Every time something like this comes up, I remember two stories about making media. The first is about movies, and comes from Quentin âFeet Manâ Tarantino.
When he was making Pulp Fiction, he was worried that the MPAA would object to the high level of violence in the film, so he shot a bunch of extra-gory stuff that he didnât actually want in the film, and added it in before submitting it to the MPAA. Predictibly, they asked him to cut most of it (without even commenting on some of the things that had him worried, like the bits of Marvinâs skull that lodge in Samuel L. Jacksonâs hairpiece). The resultant cuts were actually more permissive than heâd expected, so he cut a little more and submitted it, and it got passed with an R.
The second story is about that artist on Morrowind whose name escapes me (Iâm not a big ES fan tbh) who figured out that if he made two creature designs, one weird and what he wanted, and one even weirder, he could get Todd Howard to agree to just about anything by showing him the whopper first, then going back and âworkingâ for another few hours on a second, âtoned-downâ version, and it worked every time.
The reason I bring these up is that the thing that drives censors isnât some extant physical rubrick of what is and isnât acceptable, itâs the idea that they can have absolute power over someone elseâs creative work. Itâs about the social dominance of the interaction.
There is nothing so innocent, so clean, that a censor will not find some fault with it. Because they must find something wrong with it to justify their existence, and because it makes them feel powerful.
This is true of all censorship.