Free Speech, Gore Vidal and TV Censorship
I recently read an essay by Gore Vidal, dated 1956, about censorship of material written for TV back in the 1950's when he was doing television playwrighting.
The tone of the essay is a somewhat surprised and bemused admiration by Vidal for the unintended benefit of TV censorship. He discovered that it actually required a playwright/screenwriter to be more creative than a lack of censorship would. I agree.
He wrote: "More often than not, the tension between what one is not allowed to say and what one must say creates ingenious effects which, given total freedom, might never have been forced from the imagination." He went on, "With patience and ingenuity there is nothing that the imaginative writer cannot say..."
My first thought after I read the essay was of "Seinfeld" and how many of their ingenious references could have gotten by a censor in much cruder form, to the viewer's detriment, if they hadn't self-imposed censorship on their writers.
What Seinfeld devotee can forget the reference to "south of the equator" a hilariously clever reference to a sex act that could, and has been, crudely referred to in other TV sitcoms or movies?
The possibility that censorship of free speech, at least in the entertainment field, might actually create better writing seems counter-intuitive. That is why I think Vidal was so surprised by its effect on TV writing, since he would be the last person to endorse limits on free speech in other areas of society.
The indirect reference or clever double entendre has almost disappeared from TV and film. Their disappearance has led to a youth culture being brought up on a definition of "comedy" as a collection of ham-handed bathroom scenes, bad language and crude references to bodily functions that anyone could write, and that Vidal would find offensive. Too bad.
The tone of the essay is a somewhat surprised and bemused admiration by Vidal for the unintended benefit of TV censorship. He discovered that it actually required a playwright/screenwriter to be more creative than a lack of censorship would. I agree.
He wrote: "More often than not, the tension between what one is not allowed to say and what one must say creates ingenious effects which, given total freedom, might never have been forced from the imagination." He went on, "With patience and ingenuity there is nothing that the imaginative writer cannot say..."
My first thought after I read the essay was of "Seinfeld" and how many of their ingenious references could have gotten by a censor in much cruder form, to the viewer's detriment, if they hadn't self-imposed censorship on their writers.
What Seinfeld devotee can forget the reference to "south of the equator" a hilariously clever reference to a sex act that could, and has been, crudely referred to in other TV sitcoms or movies?
The possibility that censorship of free speech, at least in the entertainment field, might actually create better writing seems counter-intuitive. That is why I think Vidal was so surprised by its effect on TV writing, since he would be the last person to endorse limits on free speech in other areas of society.
The indirect reference or clever double entendre has almost disappeared from TV and film. Their disappearance has led to a youth culture being brought up on a definition of "comedy" as a collection of ham-handed bathroom scenes, bad language and crude references to bodily functions that anyone could write, and that Vidal would find offensive. Too bad.
posted by Marshall Darts at
9:16 AM
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