural difference, also grew more public in their complaints about bias in this museum program or that educational curriculum. African-American parents called for the removal of Huckleberry Finn from schools because of its (historically accurate) use of the term "nigger," while concentration camp survivors called for the cancellation of an exhibition at The Jewish Museum that contained work by an Israeli artist/peacenik/serviceman who approached the Holocaust in unorthodox, critical fashion.

Whose voice matters more? Who is allowed to speak about the painful history of an ethnic or racial group? Does anybody own identity and history? Some questions are so complex they resist resolution. We acknowledge the complexity of such matters, and—in good faith—insist that not every question is answerable. We also assert that the practice of civility and the cultivation of patient listening can transform shouting matches into discussions, enabling everyone involved to actually hear opposing points of view.

The most difficult sort of censorship to analyze—and even recognize—is self-censorship. Self-censorship is the interiorization (conscious or sub-conscious) of every mechanism and rationale for censorship: It is present when an artist hesitates about creating a work that might disturb viewers or might infringe on copyrighted material; it is operating when a fiction writer decides to purge sexual explicitness from the language of her characters; and it is apparent when museum curators refuse even to consider exhibiting work by artists with politically contentious points of view, fearing that showing such work might lead to losses of support from audiences, public officials, and funders. Typically self-censorship remains unrecognized—even by the person or institution guilty of it.

To be sure, it is, often very difficult to draw the line between editing—the discriminations and judgments that are at the heart of the creative process—and the realm of self-censorship. To complicate matters further, there are many motives for self-censorship and some are undeniably legitimate. They range from fear of political retribution or financial fallout, to consideration for one's family or community. Self-censorship is so shaming an activity, though, that those who opt to do it in light of one of the "good" rationales mentioned above—that is, choosing to self-censor rather than to disgrace the family or to avoid facing some unpleasant financial music—tend to deny the nature of their actions. Take a poll—we did—and found that nobody wants to admit s/he ever self-censors. Perhaps the single, resolved issue in conjunction with self-censorship is that a more detailed exploration of this uncharted terrain is necessary.

Censoring Culture is an unfinished project, an exercise in connecting the dots. We hope that readers will help continue our work by applying some of the methodological signposts we've set out to their own lives, to the sometimes-difficult-to-detect habits of the culture at large and by publicly disseminating their findings for the benefit of the rest of us. We hope that Censoring Culture might serve as an antidote, however small, to the appalling and disingenuous lip service frequently paid to championing freedom of speech, and the gargantuan volume of hot air expended by those among the powers-that-be who, at the same time, seem neither interested in free expression nor in broadening its reach through promotion or policy.

Happily, the conditions described in this book are not immutable. On the contrary, the mechanisms of censorship also provide openings, possibilities for action, innovation, and change. The censor's disguises are not impenetrable, either. Censoring Culture may help, we hope, to identify some of those openings and possibilities, and to provide encouragement for exposing censorship in all its guises. It is time to state the obvious: It is necessary to restore the value, in public life, of reasonableness and respect for others, of truth-telling and plain speaking, and of the freedoms that have previously been broadened and deepened by each generation in succession.

If we are to actually confront the social problems at hand, we must face up to some unpleasant realities as part of the process. If we are to ameliorate the condition of children, we must initiate a truth-telling campaign that encompasses the sometimes disingenuous meaning of "protecting" children and the unscrupulous manner in which politicians have used children to impose their views of what is "appropriate." If the Internet is to fulfill its potential as a site for community building and a space for genuinely open, non-commercial communication, we must be alert to initiatives to privatize its infrastructure or to control its content. We should also reassess the balance between the necessity of stimulating creativity (through copyright protections) and the danger of stifling creativity (through copyright overprotections). And finally, if we wish a better world for those victimized by historical injustice, we must do more than purge our vocabularies of a dozen unacceptable epithets and deepen—or initiate—efforts to actually improve our fellow-citizens' lives.