Meet the Censors

My degree in Media Studies rests on a thesis on censorship so I had to watch this one, but it immediately becomes clear that the director - as much as an effort he makes - didn't do his research. It never fails to amaze me how rarely social science documentaries address literature, of which there is plenty in regard to censorship. So the first major mistake of this film is to not present an overview, a starting point. Like, all governments at all times have tried to exert information control, the word "censor" itself goes all the way back to the Roman Empire.

Instead, the director uses footage of a right-wing rally to ask whether there could be a "good" censorship to filter away events like that. Ouch, that totally misses the point. All information is censored to a certain degree. As for his interviews, it's not that Fossum isn't prepared - he's just too nice all the time. For a subject like this, you have to be tenacious and aggressive in a friendly way. He interviews Chinese editors who present distorted but totally convinced opinions, but then fails to push the subject (by asking why the "real" footage of Tiananmen is just as forbidden as the "wrong" Western one or whether Tibet's feudal state was a justification for invasion, and whether the Tibetans are really happy about the Chinese outnumbering them). Only in Iran he manages to get some useful info, but I've been there, the people are exceptionally eager to communicate, even if they disagree with you.

Only at the end, when faced with the stonewalling of American institutions, Fossum seems to realize that his film is a failure because his approach was wrong. He understands that when officials in other countries talked to him, they served their own interest, while the Americans simply don't give a darn. He sorta admits this via a defeatist voice-over. But instead of starting all over, or at least announcing that, he capitulates. So this is an interesting failure about a mega-important topic which gives you a glimpse of what a huge and underrated subject censorship is.

First, I want to say that it takes a lot of nerve to interview an ayatollah in Iran on the subject of censorship, where in a heartbeat you could wind up dead in Evin prison. A similarly unpleasant fate could easily befall you in Sudan or China, two of the other locations where this was filmed. But that's about all I have to say about this doc that's positive.

The filmmaker sets out with a clearly articulated question: Is there a sound argument to be made in favour of government censorship? But he then completely fails to pursue that question (let alone answer it), instead leaving the viewer to read between the lines of the answers he receives to a lot of unrelated questions posed mostly to people who are a little distanced from the regimes they actually work for.

The other big problem here is in the presentation: As he jets from country to country, he doesn't bother to inform the viewer (via voiceover, captioning, smoke signal, or anything else) where (or when) he's just landed, or provide any other setting, introduction, or background. For example, we're suddenly in a room with a man who is conducting an apparently Hindu ritual - but why? Who is he? Where are we? India would be a good guess, but it doesn't have as high a percentage of Hindus as Nepal, so it's far from certain. There's a lot of this sort of failure to provide necessary context that becomes increasingly annoying.

So while we appreciate the effort, perhaps next time you can line up a collaborator to help keep you on track and temper your assumptions. In fact, it's not too late for this one - it'd certainly benefit from a little re-editing to add the missing contextual information.

I really liked this one, super layered and fun to watch - keep up the great work :)

To be cristal clear: there is NO such thing as positive censorship, once we start to control the free spech thru censorship, well, it's a slippery slope that will lead to destruction of democracy and ultimately will legitimize authoritarian, populism, or any other "ism" posible.

The only way to combat the far sides of political compass (left, right and/or zealotry) is thru education, and we have neglected this aspect in the past 30-40 years.

How to make sense of nonsense when not to yell fire in a movie theater a look into the ideology of what makes a good socialist