Censorship-a fable for modern Kansans
Once upon a time not so very long ago in a place not far from here, there lived a group of very happy people. Every morning the sun would rise in fiery splendor through an azure sky, gilding everything within its reach and warming the rich black earth.
In the village, houses would come to life as breakfast fires roared in the hearths. The men hurried off to their businesses and the women bustled about the houses discharging daily tasks and coping with minor emergencies. The children went whistling off to school except for those who had to stay behind and play because they were too young.
COME EVENING, the men would hurry home from work, the women would place dinner on the table, and the whole family would enjoy a spirit of togetherness before the night's recreation. They were a hard-working, fun-loving people—no better nor worse than their ancestors had been. Life was simple. Life was calm. Life was good. Nothing ever changed.
Then one day, one of the town's leading senior citizens was out walking when he happened to spy a four-letter Anglo-Saxon word crudely scrawled in cawen on a board fence. He was noticeably disturbed. A little further on, he spied another shocking display of human desire.
"Forsooth," he declared, "methinks the country is going to the hounds!" So he hobbled as fast as his cane would allow back to his club where he wasted no time explaining to his cronies what he had seen.
"No doubt 'tis the influence of all of today's dirty books and movies," he hypothesized, using the stock criteria that everything since his day was, of course, "dirty." The cronies nodded their aged heads in mute agreement. "I propose we form a board selected from our mature and knowledgeable group to eradicate all this dirt," he said. Again the graying heads bobbed.
"IF WE REMOVE all dirty words, then we'll remove all dirty thoughts, too," he concluded profoundly. And so they set to work.
The group hired squads of painters to repaint all fences and buildings where scrawlings appeared. Men's restrooms were invaded and given a gleaming new surface. Professional readers went through volumes at all the bookstands marking out questionable words with a magic marker. Even words in film dialogue were dubbed over with a "beep."
Of course the happy people were at first taken aback, but they said nothing. The elders must be right, they said, because they had never been questioned before. The thought of constitutional freedoms never entered their heads.
It was not until one fateful day a couple of months later that something had to give. One of the local college youths came home for a vacation. His first day back, he decided to go to a movie, but arriving early, he spent some time browsing through a book and record shop near the theater.
"ODD," HE THOUGHT as he glanced over the titles. Some of the words had been blotted out by ink markers. "The Turn of the ...," by Henry James, he read. Glancing at the albums, he noted "Die Gotter erung" by Wagner. But he shrugged it off and went mercilily in to the movie.
He was just settling himself comfortably in the plush seat when the house lights dimmed and the travelogue flickered on. It was about the man-made wonders of the country. At one point, it showed a guide leading a group around a huge reservoir. "And here, ladies and gentlemen," the guide explained, "is the incomparable Grand Coulee "beep." The student shot upright in amazement. Had he heard right?
The guide continued, "Yes, Grand Coulee "beep" is the largest. .." The student's mind couldn't comprehend. He fled to a quiet cafe down the street to mull over what had happened. As he stepped through the door, he was assaulted by the strains of a then-popular recording coming from the jukebox. "Beep-o, Dolly. Well, Beep-o, Dolly," crooned the raspy bass voice. That did it.
Armed with a crayon, the student set about to return vulgarity to its proper place. He scribbled on freshly painted fences. He wrote on clean restroom walls. Late at night, he stalked about serenading his neighbors with "Hello, Dolly." The elders were outraged at the impertinence.
MORE PAINTERS WERE hired. This time, they were armed with paint sprayers. The student rallied again, spending many hours on his newly found project. It even looked as if he might win.
The elders conferred. Then their painters were given cans of spray paint with instructions to blot out the offending words rather than to try to cover whole areas.
The student became desperate. Try as he might, he couldn't keep ahead of the paint sprayers. So he gave up. The elders rejoiced. The fiend had been overcome at last, they said.
Then an idea hit the student. He obtained a can of spray paint and went to work.
The next morning, one of the elders was driving down a street when he came upon a partially vandalized sign. It should have read "No Parking." Instead,
it read "No ... ing." He was puzzled. Why would anybody do a thing like that, he asked himself.
THE ANSWER WAS NOT long in coming. At that moment, a couple of grade-schoolers skipped by the sign. Both stopped. One pointed at it and both sniggered knowingly. The elder's jaw dropped in horror. He hurried to his club to tell what he had seen. On his way he saw other examples of the new handiwork: "Eat ___ at Joe's." "Get ___ for Less." "Believe and ye shall be..."
Truth dawned. To take away the word didn't necessarily take away the thought, too.
In another part of town, the student drove around in his new sports car sounding the horn at frequent intervals. "Beep," he honked, and the conditioned townspeople reacted like Pavlov's dogs. Strong men blushed and women fainted right on the street. The snowball was gaining momentum.
Pornographers worked day and night filling books with nothing but blanks and inked-in places. It was much easier and faster to produce, they agreed. Hundreds of teenagers dropped "Tropic of Cancer" and "Candy" in favor of the new books, "A Friend Is Someone Who ... You," "Winnie the ...," and others, as soon as they hit the stands.
MEANWHILE THE ELDERS called an emergency meeting of the board. They were frantic. They didn't dare continue with their arbitrary censorship project now or they'd be contributing to the problem. In desperation, they called off the painters and inkers and "beepers." They conceded to the omnipresence of the human mind and sat down to discover another solution.
"Perhaps we should try judging things on their overall worth?" one of them suggested "Maybe we should try a positive approach and try to make other things look more attractive?" another ventured. And so they did.
Within a short while, regular editions of books, records, and movies reappeared, driving the inked-in pornography off the stands Grants were given to the encouragement of good literature and bursts of man's vulgarity were once again consigned to their places on bathroom walls and fences. Things returned to where they had been before the purge.
Once upon a later time in that same place act so far from here, there lived another group of very happy people. The sun still rose every morning, gilding everything within its reach. The people were still hard-working, fun-loving people—no better nor worse than their ancestors had been. Nothing ever changed.
Bestsellers in paperback
Election to the "bestseller" lists continues to be the best way for later success as a paperback, and Morris L. West is regularly found on both bestseller and paperback lists. His ability is that of taking contempoary ideas, events and
problems and giving them universality in a well-told story. Italy has been his recent scene, particularly Rome; in The Ambassador (Dell, 95 cents) he shifts to the Far East.
For West's hero this time is Maxwell Gordon Amberley,
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
OOMNETING I SUSPECT PROFESSOR SNARFS
"RITICISM JUST AWEE BIT HARSH."
assigned to South Viet Nam amidst turmoil both there and in his personal life. Not up to either "The Shoes of the Fisherman" or "The Devil's Advocate", this new book still makes telling comments about the United States and its political and moral role in Southeast Asia.
American Chrome, by Edwin Gilbert (Dell, 85 cents), is another of the new volumes. This is one of those big old family epics, with considerable sex, controversy and striving for the successful heights of business. Gilbert's hero is one Codman Smith, boss of an automobile business. It is of special interest because it is one of the few novels written about that most symbolic of American possessions—the car.
Also in paperback is Bernard Malamud's collection called Idiots First (Dell, 75 cents). Malamud has achieved considerable success, particularly with the avant-garde, for his stories and novels. He is a sharp commentator, especially, on the American college scene. New this month also is Calder Willingham's Natural Child (Dell, 60 cents). The publishers are dredging far back to find novels by this excessively sensational and occasionally depicter of the more sordid side of the American South.
And what we might call the trivia, books, that is, quite unlikely to appear on anybody's reading list. First a new Hercule Poirot. Agatha Christie's Murder in Retrospect (Dell, 45 cents), about an artist, his wife, and his model; next Mary Roberts Rinehart's Episode of the Wandering Knife (Dell, 50 cents), which goes back a couple of decades and will fascinate especially the older generation; Ellery Queen's The Murderer Is a Fox (Dell, 50 cents), starring one of the most famous of detectives; Leonard Holton's Deliver Us from Wolves (Dell, 45 cents), which
Plus two in the miscellaneous category—McCall's Easy Sewing Book (Dell, 95 cents), and 12th Book of Dell Crossword Puzzles (Dell, 45 cents). No plots or point of view to comment on.
involves a sleuth named Father Bredder in spooky stuff about old castles and werewolves, and Wayne D. Overholser's Day of Judgment (Dell, 40 cents), an adventure about old times in Colorado.
2 Daily Kansan Thursday, January 20, 1936
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