NOT CENSORSHIP BUT SELECTION

By Lester Asheim[37]

The major characteristic which makes for the all-important difference seems to me to be this: that the selector's approach is positive, while that of the censor is negative. This is more than a verbal quibble; it transforms the entire act and the steps included in it. For to the selector, the important thing is to find reasons to keep the book. Given such a guiding principle, the selector looks for values, for strengths, for virtues which will over shadow minor objections. For the censor, on the other hand, the important thing is to find reasons to reject the book; his guiding principle leads him to seek out the objectionable features, the weaknesses, the possibilities for misinterpretation. The positive selector asks what the reaction of a rational intelligent adult would be to the content of the work; the censor fears for the results on the weak, the warped, and the irrational. The selector says, if there is anything good in this book let us try to keep it; the censor says, if there is anything bad in this book, let us reject it. And since there is seldom a flawless work in any form, the censor's approach can destroy much that is worth saving.

An inevitable consequence of the negative approach is that it leads to the use of isolated parts rather than the complete whole upon which to base a judgment. Taken out of context and given a weight completely out of keeping with their place in the over-all work, single words and unrelated passages can be used to damn a book. This technique has been typical of many of the most notorious instances of censorship: the major theme, the total purpose, the effect of the work as a unified whole have been ignored in order to focus on a word or phrase or sequence. In other words, four letters have outweighed five hundred pages.

Nor is this failure to view the relevancy of the parts to the whole an outmoded one; it was in 19—not 18—53 that an official censor went on record publicly to the effect that he does not distinguish between a nude in a work of art and one in any other context: "It's all"—and I quote—"lustful to me." The censor who starts with such a premise will inevitably find much that is offensive, because that is what he is seeking and because he is abnormally susceptible. The phenomenon is not a new one, nor is the suspicion which logically follows: whether a mind so oriented does not bring more dirt to the book than was originally there.

The negative orientation, which seeks reasons to ban rather than to preserve, also leads to the judgment of books by external rather than internal criteria. The censor need not ask what the book has to say, what values it has to contribute, what within the covers of the book itself—is the material which will be lost if the book is suppressed. He can ask, instead, what kind of a husband and father is the author, of what nation is he a citizen; what are his political affiliations; what magazines does he read; what is his color, his race, his religion? And if present circumstances cannot lead to a rationalization for the ban, he can go into the past what has the writer ever done with which I am in disagreement? The book is not judged on its merits as a book at all; it is used as a stick to beat its author for personal deviations whether they are reflected in the book or not.