The final week of September is Banned Book Week, a time to look at the impact of censorship, whether right or wrong, on our society. It is the ideal time to recall the trials and tribulations that censorship, the censors and the censored have endured in recent years.
Censorship, in its most violent form, reared its head earlier this year when the late Ayatollah Khomeini put a price tag on the life of Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses."To Moslems, the book is blasphemy, and Moslem opposition to the book, for the most part, favors banning or burning it.
Censorship in a gentler form was practiced last year when Christians opposed Martin Scorcese's film, "The Last Temptation of Christ." Some Christians did insist it was "a work of art." Most were shocked by what they felt was blasphemy. Pickets, petitions and protests were the weapons used to make the Universal production a box office loser.
For the most part, in the United States the censor's scissors are rusty now. They haven't been used with any vigor in many years.
The censor was put out to pasture in the '50s by the U.S. Supreme Court, when it ruled that as long as a play, book, movie or any work of art has "redeeming social value," it cannot be banned.
Thus, it was the censor, except in rare cases, who hung up his scissors on a hook and forgot they were there. Nevertheless, while he was wielding them, he had a merry old time.
The most surprising censorship case of all involved Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Censors in a number of major cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Miami had their doubts about a scene in the classic when it came out in 1937. In fact, it was in danger of being banned in some communities.
The uproar was inspired by four lines in a song Sneezy, one of the dwarfs, sang. The controversial lines went:
Needless to say, the Disney people were stunned when they learned their film was having problems. Other movies, plays and books had reaped great financial gains when they had trouble with the censors. Snow White was an entirely different matter. To avoid any unpleasant publicity, Disney cut out the four lines. However, they were restored when the film was later reissued.
"Snow White" was a victim of a chain reaction scissoring that old-fashioned city and town censors indulged in years ago. If the protector of virtue in a certain community - say Boston, as was the case with the Disney film - found something interesting in a book, play or film, the publicity that followed would cause censors in other communities to scrutinize the same work of art so they would not be considered asleep at the switch.
Disney was definitely not immune to censorship problems. The marital status of Mickey and Minnie, Donald and Daisy and Goofy and Clarabelle has been challenged a number of times along the way. Overseas, in Europe, after World War II, the Disney comic books had more than their share of headaches.
The Three Stooges also had trouble galore way back when they did a vaudeville tour in the late '30s. The trouble started in Portland, Ore., when they did a sketch in which they were sailors on leave in France. The dialogue was questioned and changes were made.
Later on, when they headed east, the censors were waiting for them. The spotlight beamed on a beautiful blonde featured in their skit. Local censors in practically every town they visited demanded the young woman wear something more prim and proper.
In 1939, "Gone With the Wind" was almost banned in a lot of places because Clark Gable said he didn't "give a damn" near the end of the movie. Many censors threatened to keep the film out of their towns unless that "damn" was changed to a "darn." Producer David O. Selznick refused to budge, and the censors backed off because the public was waiting anxiously to see the much-publicized picture.
Boston was the center of censorship in the good old days. That "banned in Boston" label was pure gold. It guaranteed, in most cases, a best seller or long lines.
A long and distinguished list of works of art were clipped by the scissors of the Boston city censor. That list includes Lillian Hellman's "The Children's Hour," Eugene O'Neill's "Strange Interlude," J.M. Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World," H.G. Wells' "The World of William Clissold," Sean O'Casey's "Within the Gate," and Voltaire's "Candide."
Other "banned in Boston" masterpieces include "The Last Time I Saw Paris" by Elliot Paul, Sinclair Lewis' "Elmer Gantry," "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair's "Oil," Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" and countless others.
Censorship left Boston decades ago. In 1970, Richard Sinnott, the last of Boston's censors, told an interviewer: "I haven't banned anything in years. We've got a lot of terrible movies showing around town, but if I tried to ban them, the theater owners would go to court and have my ban tossed out the window. It's not like the old days. You can't ban anything in Boston any more."
The first book ever officially banned in Boston was called "The Woman Who Did." It was written by Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen, who used the pen name of Grant Allen. The author, a native of Canada, was a naturalist who wrote scholarly essays that never got published. In need of cash, he penned "a trashy novel" and made some money. In time, he decided to write his "epic novel" and become a literary immortal. According to Allen, "The Woman Who Did" was aimed at "stamping out prostitution forever."
British critics panned the book, calling it "depraved" and "a menace of womanhood."
In 1896, Roberts Brothers, a Boston publishing house, brought it out. City officials flatly refused to allow the book to be displayed on the shelves of the Boston Public Library, and booksellers who tried to peddle the novel were arrested.
Thus, "The Woman Who Did" became the first book ever banned in Boston. Grant Allen was finished. After that, he wrote travel books under another name. He was only 51 when he died in 1899.
Perhaps the most interesting censorship case in the United States lately involves the American Heritage Dictionary. In 1976 it was removed from the shelves of libraries in Anchorage, Alaska, and Cedar Lake, Ind. In 1977 it was banned in Eldon, Mo., and five years later it was taken off the shelves in Folsom, Calif.
Why? In each case "objectionable language" was the reason given.
Censorship is not limited to the United States. In 1835, Hans Christian Andersen's volume of "Wonder Stories" was kicked out of the country by Nicholas I of Russia. The same book was only available to adults in Illinois for a while. It was kept in the adult section in libraries to make it "impossible for children to obtain smut."
In 1985 "The Arabian Nights," also known as "A Thousand and One Nights," was denounced and burned in Cairo, Egypt. Allegedly it contained obscene passages.
Balzac's "Droll Stories" could not make it into Canada back in 1914. Customs wouldn't allow it to enter. "The Marriage of Figaro" was banned in France.
Martin Luther's translation of the Bible was burned in Germany in 1624, when it came out. The USSR has kept the Bible out of circulation for years.
You will also have trouble obtaining a copy of the Good Book in Ethiopia. Dante's "The Divine Comedy" has been burned in a number of places over the centuries. Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" has had the same problems. In 1933, the Nazis burned Dreiser's "An American Tragedy." George Eliot's "Adam Bede" was considered "vile" in England in 1859, when it came out.
"The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" was toned down a number of times. Franklin was a literary braggart and took delight in recalling his sexual conquests. He was censored in Europe. In the United States, too.
Huxley's "Brave New World" was banned in Ireland. Ibsen's "Ghosts" was censored in England in 1892, and scissored in Spain a half-century later.
"The Koran" is restricted in Russia. Shakespeare has been censored in a number of places. His "Merchant of Venice" has been banned in several countries along the way, but somehow has managed to survive. Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman" is not available in Yugoslavia.
So many books, plays and films have been scissored, burned or banned over the years, it is impossible to compile a complete list of them.
Be that as it may, censorship in the Western World, for the most part, has gone out of style to such a degree it could almost be considered a lost art.