We live in a society that has no adequate images anymore, and if we do not find adequate images and an adequate language for our civilization with which to express them, we will die out like the dinosaurs.
—Werner Herzog
I read The Neverending Story when I was a teenager. I hardly remember the plot and I have only vague memories of the film (which I saw for the first time in 2009); it was the images in Michael Ende’s book that caught me—plains full of softly waving golden grass, crumbling buildings and a melting rainbow sky. There were pages and pages of this, of pure shifting shape and concept, colour, spectacle, adventure—imagination for the sake of imagination. And then, in juxtaposition, the plague of Nothing—darkness, a hollowness, sucking the colour and the joy out of the world. Sucking the world out of the world.
Artists know that the slip between reality and imagination is, in a sense, not really a slip at all. Writers know that stories exist in a way that makes the dichotomy of fact and fiction artificial. The popular fantasy genre takes as its premise that what occurs in the story exists in a world other than our own. Magical realism, on the other hand, more directly challenges our understanding of this world. ‘Normal notions about time, place, identity, matter and the like are challenged, suspended, lured away from certitude.’(1) Salman Rushdie talks about the writing of Midnight’s Children: ‘I wanted to make it as imaginatively true as I could,’ he says, ‘but imaginative truth is both honourable and suspect.’(2) The child in Pan’s Labyrinth knows the magic is real, even if the adults have turned a blind eye. Novels like Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria and Gabriel García Márquez’s A Hundred Years of Solitude merge history and fact with the fantastic to the point where it is almost impossible to tell where the real leaves off and the ‘magic’ begins. And this is precisely the point: by treating the fantastic as an inextricable part of the actual, such stories force us to question ‘the political and metaphysical definitions of the real’ in which we anchor our lives.(3)
It’s the job of the fiction writer to slide between the real and the imaginary and to put these concepts into words. To create something physical (a text) from something that is not (an idea). To create new worlds from those that already exist. To challenge. This is dangerous. Imagination is dangerous. It’s dangerous in the same way that fear is dangerous. It reminds us of our mortality, of our fallibility, of the slipperiness of our experiences, our knowledge, and the simplicity of death. But the imagination is bridled only by itself. We may allow of our imaginations what we would never allow of our realities, and in the private space of our minds, whole other worlds may exist. Every now and then they test us. Stories and ideas push us, push our realities and our understanding of the things we can touch and taste and see. By imagining the impossible we wonder about the realm of the possible. And this is dangerous.
Censorship attempts to limit the imagination. Censorship limits what is shown to be thought in order to limit what it is possible to think. It is at direct odds with the project of the artist, the writer, the creator and the innovator, because it curtails the hypothetical, the imaginary, the possibility. The role of art in a society is not to replicate the actual but to reflect it; to reinterpret it, to represent it: to re-present it. Its purpose is not just aesthetic but social and political. Aesthetics are the medium through which it draws attention to itself. ‘Culture’ is not a fringe concern; it is a representation of how a society understands and defines itself. It is the core of our existence as sentient creatures. Censorship is power recognising danger in imagination and representation, but mainly the danger presented to itself.
I am becoming afraid of being an artist in this country. I am becoming afraid of saying what I think, especially in a time when the world is becoming less and less private, and the relative safety of anonymity is crushed. Even now I struggle with the idea that I am still free to think as I like, that my mind is not shackled by anything except that with which I shackle it myself. And the more afraid I am to speak, the more important it becomes. Soon the only private spaces will be the ones in our heads, if they are not already the only ones left. And perhaps one day even that will be taken from us, because the more restrictions governments and power brokers place on our representations of ourselves and our understanding of the world—of all aspects of it, not merely the loving, the sacred and the benevolent, but also the dark, the disturbing and the profane, which are as much a part of this world as the things we hold dear—the closer we come to a time when even to think in certain ways is to commit a crime.
There are places in the world where these words would be considered dangerous enough to censor. I almost censored them myself, except I think they are too important. The mere fact that I can say them means they should be said, because there are places in the world where speaking your mind or creating art is considered dissident enough for jail, capital punishment, death. That place might be here sooner than we think. The wheels are already turning. The artists are always first.
(1) & (3) From the Introduction to Magical Realist Fiction: An Anthology, David Young and Keith Hollaman (eds.), Longman Inc. : New York and London, 1984.
(2) Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism. Granta and Penguin : London, 1991.
I’ve always thought some of the best genre fiction was that which overlaid the fantastical over our reality. I doubt most of those genre writers would class themselves as “magic realism”. Hmm is Charles De Lint genre or a magic realist? Or both?
But I digress slightly.
I tend to both agree and disagree with your premise. Personally, I belong to the “information wants to be free” generation of people. Yes. censorship is bad, both as a form of social control and as a restriction of creation. But I feel the real danger with censorship is because it’s a slippery slope. Censoring ideas fails because ideas are subjective and rarely can language be found that quantifies “this is wrong” and “this is right”. Hence why classification codes are so ludicrously arbitrary and incoherent.
I still subjectively feel, however, that some “speech” is bad … to pull the pin on the cliché … child pornography is one such form of “speech”. But my definition of child pornography, the sexual exploitation of children, differs from others in our community who see Bill Henson, fashion labels and parents taking photos of their children in the bath tub as acts that should be censored, if not prosecuted. So, censorship. Fail.
There are clearly problems we need to solve … and “who will think of the children” is one of them … but censorship appears not to be the control that will do that and the consequences of its use are often unforeseen or unexpected hence it becoming a social or repressive control. Answers, I have none. *sighs*
As to where I disagree – are we there yet or even close? I don’t believe so – there are places in the world where bad, bad things happen to people who create ideas that regimes or cultures disapprove of, you just have to read PEN’s reports to see the evil done to writers who do so. The distance to me between Australia (if by “here” above you mean Australia) is a wide one. People disapprove of some forms of speech here, even hate some forms of speech, but actions against those speakers tends to be ad hoc rather than institutional or organised. Sometimes those actions against the speakers even tends towards the farcical. I don’t see any farce in the way countries like Iran and China censor their artists and their citizens.
Do we have to keep watch and hold a line? Yes. Has it got to the point where we fear for our lives and liberty by holding that line? I don’t believe so.
There is more to magical realist fiction than that which I’ve mentioned here, but some kind of simplification was necessary or I’d spend all day writing about what magical realist fiction was or wasn’t and not getting to the point.
I don’t think we disagree on much, honestly. The point is vigilance. The slippery slope is precisely the problem and it’s that which I fear. It’s clumsy and it’s quick and it lurches out of control so easily.
The point is that if we don’t speak about these things they will become unspeakable. Australia already has some of the most restrictive censorship laws in the world, and the government has no problem adding more. Remember JH’s sedition laws? The brouhaha in Adelaide over accountability of comment? They’re introducing an internet filter for Christ’s sake. The fact is, the tools are there for them to use. We have been lucky so far in that government has bungled most opportunities to use them in the public eye. We won’t always be so lucky.