Political censorship

A play examining issues of Islamic extremism and radicalization in a London school was suddenly pulled last month. “Homegrown” inspired by the case of the three English schoolgirls from East London who ran off to Syria in February had been scheduled for the National Youth Theatre but cancelled ten days before opening night.

Reported by Al Jazeera, there has been no explanation on why the play had been dropped except that the police had turned up during rehearsals and requested a copy of the script. They also indicated they would attend performances with plain clothes officers in the audience. The explanation from the National Youth Theatre people who pulled the performance was that “Homegrown” did not meet their standards despite its artistic director Paul Roseby, according to the Guardian newspaper previously saying “Their duty as a young company was to tell stories that are on the edge that divide opinions”.

While obviously the production would have contained a critical examination of the government’s growing counter terrorism policy, police involvement and subsequent cancellation would indicate political involvement and censorship. The decision is reminiscent of the decision in Australia forcing the Australian Festival of Dangerous Ideas to pull one of its speakers from its programme at the Sydney Opera House on the basis of presumed content. Certainly “Homegrown” would have contained some concepts which outraged local cultural sensitivities. It could for example be postulating that the Islamic State emergence was justified reacting to intimidation and murder of Sunnis by the surrounding Shia majority. Even if one accepted this premise, the barbarity, beheadings and other carnage might not be condonable but this tends to cloud the issues.

The overall question still surrounds the ethics of censorship and whether this is politically acceptable no matter to what extreme position is vocalised? The issue within the question becomes the ethics of pulling the content before the public have the opportunity to be exposed to it or are able to form an opinion for themselves. Since the police had names of people expected to be attending the London performance, which was even unknown to organisers, this was seen as a thin line between spy and protector. Fast forward to last week’s case in NSW where calls were made by politicians to cancel the showing of a Sydney Film Festival movie “Gayby Baby” depicting children growing up under same sex partners to school girls when they had not even seen the film themselves. Should people be permitted to view content and make up their own minds or are others needed to make this decision for us?

At cinemas almost anything is available unlike with Google but there is a classification system so watch AO rated movies and you know what you will get. Attend a “Festival of Dangerous Ideas” and you don’t expect sugar coated rhetoric or you wouldn’t be going there to participate. This begs the question of whether the public needs to be protected from themselves and from exposure to radical thinking and if so, what are their limits in offering such protection?