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Liberal Censorship [1]
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Date: 2022-12-22
“I’ll telephone Winchell to publish the banns.”
This was a line from the play I am rehearsing for, Arsenic and Old Lace, written in the early 1940’s. I had to look up banns. Banns are the notice of marriage engagements that were published in newspapers. Walter Winchell was a famous newspaper gossip columnist. Apparently, banns has nothing to do with bans—the attempt to censor and prohibit objectionable material. A ban usually refers to an entire work or entity, such as to banning books from libraries that have any mention of gay couples. Censorship usually refers to banning only a portion of a work, such profanity in a play.
As progressive liberals we cringe at this volley in a culture war that that restricts freedom of the press in the name of protecting our children, as illustrated in this quote from the New York Times:
“This is not about banning books, it’s about protecting the innocence of our children,” said … a conservative group focused on education, “and letting the parents decide what the child gets rather than having government schools indoctrinate our kids.”
And what do these concerned conservative parents want to protect their children from?
“The books most frequently targeted for removal have been by or about Black or L.G.B.T.Q. people.”
The premise of this diary is not simply that these conservatives are wrong in wanting to ban or censor such literary materials. And indeed, I do consider such bans wrong. My premise is that liberals also want to ban and censor as much as conservatives do. The difference is in what we want to prevent others from reading or seeing. Neither liberals nor conservatives hold fast to the principle that censorship is a bad thing, or that freedom of speech and freedom of expression, is a good thing—regardless of what is being suppressed. Instead, we are engaged in a long-standing cultural war over what should be banned and what should be censored. I hate the idea of banning books, but endorse the idea of banning assault weapons. When I walk by a neighbor’s home displaying a Trump flag or a yard-sign still up to vote for Trump in 2020 (with Pence’s name crossed off), I have to fight the urge to destroy these symbols of hate. I wish there was some law or HOA rule in my neighborhood that prohibited such an objectionable symbol of ignorance and disdain for our democracy. I’m not too fond of displaying the Confederate flag either. Even the thought someone might actually display a flag with a Nazi swastika fills me with dread.
But we liberals don’t just want to censor the most egregiously offensive words and images, such as the N-word; we also relish the opportunity to censor far less egregious language and ideas, which we don’t deem politically correct by today’s standards.
This all became crystal clear to me when I was asked to audition for a role in the play Arsenic and Old Lace. I thought I would get the role of Teddy, the delusional nephew who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt. It was a relatively small but important role I thought I could handle. Instead, the director pulled a fast one, and gave me the leading male role, Mortimer Brewster, played in the Hollywood version by Cary Grant. Although I look nothing like that tall, dark, and handsome Hollywood icon, I accepted the role. (I am short, stocky, and over sixty.) When the actor who was selected to play my fiancé found out I got the role, she said, “Oh, well, instead of Cary Grant, we got Jackie Gleason.”
When I lamented there were too many lines for me to memorize, the director assured me a lot of dialogue would be cut. Several extraneous lines were cut, but I soon noticed a pattern: anything not deemed politically correct by today’s standards, would be censored for being out of tune with current cultural sensibilities.
There are two dimensions of culture: time and place. We all realize that Japanese culture is different than French culture, but place is only one dimension. The other is time. The American culture of today is very different than American culture of eighty years ago, when this play was written. Should a modern re-enactment of this play use Disneyfication to remove and censor language not appropriate today, or should the play be performed as it was written—honestly and authentically exposing the prejudices and attitudes of a different time?
Mickey Rooney plays Mr. Yunioshi
I come down on the side of authenticity. Don’t censor the insensitive material. In the movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Mickey Rooney played a disparaging stereotype of a Japanese man, Mr. Yunioshi. As time goes by, (and World War II fades into the background), the scenes played by Mickey Rooney, become increasingly more objectionable.
Arsenic and Old Lace was written just before we entered the war, and has the character Teddy saying, “Japan! those yellow devils.” Not surprisingly, “yellow devils” was censored. Likewise, when an annoying cop, O’Hara, relates the plot of a play he hopes to write says, “There she is, lying on the table unconscious across the table in her lingerie—the chink standing over her with a hatchet…;” the word chink (a derogatory term for someone Chinese) was censored. In fact, I suggested we use the word thug instead of chink. But even the word thug originally referred to thieves in India, who were supposedly a hereditary criminal caste.
Speaking of Indians, two lines in my script were, “The first Brewster—the one who came over on the Mayflower. You know in those days the Indians used to scalp the settlers—he used to scalp the Indians.” The entire sentence referring to Indians was deleted.
This process of Disneyfication was also applied to make the roles of men and women more in tune with today’s standards. In an early scene, Mortimer does some man-splaining to his fiancé, Elaine, when she asks why the musical isn’t playing that night.
“Darling, you have to learn the rules. With a musical there are always four changes of title and three postponements. They liked in in New Haven, but it needs a lot of work.”
Taking that out didn’t hurt the dialogue, but fortunately the female censorship committee reluctantly kept in my next episode of man-splaining. Extricating it ruined the logical flow of dialogue: “I’ll explain that to you sometime, darling—the close connection between eroticism and religion.”
Indeed, my character Mortimer Brewster is somewhat of a bastard—at least by modern standards. Ironically, one of the best lines I have is when Mortimer discovers he is not blood-related to his crazy family: “Elaine, did you hear? Do you understand? I’m a bastard!”
But an asterisk (*) near the word bastard indicates that bit of profanity might be too objectionable for many audiences. If so, they suggest ways the director can adjust the dialogue to omit this profanity. Fortunately, our director kept it in. Yet it occurs to me, that over the years, profanity has become more and more socially acceptable, whereas other terminology has become increasingly taboo. Suggesting the lead character is literally a bastard is currently OK; suggesting Indians used to scalp settlers is now taboo.
In my not so humble opinion, we need to preserve literature as it was written—even if offensive to some by modern standards. And by literature, I mean movies and plays, too. The greatest playwright was William Shakespeare. Should his play, The Merchant of Venice be banned because it is blatantly anti-Semitic? Or, if a modern company wants to put this play on stage, should any or all anti-Semitic dialogue be surgically removed? I don’t think so.
Siamese twins. OK in 1955, Taboo by 2022. From “Lady and the Tramp”
Perhaps there is justification for the Disney-fication of a Disney movie. After all, the prime audience for such films is children, and children are more likely to accept the biases and prejudices of the time the film was made as being acceptable today. Even so, I prefer the original Disney version of The Lady and the Tramp—complete with twin Siamese cats that look Asian. But adults are supposed to be mature enough to discriminate between what was acceptable at one time, and what is, or at least should be, acceptable today.
Besides, it is the deliberate intention of many authors to expose characters realistically as flawed humans who say inappropriate things. One more subtle example in Arsenic and Old Lace, is when Officer Klein, who is collecting toys to give to poor children for Christmas says, “What’s the difference what kid gets it—Bobby Evans, Izzy Cohen?” Not only does the cop not realize that “Fighting Bob Evans” was a friend of Teddy Roosevelt, he doesn’t even realize that Izzy Cohen, an obviously Jewish name, won’t be getting toys for Christmas because Jews don’t celebrate Christmas—at least not back in 1942. That line stayed in the script.
Gabby gonged saying N-word
Yet, as a Psychologist, I object to this play perpetuating the myth that insanity is a hereditary disorder. My character Mortimer is afraid to get married because he fears he will genetically pass the insanity that runs in his family onto his children. However, there is no way to “fix” or censor this idea, without ruining the entire play. I don’t like censored versions of Mel Brooks’ movie Blazing Saddles, so I didn’t want to censor or change anything in Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace.
Believe it or not, I had no serious objections to the above examples of censorship in this play—even if they went a little overboard with the Disneyfication. But there was one sticking point I just couldn’t let go of, as I felt it was destroying the entire premise of the play.
Here we get into the role of women—a cultural bone of contention if there ever was one, both today, and when the play was written. Although my role is for the leading man, the two biggest roles are for women, Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha—two sweet, generous, very proper, little old ladies who have only one “peculiarity”—they are serial killers who murder lonely old men as an act of “charity.”
Several women auditioned for these two prime roles. The reason I got my role, was there more parts for males, than men who showed up to audition. Now in Shakespeare’s day, when women weren’t allowed to be on stage, men had to play the role of women—as wonderfully illustrated in the movie Shakespeare in Love. So, it was theoretically possible for women in this play to play the role of men. Instead, they decided to turn several male characters into female characters. The cops, Klein and O’Hara, were now female officers. Although historically inaccurate—women had very limited roles in the police force until the 1950’s— having two female police officers didn’t hurt the gist of the story. Neither did making Dr. Herman Einstein (played by Peter Lorre in the movie), Dr. Herta Einstein, a woman.
Virgina Slims cigarettes advertisement aimed at women. Cancer is cool!
None of these adjustments diminished the premise of the play, but there were two additional roles that were supposed to be men—potential victims of the two aunts whose modus operandi was poisoning lonely old men with arsenic with their home-made elderberry wine. Yet it was decided that these two female serial killers killed both men and women. The twelve gentlemen buried in the cellar became the twelve people buried in the cellar—the term gentlemen no longer being appropriate.
After all, shouldn’t women have the right to be victims of serial killers, as well as men? I argued that even if their last two attempts at murder were directed at women, we didn’t have to make the already dead twelve male victims, both men and women. It reminds me of the old TV commercials for Virginia Slim cigarettes, which encouraged women to smoke, as they had as much right to die from lung cancer as men did. This is equality?
Moreover, plays reflect the political angst of the times. And at this time in history, on the eve of our involvement in World War II, millions of men were being killed and would be killed. Even though killing others in war isn’t considered an act of charity; it isn’t considered murder either. Nevertheless, men are the expected victims of war, and their killing is justified because soldiers don’t murder, they fight for their country. No wonder the two demented old aunts see nothing wrong with culling out lonely old men for extermination. It is true, at this time in Germany, the Nazis were culling out men, women and children for extermination, but few if any Americans in knew this before we entered the war.
I soon discovered my opinion didn’t matter. Most everyone else disagreed with me.
But I find it amusing that so many of my closest liberal and progressive friends are just as gung-ho about censorship as conservatives who want books banned from school. We are just as human as they are, and we humans, regardless of political orientation or values, want to get rid of anything we deem objectionable. The only real difference—and it is a big one—is what is found to be objectionable enough to warrant it being banned or censored.
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