Ah yes! Back to the murky ill-defined and logic-defying world of the censor. Last week, I had cogitated over the rationale behind the blacking out of certain startlingly offensive words that have whole institutions quaking in their shoes. Terrible assaults on our national vocabulary cleverly disguised in the subterfuge of innocent instruments such as “violin”, “piano” and, wait for it, the combination of these subversive slights, “music”! If it weren’t for our glorious heroes brandishing their board markers we would surely be morally corrupted by such socially seditious terms that would have us engaging in all sorts of humming and other types of tuneless behaviors.
This week I think it would be a fitting tribute to understand the full extent of the important tasks these valiant individuals perform in order to protect our society from harm. We pride ourselves as a country on refraining from acknowledging a wide array of non-descript body parts not only in the textual form, but also through the potentially dangerous medium of visual association. But what most of us don’t realize is that such a sanctimonious approach en masse would not be possible were it not for the trained eye of the censors who work from dawn until dusk subjecting the sleeves of their attire to a varying assault of ink in order to safeguard our national heritage.
If you were ever wondering whose brilliant idea it was to cover up the tantalizing image of little children playing on the beach in their swimsuits in a Grade 2 textbook then look no farther than these far-sighted individuals. After all, with their incisive common sense they realize that these children will grow up into adults one day! I bet many of you had not even thought of that!
A particularly good example of their dedication to this esteemed vocation is a photograph in the Guinness Book of World Records in which a female hurdling champion is shown straddling an obstacle so proficiently in spite of being devoid of arms and legs. It really is an amazing scene to watch the feat of this flying torso suspended in midair the mere sight of whose ankles, knees and elbows could throw our poor unsuspecting citizens into a state of hedonistic frenzy. Naturally, our children must believe that in order to achieve athletic success having a good set of working limbs is not necessarily a priority.
The judicious, astute and well-thought out approach of those in charge of screening us from a plethora of undesirable images ranging from cartoon pigs to Barbie dolls to Vanessa Mae’s neck, shoulders, forearms and violin has been the product of many years of research and painstaking dissertation.
However, there are also many among our ranks aspiring to the giddy heights of a career on the fast track in this noble profession through purely voluntary endeavors. Many years ago, I had taught a Grade 4 class in a private Saudi school for girls. Due to intense overcrowding we were evicted from the main premises and re-housed in a makeshift shed in the playground. The walls were drab, grey, flimsy and intensely depressing. So, in order to spruce up the room and make it more appealing to the children I spent the week after school assembling a mural of a whole host of Disney characters that stretched across the entirety of the facility. Pleased with the gaiety (am I allowed to use this word?) and lightheartedness this lent the atmosphere I departed for the weekend. On Saturday morning I was horrified upon my return to find that Snow White and her Seven Dwarfs had all had their eyes gouged out. Pinocchio had a single line slashed through his neck that seemed to represent a noose and Cinderella’s dazzling white sparkly gown had been adulterated with splatters of ink that covered her arms and neck. I immediately came to the conclusion that my efforts had been ruined by one of my own psychotic proteges who was displaying early signs of developing into a serial killer. What constituted a more disturbing reality was that when I approached the administration to inform them of the tragedy that had befallen my display I was regaled with the fact that they had perpetrated the crime!
“But these are only cartoons!” I argued in vain.
“No sister,” said the matronly supervisor in between shelling her pumpkin seeds. “What you have done is un-Islamic. We can’t have images of live beings.”
On the one hand every home has a satellite connection beaming in a whole host of channels that have scantily-clad women gyrating in all sorts of lascivious routines and are quite frankly a direct result of what a repressed populous wants to see. On the other, we have foreign magazines with celebrities dressed fairly decently subjected to the most irrational censorship imaginable with black ink often so venomously applied that it leaks through to ruin several articles on subsequent pages. And then of course, being Saudi Arabia, we have a third hand whereby all the national newspapers quite brazenly feature outsized snapshots of beauty pageants or gorgeous women complete with necks, shoulders and arms on every back page!
Another question I would like to have an answer to is what qualifies someone to be a censor? Considering that most of the pictures that are deemed unfit for public viewing are of women, surely this department must be manned (no pun intended) by women too? Surprise, surprise! All those in employment are indeed men. So I wonder what devices are used to advertise this position? After all, they can’t just be ordinary men who do the job. There has to be certain criteria pertaining to their personal attributes that must be upheld lest they develop impure tendencies through their line of work.
If the premise is that such a visual onslaught is detrimental to the minds of the ordinary, then what sort of training is a censor given to withstand the blitz of body parts that he is consistently subjected to? I think that it’s high time we re-evaluated the relevance of such practices in the modern world lest we make a mockery of ourselves and what it is that we supposedly represent.
Sensible limitations should be encouraged but there has to be a system intact that really does separate what needs to be restricted and what does not. It is more important to educate our children to understand how to discern these things for themselves for knowledge is power. And at least in this part of the world we are not allowed to follow the adage “Ignorance is bliss”!
(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)