The Golden Age of Censorship
by Paul Hoffman
T. S. Eliot thought it a curiosity of our culture that we use the word ‘taboo’ purely negatively. The word ‘censor’ is surely similar: the notion that any person or society could survive for long without some forms of censorship is fatuous, and yet it is something that tends to arouse disapproval. It implies political oppression, sexual squeamishness, or even worse, the meddling in other people’s psyches in order to ‘put them right’. We are far more likely to protest about it than celebrate its achievements. The Lord Chamberlain’s office became a byword for the kind of fatuity that John Osborne spent decades lampooning.
So Paul Hoffman’s title might seem inherently paradoxical. But no. This often engrossingly brilliant novel explores the subject with an intellectual honesty that should be saluted. His British Film Secretariat has the job of awarding certificates (or not) to films and videos.
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