Theoretical Framework Of Censorship

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02 Nov 2017

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5.1. Introduction

This chapter consists of the theoretical, practical findings of the overall study, incorporates the conclusions of these findings and provides recommendation for art censorship environment of Turkey. First of all the findings of this study will be discussed from the perspective of theoretical frames of censorship then the case studies of the previous chapter will be discussed according to Turkey’s existing art censorship issues.

5.2.1. Discussion of Findings

In this part researcher evaluates the findings of this research according to the theoretical dimensions which provide source and contribute an academic point of view to achieve the research objectives. Then the practical findings concerned with the factors that influencing censorship in Turkey’s art environment will be examined critically. Finally, the case studies that evaluated in the previous chapter will be discussed through the practical sources and the results of them. Research questions and hypotheses will also be revised.

5.2.2. Theoretical Framework of Censorship

Censorship is the legislative or moral process by which society agrees to limit what an individual can see, say, think or do. While some argue that society-wide censorship movements are a form of contagion, the majority of censorship movements are actually fairly localized. Theoretical analysis of the censorship within the existing literature has provided a wide variety of definitions in which its borders are not only restricted with governmental or administrational forces but also the societal and institutional pressures enforce the censorship drivers. In a broader definition, censorship is a restricted circulation, suppression of removal of educational, artistic or literary materials of information, ideas and images on the grounds that these are objectionable or otherwise morally in light of standards applied by the censor.

Current debates about censorship refer to a distinction between governmental and non-governmental restrictions on speech, and in particular whether it is meaningful to speak of non-governmental censors such as religion based, corporations, or even social norms. However, whether censorship is restricted to legal-political power or extended to include social and economic power, censorship in this debate refers exclusively to a censor that exists independently from a censor. There are several dimensions and conditions to be fulfilled in a censoring action. These dimensions are found in this research that built on human expression’s control. The major sources of the censoring motive are fed by rulers and the religious leaders throughout the history in order to strengthen their powers. These authorities used censorship by forbidding words, images, shapes and ideas to prevent them being a threat to their presence. The other well known practice in the use of censorship is manipulation of the information to weaken the trust of population against the mass messages carried by alternative ideologists and artists. New and extraordinary ideas have become major targets for the official authorities and their widely accepted ideologies. Censorship has given a function both to prevent the threatening constitutions and to keeping the secrets of the rulers to prevent their criticism that possibly used by these alternative thinkers.

Governments and authorities have a common goal of creating at between a conception of permissible expressive attitudes and attitudes actually expressed. There are several assumptions that are defended by the censor to make an effective censor mechanism on the existing societal structure such as democratic freedom, public order or national security. These reasons also make it possible to describe the fundamental aims of censorship regimes.

Rulers in different periods of the history include an account of the content of their conception of expressive attitudes that are permissible. The content of the conception of these attitudes answers the question what is to be censored. Censoring authorities may justify which expressive attitudes are permitted and which are not on grounds of moral right and wrong or religious reasons.

Censors enforce their goal between permissible expressive attitudes and the attitudes expressed by means such as their normative viewpoint, power or their authority. Censored side express their attitudes under these conditions. Intuitively, a number of ways can be described how the censored side can interact with the censorship in which they can respond to censorship, including various degrees of opposition, compliance or self-censorship. Principles of free speech only apply to public censorship regimes because censorship does not exist outside relations between governments and individuals. Censorship relationships exist beyond relations between government and individuals. However, a wider set of censorship regimes do not imply that principles of free speech at all.

In this study the functionalities of censorship, the major descriptions and the interactions between the two sides of censorship is clarified in order to provide an academic basement to the practical analysis. The censorship motivations can be classified into four general categories. These are also explained in the literature review part as family values, political values, minority rights and religious reasons.

When the censorship research is applied to the artworks, understanding the major characteristics and the function of arts for a society is becoming more important. Censorship which tries to hide or ban certain art materials from a society’s attention recognizes the central significance of the art in our society. However the censor usually fails to recognize that the art organisations and artists fulfil their roles to a diverse community by teaching audiences to tolerate, understand, and appreciate diversity. The major idea underlying the censor’s mind is that the purpose of the art is to support certain values or causes that are their causes and values. Therefore, they tend to believe that those causes and values are best promoted by denying a forum to competing causes and values.

Art censorship has been a common way generally used by authoritarian governments, regimes and religious ideologies throughout the centuries all around the world. Because of the transforming and enlightening effects of arts over the social and cultural structure of societies, different types of tools are applied in order to intervene the artists and arts. Censorship has been discussed as an hot topic for many decades within the last century and with an undeniable support of the liberal, democratic and humanist groups, censorship in arts, science and expression of opinions are not an acceptable action in general.

5.2.4. Findings in Case Studies

Case studies used in this thesis, constructed around the performance conventions and addresses the issues which are of most concern to a contemporary approach to art in Turkey. But these case studies provide an illustration of the various outcomes of censorious intervention and offer an opportunity to consider what generates the desire to silence and suppress the artistic expression. The censorious anxieties expressed in the case studies return again to the threatening volatility of art and it is frequently established through the cultural, political, historical and religious contradictions directed to these artworks. Some censors go so far as to describe these cumulative reasons in terms of cultural disease, suggesting that enacted behaviour can pass from performer to audience member, and then out into the world at a broad meaning.

These connections between artworks and cultural threat to provide a rationale for censorship: if the censored object is a cultural threat, then it requires quarantine; if the unsuspecting audience is vulnerable to be influenced, then they need protection; if the spread of uncontrolled ideas or imagery amounts to a cultural degeneration and disruption, then it demands authoritarian intervention.

Concern about the impact of art upon its audiences has created an area of censorship which sets up a conceptual division between those types of art which are promoted as proper and respectable, and those which are not. Judgements about whether a type of arts is acceptable or not often generated by the censor in which it appears, rather than content alone. This tells us that the imagined content of an art production can be enough to generate a censorship activity. The number of artworks that are subject to censure or more concerted attempts at silencing when the complainant has not seen the performance suggests that indignation over the actual content of an artwork is not always the primary motivation in a censorious attack. Occasionally it can appear that a controversial production simply represents a convenient focus for a campaign which produces publicity for a political or religious cause. It sometimes seems that attacks upon artworks occur because they present an easily identifiable target, a tangible common enemy, or can be figured as a symptom of a broader set of social problems or perceived inequities. Calls for censorship enable the public reassertion of beliefs, values and identity.

The outcomes of censorship can seem much easier to assess than the sources of censorious anxiety. Many of the case studies covered in this thesis generated a high level of publicity. It seems that the most significant effect of the censorship system may have been its encouragement of self-censorship, as the publicity. Thus, it seems that a publicly made art censorship may simultaneously inhibit or provoke the creativity and awareness of similar sections of creative thinking such as the other artists, scientists, publishers, writers and opinion leaders as much as the artist her/himself.

These creative responses to censorship can produce complicit and sophisticated audiences in their turn, capable of decoding the multiple structure of a censored art. For these audiences, comprehension of the simultaneous existence of meaning in arts opens the censored performance to an entirely new mode of reception as they become accustomed to listening for the hidden significances of this artwork between the lines. A public censorship against arts also tends to generate resistance from the several different levels and the stakeholders of the creative thinking and art environment. In these contemporary art censors the legitimating authority of authentic, lived experience means that this tactic is perhaps even more prevalent today, as cultural commentators ask artists who include controversial or shocking material in their work to explain themselves, questioning whether they are sincere or acting in good faith. Indeed, these case studies indicate that censorship remains a live issue, requiring the attention of all those who concerned with the freedom of expression in every type of arts and crafts.

5.3. Conclusions

Art censorship in Turkey and the sources of censorship in contemporary practices are examined with the help of the academic approaches and the examples from Turkey’s recent art censorship experiences.

Censorship shows its effects in the every area of the freedom of expression throughout the centuries with several reasons concerned to authoritarian expectations and targets. Cultural, political, societal and religious reasons are found in this study that the major reasons of the censorious attempts.

Art censorship exists in every government and country and that only the censorship players differ. Conducting an analysis on a particular country or political period is only possible by close examination, comparing and combining the cases of censorship and interrelated with other cases of censorship with associating them with the academic sources and practices of the country or political period in question. This study analyzes, evaluates and concludes the sources, causes, bases and the results of censorship and applies these as a framework of art censorship. Turkey’s art traditional political volatilities, cultural differentials and current art environment are held in an associated perspective and evaluated through the recent censorship issues publicly interested by the majority of the population in Turkey.

The major objectives of the study are maintained through identifying the main elements of censorship; analyzing the historical roots of the censorship through the western and domestic experiences; distinguishing between the traditional, cultural, political and contemporary roots of Turkey’s censorship approach; discussing the art censorship and its functions in Turkish and western societies and conducting a link between the art censorship and the freedom of expression. Their influences on the Turkish society as much as the creative art workers are also evaluated with the help of the theoretical and practical information provided in this thesis.

The research questions are answered by explaining the major causes of censorship and the intentions of a censorious authority; the major influences of the censorship on the future artworks and the majority of a society’s courage on producing new ideas and works; expressing the link between the productivity and the freedom of ideas for an artist; identifying the government’s usual approach to intervene the expression of ideas in arts; illustrating the tools and sensitivities that are used in Turkey for censoring the arts and sampling the specific tools and types of censors that are applied in Turkish art through the actual case studies that selected from the previous decade in Turkey.

The major assumptions are tested in this study and it is found that although the increasing effects of art censorship in Turkey publicly identified, its influences on the creative artworks and freedom of expression in the artworks are in the local and limited level. There is a strong bond between the Turkish art environment and the other creative areas of arts and sciences. The censorship activities are ruled by the local and national governments and the cultural forces have already been a part of Turkish creative production for centuries. These types of interventions are perceived as a part of the habitual and traditional approach of rulers upon the Turkish arts.

5.4. Recommendations

There are numerous ways and sources to carry out such a broad topic as censorship. When it is combined with art censorship it becomes a much broader topic with variety of different dimensions in its nature. To help define the topic and narrow the scope it is best to begin a research project by creating an outline. The outline should describe what the project is about and how it will be presented. The outline is a work-in-progress: As the research evolves it may be necessary to eliminate some things from the outline and expand or even add others. Some of the narrower censorship themes on which one might focus including:

Censorship has several specific areas and there is a wide variety of material in library reference sections, in magazines and newspapers or through the internet news. In this study the reference books, articles and internet news are used as the primary sources. The best option is to focus on one type of censorship, one area of censor and one particular country to analyze. This research is constructed in order to analyze the Turkey’s censorship environment in arts because of the increasing interest in public for the recent censorship incidents in Turkey’s art environment.

The case study approach is followed because it provides a documentary for the further researches of the student in this area and/or may be helpful to provide a historical background for the other researchers’ studies in the censorship area. The major limitation in using the case study approach was the selection of the appropriate cases in form of objective expression. Because of the sensitivity of censorship issue for the rulers and the censored individuals and groups it is difficult to find "raw" sources. The most important recommendation for the further researchers is that allocating a respectable period of time for the case study research.

Censorship can be for social, political and religious reasons though later it tends to be a mixed form of these sources. Although these major controversial issues provide sources for censorship and art censors, the researcher should be able to maintain the sense of balance in order to provide a large scope to the problems. A good approach might be to illustrate the censorship actions of opposing political ideologies or religious faiths however some concerns of censorship may be a part of a state security or emergency. The researcher should respect the sensitivities during the research period and to comprehend the incidents within their own state of being.



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