Torpedo the Ark Versus the Censor-Bots

Screenshot of my post with sensitive content warning 

 

 

I.

 

D. H. Lawrence famously battled the censors throughout his life as a writer - often describing them as morons infected with the grey disease of puritanism and busy extinguishing the gaiety and rich colour of life, which they find both dangerous and obscene [1].

 

He also thinks of censors as dead men; "for no live, sunny man would be a censor" [2].

 

But of course, Lawrence was writing 100 years ago and things have changed since then. Now censorship is often carried out by an autonomous programme or bot relying on instructions supplied in the form of an algorithm.

 

Take, for example, the following case ...

 

 

II.

 

In ten years of publishing on Blogger - a site owned by Google since 2003 - I have never had any issue concerning content of the 2000 posts. 

 

But the first part of my post on Young Kim's erotic memoir - A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell (2020) - that I published recently (24 Feb), was immediately issued with a sensitive content notice, which warns that I have, apparently, infringed community guidelines (a document which describe the boundaries of what is - and is not - allowed on Blogger).

 

Admittedly, readers can still access the post, but it takes a bit more effort and this will, inevitably, result in a loss of views.      

 

I am unable to appeal this decision: and nor have I been told the exact nature of my offence; i.e., what word, phrase, or idea is so distressing to the censor-bot. 

 

Thus, although I have been invited by Google to update content so as to conform to their guidelines - and then instructed to republish the post so that it's status can be officially reviewed - I really don't know how or where to begin any revision. 

 

Not that I feel inclined to make changes to my text - to effectively self-censor. Did we have done with the judgement of God, merely to accept the judgement of Google ...? I think not. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In a letter written in November 1928 to Morris Ernst - an American lawyer and prominent member of the American Civil Liberties Union who would later play a significant role in challenging the ban placed on works of literature including James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928) - Lawrence makes his disdain for the censor-moron clear:

 

"Myself, I believe censorship helps nobody; and hurts many. [...] Our civilisation cannot afford to let the censor-moron loose. The censor-moron does not really hate anything but the living and growing human consciousness. It is our developing and extending consciousness that he threatens - and our consciousness in its newest, most sensitive activity, its vital growth. To arrest or circumscribe the vital consciousness is to produce morons, and nothing but a moron would wish to do it." 

 

See: The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 613.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Censors', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. by Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 459.   

Betty Boop Versus the Censor-Morons

Betty Boop: before and after introducion of the Hays Code

I.

The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of moral guidelines applied to US films released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. Often known as the Hays Code, after William Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (1922-1945), it clearly set out what was and was not acceptable content for movies produced for the American public.

Whilst it obviously restricted filmmaking, it coincidently overlapped with the Golden Age of Hollywood, demonstrating that explicit sex and graphic violence are not essential elements of great movies.

Just to be clear: I'm not advocating censorship. As a Lawrentian, I'm instinctively hostile to the censor-morons who heavy-handedly enforce the letter of the law and I believe that ultimately censorship helps nobody and harms many; arresting and circumscribing the development of vital human consciousness.*

All I'm doing, rather, is reminding readers that whilst numerous aspects of the Code now seem ridiculous and reprehensible, many great directors made many great films whilst working within its framework. (Of course, it could be argued that these films were made in spite of the Code and that there are at least an equal number of films weakened by cuts insisted upon by the censors.)  

One star whose career was certainly impacted negatively by the Code, was animated favourite Betty Boop ...

II.

Created by Max Fleischer, Betty Boop made her first appearance in the six-minute adventure Dizzy Dishes (1930). At this stage, she appeared as a neotenous-looking half-woman, half-poodle, though still with her distinctive features including a large round baby face, big eyes, and a carefully styled coiffure - and still dressed like a Jazz Age flapper, with a short skirt and stockings.

Within a year, Betty became fully human and her floppy ears were replaced with signature hoop earrings. She soon dumped her original canine boyfriend - the tubby black-and-white dog known as Bimbo - and began to flirt with human love interests, including Popeye the sailor.**

In 1932, thanks to her popularity amongst adult audiences as a two-dimensional sex symbol, she was given her own series and crowned queen of the animated screen. However, after 1934, when the Hays Code began to be more rigorously enforced and the Catholic Legion of Decency also jumped on her case, Betty's overt sexuality became problematic. 

Joseph Breen - the head film censor appointed by Hays - ordered the removal of the saucy openings to Betty's short films, deeming her winks and wiggles suggestive of immorality. Her animators were also obliged to provide her with a more demure appearance.

Personally, I prefer this new look. But most critics seem to agree that Betty's best days were already behind her by 1935. No longer the carefree adolescent boop-oop-a-dooping her way through one risqué adventure after another, Betty was reinvented as a housewife or a career girl. No more garter on display; no more gold bracelets or hoop earrings; even the curls in her hair gradually softened and decreased as the years passed.

Betty was now a little more mature and a little more responsible: in a word, boring. And her films, now aimed at a much younger audience, were disappointingly tame compared to her earlier adventures; their self-conscious wholesomeness contributing to the waning of her star. 

Further, by 1938 the Jazz Age was well and truly over, having been superseded by the era of swing and the big band sound. Desperate attempts to have Betty move with the times were doomed to failure. However, eighty years on, and Miss Boop has retained her iconic status within popular culture and the pornographic imagination (second only to Jessica Rabbit as the sexiest cartoon character of all time).

Notes

* See Lawrence's letter to Morris Ernest of 10 November 1928, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI (1927-28), ed. James and Margaret Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 613. 

** Amusingly, there is even supposed to exist a pornographic short featuring Betty and Popeye. According to Jim Hill, in 1938 Max Fleischer wished to thank animators who had moved from New York to a new studio in Florida by throwing a party at which he screened a one-reel film in which Popeye requires his spinach in order to satisfy a sexually insatiable Betty. It's unknown what became of the film (if in fact it ever existed). See Jim Hill, Why For? (10 April 2003): click here.   

See also an interesting article by Heather Hendershot, 'Secretary, Homemaker, and 'White' Woman: Industrial Censorship and Betty Boop's Shifting Design', in the Journal of Design History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 117-130. Click here for a link via which the essay can be purchased and downloaded.