As journalism and media enter an era of highly scrutinized and policed through an authoritarian lens, Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis’s book Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control show us how morally panicked gatekeepers have been trying to silence artists, writers, and storytellers since the beginning of time.
From the bible to comic books, Censored explores the broad history of censorship and suppression in the U.S. and beyond. As we have seen with the arrest of journalists Don Lemon, Georgia Fort, Trahern Jeen Crews, and Jamael Lydell Lundy as well as the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the powers that be have been working overtime to silence creative storytellers and those who aim to tell the truth.
Stringent censorship was designed by authorities to control those who threaten conventionality and social norms. In other words, lots of LGBTQ people, people of color, women, and for the most part, anything that isn’t Christian, white, heterosexual, cisgender, and male.
Anyone who has been a dissident of the status quo or have radically challenge how power structures treat the most vulnerable people in the community, have often been the communities that have been impacted by censorship and Censored unpacks how this can backfire as it explores how books such as Ulysses, Lolita, The Well of Loneliness, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure).
Playwright Frances Burney produced works that aimed to topple the patriarchy and that didn’t go over too well with all the overly sensitive men at the time. Even comic books were put under the censorship microscope when controlling prudes and social critics created the Comics Code Authority to help prevent delinquent behavior.
Censored a guide to the history of censorship so we can have the tools to fight against oppressors and bland art.
Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control at Bookshop.org.
