Sunday, November 4, 2007

Media Censorship

A recurring theme that I have noticed over the last few years is one of media censorship. It seems like every time that someone uses a “curse word” on television a federal case is made out of it. My opinion on this matter is that words in and of themselves have no power without context and thus no word should be considered inherently inappropriate. For instance even the f-word which is considered the most inappropriate word of them all can be taken to mean a variety of different things based on the context. Another factor to consider is these words can be used to portray a particular artistic vision. By removing these curse words the artistic vision in some cases is skewed or not fulfilled and thus not only is it a censorship of speech but also a censorship of art.

Most curse words are simply words from older languages with common meaning that when translated were given vulgar connotations. When it really comes down to it curse words have similar meanings as other words and we have just placed them into a category of inappropriate. So it would seem that if we simply removed the broad language censorship from television and radio and replaced it with contextual censorship (to limit conversation on vulgar topics, much like there is a line between art and pornography but yet no color of ink is in and of itself banned) we would then over time remove the vulgar and inappropriate connotations from these words we so fear and they would no longer be considered inappropriate.

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