What, exactly, is self-censorship?
I’m talking about when a piece of work (such as film/TV/books/games) makes a conscious choice to alter their work over societal pressure or current events to curb criticism or maybe even avoiding the controversial topic(s) altogether.
Here’s one recent example you may remember. Do you recall "Gangster Squad"? It was a movie released in 2013. It dealt with cops and mobsters and one of the more infamous scenes in the trailer was a shootout in a movie theater causing a massacre. What? You don’t remember that scene in the movie? Why is that, you may ask?
The Aurora Colorado Massacre is what happened.
In case you don't know, the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises (which had Gangster Squad showing in front of it, making it more awkward) in Aurora, Colorado was shot up by James Holmes who called himself The Joker. Thus, it started a heated discussion whether or not violent material caused James Holmes to murder those people.
Because of this incident, the filmmakers decided to reshoot and replace the initial scene where a movie theater shootout happened and instead showed Chinatown being bombed.
Now, comes the question: were the producers in the right to alter that movie thus making it a broken mess as it was? Were they giving up their 'artistic integrity' by removing this one vital scene (supposedly, this scene was the lynch pin for holding the entire movie together and by replacing the shootout at the movie theater with the bombing in Chinatown, the film does not flow as it needs to).
Also consider the following. Back in 1994, Spider-man had another cartoon premiering on Fox Kids. However, the Fox network was under heavy scrutiny at the time because many parents felt that Power Rangers was promoting violence that kids could imitate. So, Spider-man had to go through many animation edits and cut out many of the more dangerous elements. Spider-man only punched in one instance and most of the time kicked his opponents. Characters could not die but instead were sent to an alternate dimension. How silly did it get?
Let me introduce you to Morbius. See, Moribus was a vampire in the comic books, but due to the heavy standards set upon by Fox, the show runners had to get… how shall we say creative with him. So, instead of sucking blood through his fangs, like a normal vampire, he instead absorbed 'plasma' through the palms on his hands.
Or how about series in which the cutting back on harsher elements is done naturally? Like in Batman TAS, where the depiction of death could not be shown so instead the Joker inflicted his enemies with Joker Venom and gave them a creepy smile. Or in Gargoyles where they depicted Gargoyles dying through showing a smashed statue?
Are these examples of 'self-censorship' or not? What should the creator do?
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