Every time something like this comes up, I remember two stories about making media. The first is about movies, and comes from Quentin βFeet Manβ 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 didnβt 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 Marvinβs skull that lodge in Samuel L. Jacksonβs hairpiece). The resultant cuts were actually more permissive than heβd 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 (Iβm 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 βworkingβ for another few hours on a second, βtoned-downβ version, and it worked every time.
The reason I bring these up is that the thing that drives censors isnβt some extant physical rubrick of what is and isnβt acceptable, itβs the idea that they can have absolute power over someone elseβs creative work. Itβs 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.
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