Lecture 11//Censorship & 'Truth'

Overview

•Notions of censorship and truth
•The indexical qualities of photography in rendering truth
•Photographic manipulation and the documentation of truth
•Censorship in advertising
•Censorship in art and photography

‘Five years before coming to power in the 1917 October revolution, the Soviets established the newspaper Pravda. For more than seven Decades,until the fall of Communism, Pravda, which Ironically means “truth”, served the Soviet Communist party by censoring and filtering the news presented to Russian and Eastern Europeans’

Aronson, E. and Pratkanis, A., 1992, Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion, New York, Henry Holt & Co., pages 269 - 270

Kate Winslet on cover of GQ Magazine, with legs elongated in photoshop.

‘At that time [World War II], I fervently believed just about everything I was exposed to in school and in the media. For example, I knew that all Germans were evil and that all Japanese were sneaky and treacherous, while all white Americans were clean-cut, honest, fair-minded, and trusting’

Elliot Aronson in Pratkanis and Aronson, (1992), Age of Propaganda, p. xii 

Censorship
The practice or policy of censoring films, letters, or publications

Treffry, D. (ed.) (2001), Paperback English Dictionary, Glasgow: Harper Collins

Censor

1.A person authorised to examine films, letters, or publications, in order to ban or cut anything considered obscene or objectionable

2.To ban or cut portions of (a film, letter or publication)



Morals
Principles of behaviour in accordance with standards of right and wrong.

Ethics

1.A code of behaviour, especially of a particular group, profession or individual.

2.The moral fitness of a decision, course of action etc.

3.The study of the moral value of human conduct.