Evolving censorship and eternal censorship by Lucian Merisca

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If me, like writer of science-fiction, I have to speak about anticipation and Censorship, then I can find an example of anticipation, even more awesome than the journey to the Moon, predicted by Jules Verne!…

Searching among my old magazines this year, 25 years after the "Revolution" in Romania, I found a “Time”, nr. 17, 28-th April 1986, where, under the title “Communism’s Old Men”, it was written: “Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, 68, appears to be in failing health, and Gorbachev may already have a protégé waiting. He could be Ion Iliescu, 56, who reportedly studied with the soviet leader in Moscow.”

Extraordinary! “Time” guessed right!… And I hadn’t known, since now, that this publication is a magazine of anticipation!...

But it wouldn’t have been conceivable for such an article to be translated in Romania during Ceausescu’s era, though it was then that it was written…

If we were to refer in a few words to the past, in the communist bloc, Science Fiction literature (official name: "Techno-Scientific Anticipation Literature") was the best disguise or mask to fool the censorship of Securitate (the political police). Under the quasi-scientific aspect of SF, quasi-political positions were sometimes hidden. One of my own narratives ("Derating"), written between mainstream and SF, in fact, a subversive political-fiction – wouldn’t have had the chance to be published first in Romania, than in France in 1987, if hadn’t been included in a SF anthology! It was declared “dissident” by the French editor as late as 1990, after the fall of communism…, as a proof that, even in Western Europe, self-censorship was somehow in act… Or, let’s take the case of my father, Costin Merisca, who lost his youth in the communist prisons. He described all those years of prison and “educational gulag” in a novel in manuscript, hidden for decades with thousand precautions… My late brother Dan proposed him one day, in the time of communist era, to transform these memories in a SF novel, to be able to publish it… as a parable for totalitarianism, but, of course, everything happens on the background of another planet… Fortunately, the old regime fell down, and my father’s novel ("Hell Realm") could be published without the disguise of S.F.

Could the political and ideological censorship be possible from now on? Or will be understand something else when we say “politics” and “ideology”?…

Anyway, today’s censorship is less concerned with ideology than with economy – so, we can call it “trading censorship”. It is true that, in a market economy, economic reasons cannot be ignored. They can at most be reinterpreted and avoided as lawyers do with laws, or a sportsman who windsurfs and manage to use the wind even for going against it!…

Another form of “censorship” that will probably remain eternal is the so-called “literary, stylistic censorship”. So, there are certain institutions and persons – official or formalized – who decide “how we must write” – of course, from an academic point of view. Other writers, on the contrary, do not strive to write according to critical standards, and write for the public taste, to gain immediate success from the part of the readers. So, what old critics are trying to impose is a sort of relative literary and artistic censorship or philological censorship. From the intermingling of these types of censorship, confusion arises. In Romania, for instance, it happens that a part of the new generation of SF authors, in order to make others notice that they totally escaped political censorship, fall into the other extreme, giving up any kind of self-censorship, including the moral one… This leads to the annihilation of a deep moral finality of science-fiction narratives and generally speaking of any kind of finality.

A certain form of political and social censorship visibly appears with the nations that promote a compulsory optimism and self-confidence that sometimes reaches self-sufficiency!… We must notice that the obligatoriness of the “happy ending” was present not only in the American movies and literature, but also in those created in the communist bloc. But, some can say – it's not true that this censorship linked with optimism and self-confidence, is it necessary to maintain the vitality – not only of writers, but also of the entire nation?… But, beware! Even communism in its utopic essence was an unnatural movement, of a good built on force!…Who has the right to legalize which is the social good, and who has the right to impose it?… Or we believe now in some kind of good universal conspiracy?...

And now, another censorship of the present, very little spoken about – the linguistically censorship. If you don’t write in English, you don’t write interestingly, or you don’t write nothing… For almost nobody! (Or you even don’t exist, as author…) In my country, it happened that a writer, a friend of mine, noticed that he cannot publish his SF novel. So, he took an American pen name, remaining on the cover as the so-called translator… In that case, he found an editor…

Now, let us pass to the near future. Soon, the Republicans and the Democrats, or the Conservatives and Labourists will not be the greatest parties any longer, but the “Coca Colalcoholics” (those addicted to Coca Cola), and the “Pepsi Colalcoholics” (those addicted to Pepsi Cola)… One will no longer be on the left side or on the right side, but on the Coke side or on the Pepsi side… And any allusion – praising or ironical – or the presence of this trade-names on the pages of a SF novel will be the equivalent of a political implication – on one side or on the other – and it will be even possible for the authors to be rewarded… or punished. Sure, I refer to the “financial censorship” of some possible law actions brought by the great companies against some possible denigrators. …On the other hand, which of you wouldn’t accept the supremacy – on a period of a Galactic Empire, for instance – of the Coca Cola drink – in your novels – on condition of a yearly revenue that would help you to live in peace and write all day long?…

No doubt, along with the appearance of tribes of smokers and non-smokers (or anti-smokers), a new form of social censorship will also appear. In an optimistically variant, great World Conventions of non-smokers will exist, along with small clandestine meetings of smokers. Anti-smoking books will be officially accepted, while SF stories where the hero lights a cigarette will be considered decadent and will appear only in samizdat, extreme or underground magazines…

Then, there is the problem of AIDS. We can suppose that in SF erotic novels it will not be the hot scenes that will be censored (describing some average techno-sexual or exo-sexual relationships), but censorship will be applied to the scenes where the characters don’t apply condoms. Of course, a condom fit for the species to which they belong.

And finally, we will reach in fact the general censoring of books – so, their placing outside the eco-low, and their total replacing with electronic libraries. It happens even now. This replacement will be enhanced by the great soft companies, Internet moguls that will argue to the Governments that in this way the forests are spared. And you, who want to buy old-fashioned books and magazines, finish with stupidities and stay like all other non-stop on the net.

Leading our essay further, to the far-away future, we can anticipate that the term “politically correct” will be replaced with “galactically correct” – along with the arrival of the exterrs (extra-terrestrials), which necessarily take place in U.S. (with or without a visa; or, maybe, a special green card for those little green men)… We will finish then once and for all, with comics that show our brothers from the stars, as monsters with boils and suckers, or with novels describing them as horrible beings, with perverse inclinations... (It may happen that officially, they will not be called “extra-terrestrials” any longer, but non-terrestrials or a-terrestrials, in order not to offend them.)

The SF authors will continue, never less, to treat aliens with irony, even if more subtly, and this just because SF novels written by extra-terrestrials, will be better sold than SF novels written by earthlings.

On the other hand, if not the earth-centrists (earthly nationalists) will win the political battle, then the cosmo-polites (who will be interested in stimulating the emigration outside the Earth), will be the ones to impose their own censorship. Thus SF novels extolling live on the orbit or in other planetary systems, will be encouraged, to show how happily will earthlings & natives from other planets get along. This emigration to the Exterior ("Ex-terrior"), encouraged by efficiently censoring pessimistic SF books, will change the old slogan “Go West” with the new slogan “Go Up!”...

And as history is linked with the anticipation, and as the way history books of one nation are written, can offend other nations, we can reach the “peak of political correctness”... In order not to offend anybody, it could become compulsory that at the beginning of History books should be written, as in American movies: “All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”...

Finally, let us talk about the “transcendental censorship”... WHAT ARE WE ALLOWED to KNOW and what NOT? In fact, we should have started with that; we will end with it... Let us remember the Tree of Knowledge, the disobedient censorship and the Banishing from Paradise...

This already visible and possible form of censorship will result from the doctrinarian struggle between the religious fundamentalists (and militant atheists) by one hand, and those who will embrace a form of syncretic “New Age” or will embrace nothing. Some says that André Malraux predicted as a prophet that “the 21st century will either be religious, or it will not be at all”. Other people simplified this statement and said only “it won’t be at all”! The old religions and the new spiritual movements will accuse one another that their writings are pure evil and they will censor one another. Like two snakes that eat each other, till remain only the tails, then till remain nothing…

In conclusion, if at the surface censorship is restricted to the notion of prejudice, in its profound meaning, it sticks to the idea of “taboo”. But, is it taboo a form of social control or does it have an aprioristic, metaphysical load?... So, the problem that we raise in the end is whether these taboos are necessary... or simply unavoidable?

And here only the Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade could answer to our question... had it not been the censorship of his death…