OUGD501 - Lecture 11 - Censorship and the truth

Images of scanned notes

 Stalin with, and without, Nikolai Yezhov

‘Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum.These would be the succesive phases of the image:1.It is the reflection of a basic reality.2.It masks and perverts a basic reality.3.It masks the absence of a basic reality.4.It bears no relation to any reality whatever : it is its own pure simulacrum.’Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press, page 173

‘Most of the reporting that reached American audience and the west in general emanated from the Pentagon, hence severely lacking balance, as proven by the total blackout on the magnitude of the devastation and death on the Iraqi side. A quick statement of the number of dead (centered around 100,000 thousands soldiers and 15,000 civilians) sufficed for main-stream media audience. It is no wonder that this made-for-TV war started at 6:30pm EST on January 16, 1991, coinciding with National News. Alas, much of American audience today cannot distinguish between computer war games and real war, between news and entertainment’.

http://www.radioislam.org/historia/zionism/index_iraq.html

The Miller Test 1973

Whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest

Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct

Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value