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Censorship
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     censorship of performance

This page provides a perspective on online censorship by looking at the censorship of performance (theatre and music) and the visual arts. 

It covers -

• theatre
• music

     theatre

For much of the past five hundred years restrictions on public theatrical performance were perhaps the pre-eminent manifestation of censorship.

That was because the theatre (later replaced as a bugaboo by film and broadcasting) was perceived as a uniquely powerful mechanism for influencing emotions and for the delivery of seditious ideas. It was often a space in which people of all social orders mixed promiscuously. And, perhaps as importantly, it was amenable to censorship through -

• licencing of commercial venues
• prohibitions on commercial performances outside those venues
• pre-performance examination and licensing of texts, with subsequent monitoring of theatrical productions.

In the United Kingdom, for example, licensing of commercial venues and vetting of scripts was in place by the time of Elizabeth I. Stage works were subject to pre-production censorship by the Lord Chamberlain (an officer of the Royal Household) under the Stage Licensing Act 1737, an enactment that with amendments remained in force until 1968. It's discussed in Vincent Liesenfeld's The Licensing Act of 1737 (Madison: Uni of Wisconsin Press 1984). The 1843 Act required -

the submission of any new stage play or addition to an old play, intended to the produced or acted for hire in Great Britain seven days before it is due to be first acted or presented, and it is an offence to present anything which has been disallowed, or not been given a licence.

Similar legislation was in place in Australia from soon after the first Anglo settlement (eg the Places of Public Entertainment Act 1828 in NSW colony) but was wound back earlier than in the UK.

John Johnston's The Lord Chamberlain's Blue Pencil (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1990) is a readable account of UK theatrical censorship: don't mention the war, the royal family, the 'F' word, the divinity or indeed anything likely to frighten the horses up to the 1950s. There's a more scholarly and detailed study in The Censorship of British Drama, 1900-1968 (Exeter: Uni of Exeter Press 2003) by Steve Nicholson, his British Theatre and the Red Peril: The Portrayal of Communism, 1917–1945 (Exeter: Uni of Exeter Press 1999), Politics, Prudery & Perversions: The Censoring of the English Stage 1901-1968 (London: Methuen 2000) by Nicholas De Jongh and The Censorship of English Drama 1824-1901 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1981) edited by John Stephens.

Nicholson's account can be contrasted with that in Fredric Hemming's Theatre & State in France, 1760-1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1984). For early UK censorship a useful point of entry is Cyndia Clegg's Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1997) and Press Censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2001) and Lynn Hunt's The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity & the Origins of Modernity, 1500-1800 (New York: Zone 1993).

For the US a starting point is John Houchin's Censorship of the American Theatre in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2003).

Joss Marsh's Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture & Literature in 19th Century England (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 1998) is an academic study of UK blasphemy censorship, which as noted earlier in this guide was still active in the early 1990s. Anthony Aldgate's Censorship & the Permissive Society: British Cinema & Theatre 1955-1965 (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1995) catch the UK censors in action at critical times.

     music

Censorship of music has taken two forms.

The first is prohibitions on performance of particular works. Mozart's 'subversive' Magic Flute was pulled from the Austrian repertoire. Verdi's Stiffelio was suppressed; his Un Ballo in Machera is a reworking of a politically incorrect earlier version. Glenn Watkins' Proof Through The Night: Music & the Great War (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 2003) highlights censorship of symphonic or other works during the 1914-18 War. Later music critic Stalin (along with his peers) cancelled performances, printing of particular manuscript scores or the lives of their authors. For the Nazi era see in particular Michael Kater's Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford Uni Press 1992) and Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits (New York: Oxford Uni Press 2000), Michael Meyer's The Politics of Music in the Third Reich (New York: Peter Lang 1991) and Erik Levi's Music in the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin's 1994).

Censorship of lyrics has been more widespread and dates at least to the beginning of print, with particular texts being confiscated or amended under the ancien regime. In Australia and elsewhere lyrics were banned at the beginning of last century as too risque. In Argentina one set of military supremos censored tango lyrics from 1943 to 1949.

Censorship extended from paper to performance with the advent of mechanical recording. The Australian federal Customs service for example confiscated early shellac recording deemed too lubricious. Elvis Presley, undeterred by criticisms of his own performance, encouraged 'Beatle Burns', ie cremation of records from the Fab Four.

More recently Tipper Gore and others to her husband's far right converged in urging censorship of offensive rock and rap lyrics. Particular songs are accordingly not broadcast on Australian and US radio or only in an expurgated form. During 1983 Simon & Garfunkel's Cecilia ("... I 'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please to come home") was apparently banned in Malawi after reminding people of disagreements between President-for-Life Hastings Banda and female friend Tamanda Kadzamira

Bleep! Censoring Rock & Rap Music (Westport: Greenwood 1999) is a collection of essays edited by Betty Winfield on contemporary music censorship in the US, complemented by Banned! Censorship of Popular Music in Britain 1967-92 (London: Arena 1996) by Martin Cloonan. There's a more funky study by Eric Nuzum: Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America (New York: Morrow 2001). For an earlier period see Hitler’s Airwaves: The Inside Story of Nazi Broadcasting and Propaganda Swing (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1997) by Horst Bergmeier & Rainer Lotz and other works highlighted on the broadcast page of this guide.




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