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Irish author Lee Dunne, who died earlier this week, came to prominence after the publication of his book Goodbye to the Hill, published in 1965, an account of teenage sexual awakening in working class Dublin.

It caused a stir with its frank depiction of lust and a sexuality that seemed at odds with the idea of cowering obedience to Catholic stricture: in the privacy of a cinema with only a thousand people in it they forget exactly what it was the priest has said and they remember only that they want to touch and be touched and to get as much out of it as they can.

Although Dunnes book was not banned, and the stage version of it became one of Irelands longest running plays, the film version of it Paddy was banned in 1970 and was not issued with a certificate by the Irish film censor until August 2006.

A measure of the changed times was that at that stage the film was given a 12A rating by the censor John Kelleher who noted: By todays standards, there is nothing shocking in it. It is charmingly old-fashioned. But you have to remember it was banned in a different era, a very different time.

Almost all Dunnes 1970s novels were also banned in Ireland; what he called the cabbie books . . . about a team of randy cab drivers in England that were more interested in getting laid than in making money on the cab. The banning of them did not affect him as deeply; he acknowledged himself they were rubbish; written to order in 10 days each because the money was good.

With the passage of time there was a tendency to euphemise or make light of the censoriousness of that era. The same year that Dunnes first book was published, John McGaherns second novel The Dark was banned, and he lost his teaching job as a result. His writing sins were compounded by his marrying of divorced Finnish theatre director Annikki Laaksi in a registry office.

Later in life, McGahern preferred to highlight some of the humorous or farcical aspects of the furore. He liked to tell the story of the encounter he had with Dave Kelleher, the general secretary of the Into who, fortified with whiskey, told him: If it was just the auld book, maybe maybe we might have been able to do something for you, but with marrying this foreign woman you have turned yourself into a hopeless case entirely . . . and what anyway entered your head to go and marry this foreign woman when there are hundreds of thousands of Irish girls going around with their tongues out for a husband?

But in truth, it was a horrible episode and McGahern was ashamed that our own independent country was making a fool of itself yet again. He was publicly humiliated in his own land for writing about his own people and in particular, of physical and sexual abuse familial, societal and clerical and the torment of the confused teenager with sexual longings and an obsession with confession and damnation, torn between the possibility of a religious vocation or the lay alternative of the world, the flesh and the devil.

McGahern harboured no hatred of religion The Catholic Church in its origins is such a beautiful and great vision of truth and is big enough to contain us all but he did resent that the Church had surrounded sexuality with such a sense of sin, shame and fear. Lee Dunne felt likewise; interviewed by Julia Carlson in 1987 about censorship Dunne insisted the censorship mentality stemmed from shame relating to sex, guilt relating to sex, fear relating to sex. Censorship was engendered in us on a personal level Dont let people know your business.

Even in the year Dunne was interviewed, Alex Comforts The Joy of Sex, originally banned in Ireland in 1972 was re-banned, as according to Dunne, to openly admit that sex is wonderful and that it can be joyous and beautiful and affirming is really regarded with a great degree of suspicion, distaste and repugnance. As for the church, as Dunne saw it, its about control rather than love.

We have had no shortage of vindications of that assertion in recent decades; the level of control and lack of love in the historic treatment of perceived transgressors that has been laid bare is almost overwhelming.

As the playwright John Millington Synge, born 150 years ago today, was to discover, to even allude to the flesh his play The Playboy of the Western World in 1907 included the line, Its Pegeen Im seeking only, and whatd I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts [underwear] itself could generate menacing outrage that in the words of W B Yeats from the Abbey stage in response, would mar very greatly . . . the reputation of the country for fair play.

Originally posted here:
Diarmaid Ferriter: We should not minimise the censoring of Lee Dunne - The Irish Times

In Utah, many contradictions confound in their complexities. Mormonism champions its cosmopolitan outreach through its mission service, where members proselytize about the virtues of perfection, prosperity and duty of faith. Meanwhile, while immigrants and refugees are welcomed in the state, many also feel isolated and vulnerable, seeing clearly how lip service and posturing barely mask the borderline racism that runs through Utahs history. Utahs economy is touted for its potential, offering signs of an economic boom. Yet, in agriculture, an industry intertwined with the flourishing of Mormon pioneers, latter generations of farmers became disenchanted with the drudgery of daily farm tasks. Some of those disenchanted individuals leave behind the bleak prospects they see in their lives, occasionally finding the individual they believe will give them just enough luck and know-how to get ahead even if for a little while.

Likewise, the words of appreciation for education sometimes ring hollow in the most conspicuously unflattering ways. Teachers in Utah struggle to empower their own positions, a problem exacerbated by the states ranking near the bottom in terms of school funding. Even the bright spots in education cannot escape being tarnished. The quality of art education in the states schools is quite good. The Beverly Taylor Sorenson Art Learning Program, for example, has supported the placement of art educators in Utahs elementary schools. The Utah All-State High School Art Show, which is coordinated by the Springville Museum of Art in conjunction with the Utah Division of Arts and Museums, is among the nations largest and longest-running student art shows of its kind. However, stories also have gone viral nationally and internationally about art censorship in Utah, both in classrooms and libraries, thereby eclipsing opportunities to make more visible stories about creative entrepreneurship that could smooth the rougher edges of the contradictions mentioned above.

None of these stories occur in a vacuum, as playwright Matthew Ivan Bennett contends. In his newest play, Art & Class, the second premiere in Plan-B Theatres audio-only 30th anniversary season and directed by Jerry Rapier, Bennett builds an elegant theatrical edifice encompassing these complexities. This is channeled through the story of Luca, a Costa Rican immigrant and artist, who faces losing her job as a sixth-grade art teacher, as she is accused of showing pornography to her students. The images in question came from classic art books in the schools library collection.

The production, which requires digital tickets, will launch April 15 at 8 p.m. and will be available through April 25.

The incident in Art & Class is based on a news story from four years ago, when Mateo Rueda, an art teacher in Cache Countys Lincoln Elementary School, was accused similarly when he showed his students reproductions of classic art works, some of which portrayed nude figures, that were pulled from The Art Box postcard collection in the schools library. Rueda, a Colombian native who had completed his masters degree at nearby Utah State University, lost his job. However, school administrators alleged that the reasons for Ruedas removal were based more on parental complaints that he had spoken inappropriately to the children in explaining that there was nothing wrong with viewing art portraying the nude human figure than on the act of showing the postcards in the first place. In fact, police, acting on a complaint by a parent, searched the school for evidence of pornography and in the midst of its investigation, caught the principal in the process of destroying the postcards in question, which occurred at the school boards request. The story eventually went viral around the world, reinforcing public perceptions about Utahs obsession with pornography as the state defines it along with it unreasonable overreactions, which end up censoring even benign, artistic portrayals of bodies and nudity. Rueda now lives in Portland, Oregon, working as an artist and offering private art lessons.

The main character in Bennetts play shares several key traits with her real-life counterpart. Luca has an advanced degree. She is developing her own artistic portfolio. And, the play makes apparent her commitment as a teacher wanting to inspire her students to appreciate and engage with art. She spends quite a bit from her pockets to enrich the classroom experience, most of which is not reimbursed an experience also familiar to many teachers not just in Utah but elsewhere. However, the casting of a different gender for the teacher also opens up the narratives strategic creative purpose to explore why such incidents in Utah are not limited to the local cultures peculiarities and obsessions with cultural gatekeeping or outright censorship. Also, the principal in the original news story is a woman while the parallel character in the play is male (Leland).

Outsiders are welcomed in Utah but the extent and arenas to which they are welcomed narrow considerably. Immigrants will hear messages about being appreciated that sound good on the surface but eventually are unmasked for their insincerity. Even when outsiders express ideas, opinions or suggestions that sound good to the credentialed members of Utahs predominant culture, they hear sentiments that amount to saying, if only you were one of us. Flo Bravo, the actor who plays Luca and has lived in the U.S. for two decades, encapsulates the circumstances perfectly in a Plan-B blog post:

In my experience, being an immigrant can feel like being an underdog (in many ways, it is). For many, that chip on ones shoulder feeds a desire to achieve. I see that in Luca. She earned a graduate degree, traveled, and is committed to her students. But none of it is enough to earn the respect of her employers or her community and she struggles to carve out space for herself in her own life. Unfortunately, nothing she does, no advanced degree or acrobatic code-switching or smiling through gritted teeth, makes a difference in the eyes of those who see her as other. Even her closest friend encourages her to compromise her values in the name of not ruffling any feathers.

Just as integral to Lucas story is her relationship to her husband, Riley, a dairy farmer who also is hobbled economically while he recovers from an injury. Luca, who has been in the U.S. for six years, is just entering her thirties while Riley already is in his late thirties. On the surface, Riley seems to adore his wife but he also struggles with his own perceived shortcomings. Unlike Luca, he did not attend college. He is more motivated about hunting than in completing an application for a career program that Luca believes would be perfect for him. He also believes Luca could produce art bound to generate quick sales in their community. Meanwhile, he shows little interest in her current project, a series highlighting refugees. These tensions simmer throughout the play, eventually joining and heightening others arising directly from the central part of the drama in Art & Class.

As for the other characters in the plays central drama, Bennett fleshes out the dimensions of their basic traits which many Utahns will recognize. Mindy Van Tassel has a daughter, Payslee, in Lucas class. About the same age as Riley, Mindy fits in with Cache Countys main demographic: white, Mormon, conservative. She also is a part-time ballroom instructor. However, Mindy does not seem to be fully aware of what is happening to her daughter Payslee at school, including some issues that Luca has noticed and has sparked her own concerns. And, the intensity with which Mindy confronts Luca could be explained by other events which have affected the mother.

Meanwhile, Leland Hess, the principal, seems to appreciate Lucas contributions in the classroom, even trying to impress her with his own attempts to be seen as enlightened and cosmopolitan. Leland also cuts a figure recognizable in many Utah communities a liberal Mormon who strives to be a woke intellectual but also does not have the courage to go beyond the dont rock the boat mentality when some problems and controversies arise, for fear that they might be ostracized themselves.

The plays premiere is the culmination of a two-year workshopping process 13 drafts - that not only involved Plan-B Theatre but also the local Pioneer Theatre Company as well as The Constructivists in Milwaukee and the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha. Bennett, whose plays comprise some of Plan-Bs most success productions for artistic impact, exhaustively probes how to confer credibility not only to the characters but also their relationships in particular, the ways in which Mindy and Luca communicate. What stands out in Art & Class is that Bennett has the opportunity to expand these dynamics beyond what normally is possible in Plan-Bs Radio Hour Series episodes, which have strict time limits and include the station breaks as required during live broadcasts on KUER-FMs RadioWest program.

Bennett, who also spoke briefly to Rueda as he developed his script, recalls hearing the news of the incident on the radio during a car trip. I started to think about a play as I talked it out with my wife [Wendy Blankenship, who is a teacher and lived in Wellsville, which is located in the county], he says. This happened at the same time the #MeToo movement became more visible. And, Wendy and I talked about differences in treatment for male and female teachers involved in relatively innocuous infractions and it was a pretty disturbing gap.

In an interview on The Art of Education podcast, Rueda spoke about how he saw the incident as more than an issue of censorship and how he sought to process mentally and emotionally the controversy that had erupted. At one point, Rueda recalls, Luckily one of the parents contacted me through Facebook and she expressed that her daughter was in the classroom, that she heard my explanation, she understood it very well and that for her, she finds that she is not capable of giving her an explanation on why her art teacher is being removed. To me, that actually gave me some sense of hope about maybe being able to establish a better case about what happened.

Rueda adds, I wrote to her and I wrote to her a letter, a little long, but it also helped me to clarify the set of events, how things happened, how I felt and everything in a sense. It was helpful for me and Im glad that she was someone like minded and definitely decided to do something about it, which I admire and Im sure its a good lesson for her daughter to learn about tenacity and conviction about what one holds to be true in a rational manner for that matter, because all of this has been rather irrational, for lack of a more, how do you say, word.

That underlying sene of irrationality also sets up the story in Art & Class. Bennett looked forward to giving the issue of censorship a more multifaceted perspective. In 2010, for Plan-Bs And The Banned Slammed On, in which Utah playwrights were given 24 hours to write a short play and have it produced for a live premiere, he wrote Staged, a hilarious theatrical statement highlighting the absurdity of changing a word in the Broadway musical Avenue Q so as not to offend prudish senses.

Returning to the story about Rueda, I was so angry about the news story but I also did not want it to wind up being a play that preaches, Bennett explains. He adds that this led him to incorporating the tensions in Lucas marriage as well as other relationship dynamics where seemingly well-intentioned socially conditioned responses from those with whom she interacts actually are racist, condescending and oppressive. Thus, some of the most significant exchanges between the characters occur outside of the school, echoing just how embedded the roots of unintentional racism are in many communities. For example, a scene occurring in a Christmas tree lot bringing in a fifth character whose appearance in the play lasts less than two minutes punctuates a key thematic pulse that is present throughout the play.

In addition to Bravo, the cast includes Roger Dunbar, Bijan Hosseini and Stephanie Howell. Cheryl Ann Cluff handles sound design. David Evanoff is handling sound engineering to produce the master that listeners will hear. The production follows the same protocol as last months premiere of Julie Jensens P.G. Anon. That is, the actors and production crew never congregated in physical spaces but stayed separately while rehearsing and performing via Zoom in their homes. To augment the audio quality of Zoom, Plan-B invested in equipment provided to each actor.

The 10-day run of P.G. Anon produced encouraging results, indicating a total audience more than double Plan-Bs usual in-person attendance for a comparable run as live theater, Rapier notes. In addition to Utah, listeners came from Alabama, Arizona, California, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington.

Just as encouraging are the numbers for the audio stream and coloring sheets for Plan-Bs eighth annual but first virtual Free Elementary School Tour (FEST) production, Rachel Bublitzs Presenting: Super Cat and Reptile Robot, which Rapier says, has been enjoyed by elementary students in 283 classrooms at 172 schools in the state. The current FEST production is available through June 7.

Art & Class will be available for streaming as a podcast on the Plan-B website as well as on its free app. Listeners will be able to access the production within the specified run dates. Tickets for individual productions are available on a pay-what-you-can basis: As a guide, the regular ticket price would be $22 and there are no additional fees. Plan-B will send donation letters to individuals who pay an amount larger than $22 per ticket. For more information, see the Plan-B website.

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More than a story of censorship: Plan-B Theatre to launch April 15 world premiere audio-only production of Matthew Ivan Bennett's Art & Class -...

Since the beginning of the year, almost sixty-eight bills have been introduced in state legislatures that could infringe on the right to protest. Some of the bills seek to increase penalties for certain protests. Others aim to expand the definition of riot in order to criminalize certain protests. LegisScan only rates six of the bills as not clearly partisan. Based on the bills sponsors, LegisScan rated two as partisan Democratic and over fifty are ranked partisan Republican. A Florida bill (HB 1/SB 484) is particularly concerning and threatens to criminalize peaceful protestors present when others commit crimes. The bill has passed the state house and is headed to the senate for a full vote.

Several of the bills are backed by industry groups with a financial stake in silencing protest or by partisan political groups with a direct connection to industry stakeholders. For example, nine bills seek to increase penalties for protesting on the grounds of oil pipelines, and in many cases the legislators sponsoring the bills have received contributions from the oil and gas industry.

Floridas legislature is considering legislation, promoted by Governor Ron DeSantis, created in reaction to the racial justice protests of last summer. The bill expands criminal punishments for any involvement in protests during which violence occurs. Opponents of the bill argue that peaceful protesters could be arrested and imprisoned for up to five years and lose their voting rights, even if they didnt engage in any violent and disorderly conduct. Additionally, it could increase violence at protests and embolden vigilantes by shielding them from civil liability if they kill or injure protesters, protect confederate monuments, and allow the Governor to overrule local budgetary decisions.

Thirty-four of the bills include provisions that attempt to criminalize protest by expanding the application of anti-riot laws. Some seek to expand the definition of rioting or unlawful assembly in ways that could include lawful protest. Fourteen of the bills would effectively criminalize actions that encourage or aid protest by classifying them as incitement to riot or similar crimes. Thirty bills criminalize protesting in a manner which blocks traffic. Fourteen bills go so far as to provide either civil or criminal immunity for drivers who injure protestors who are blocking traffic or to individuals who use force to resist rioters. Finally, several of the bills encourage local officials to use force to silence protest by, for example, providing that local officials can be sued by anyone whose property is damaged during a protest if the official delays or limits police crackdowns on ongoing protests.

Although many of the bills have thus far failed to advance, twelve have passed at least one house of the legislature, and another twenty have either passed one committee or have been introduced only within the several weeks.

NCAC is paying close attention to the progress of these bills and all those who believe that the right to protest is fundamental to American democracy should be deeply concerned about these attempts to suppress political dissent.

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States Consider Bills That Threaten Protest Rights - Blogging Censorship

Those awaiting the most eagerly awaited film of the year will, it seems, have to await just a bit longer. John Patrick Shanleys Wild Mountain Thyme will not be available to rent in the Republic of Ireland on April 30th. The distributors have clarified that the twinkly romance, subject of much pre-emptive derision following the dropping of a trailer last November, will be coming to cinemas in the Republic of Ireland this summer.

Viewers in the UK will still be able to view the film digitally from the end of the month. The good burghers of Newry and Coleraine can enjoy Jamie Dornan romancing Emily Blunt in the privacy of their rose-covered shacks. Those in Navan and Cork must wait for the opening of cinemas.

It is most unusual for a release to be made available for digital rental in the UK but not in the Republic of Ireland. Most readers took UK to refer to the combined UK and Irish market as with the United States and Canada, distributors sometimes treat the territories as one and looked forward to an evening of ironic paddywhackery over the bank-holiday weekend.

Conspiracies already abound. Such was the aghast hilarity sometimes bleeding into naked anger at the stage-Irishness of the trailer that, when the film opened in the US, before Christmas, many American reviews referred to the response in Ireland. David Rooneys comments in the Hollywood Reporter were typical: Derisive reaction to the films trailer in the Emerald Isle suggests its less likely to be remembered alongside The Quiet Man than Far and Away, the 1992 Hollywoodized Oirish epic with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

Shanley was dismissive of the blowback. I told Emily when we first talked about this project, Im not making this movie for the Irish. If you try to get the Irish to love you, no good will come of it, he told Variety.

With this in mind, more than a few on social media have suggested that Lionsgate, the films distributor, is trying to hide it from domestic audiences. This seems unlikely. The chatter around the picture would, most likely, only have increased rental demand for a film that received largely negative reviews on its American debut. It looks as if there is a real desire to get the film into cinemas.

Nor is Brexit to blame. The distributor still retains rights to the picture on both sides of the Irish Sea. But this remains a notable anomaly. Memories revive of the bad old days when censored films everything from Brief Encounter to Monty Pythons Life of Brian played merrily in the UK while Irish audiences seethed. Not that Brief Encounter has much else in common with Wild Mountain Thyme.

Original post:
Its as if censorship were back: Why Ireland cant watch Wild Mountain Thyme this month - The Irish Times

Screengrab via Fox NewsGov.Ron DeSantisreconnected with a national audience Wednesday, joining Fox and Friends to message against the content curation policies of Google and YouTube again.

The Governor said the tech platforms were anti-science and functioned as a council of censors when they opted to pull down a video of a controversial coronavirus roundtable DeSantis held with doctors earlier this year.

Last week, YouTuberemoved a videoof DeSantisroundtable, which included Drs.Scott Atlas,Jay BhattacharyaandMartin Kulldorff. At issue: medical guidance regarding children and the necessity of masks.

DeSantis, whobrought the doctors backto Tallahassee virtually this week to bemoan the censorship, reprised his objections at length Wednesday.

When you have the ability to debate people and you can marshal facts against certain viewpoints, you do that. When you dont have that, thats when you try to fall back on censorship, DeSantis said.

These are doctors and scientists who have been against the narrative really for the past year, and you know, theyve been right against lockdowns, theyve been right about kids needing to be in school. Obviously, Florida followed a lot of their advice and weve had much more success.

And so if what theyre saying isnt true on science, then show the science that contradicts it, the Governor continued. But Google and YouTube couldnt do that. What Google and YouTube (are) trying to do is serve as a council of censors, where theyre enforcers of the narrative. The narrative is lockdown. The narrative is mask a two year old kid. The narrative is all these different things we kept hearing, and when people counteract that, their instinct is to pull it down.

Very troubling, DeSantis added. Thats not what science is about. Science is always about asking questions, raising concerns, and Google and YouTube are not dedicated to the scientific method.

The Governor said the tech platforms stifled really strong critiques of lockdowns early in the pandemic, censored across all these tech platforms.

They suffocated it at the outset, DeSantis asserted.

The Governor held to that metaphor, adding a bit later that its really hard to just smother those facts and take it down, but thats what theyre doing.

In astatement last week, YouTube spokeswomanElenaHernandezsaid YouTube pulled the video because it included content that contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says YouTube, Google are a 'council of censors' - Creative Loafing Tampa