Hey Gaston…

Below is a speech I wrote and presented in a Communications class in college at UNCW circa 1990. I got an “A”!!!

The boundaries between art and obscenity are tough to distinguish. The role of the artists in society is hard to define. Even more difficult is deciding who, in a multicultural society has the right to set those boundaries. It is not an easy question, and doesn’t have a easy answer. Plato and Aristotle argued over whether the arts served as an outlet of social evil feelings or served to emphasize them and were bad.

And for the next five minutes I’m not going to TRY to compete with the Major philosophers and offer an opinion on what I think those boundaries should be. What I want to do is open your eyes to a form of expression that you don’t hear a great deal about.

Censorship in America is a Big issue. I don’t know what part of our life is not touched by it. Breathe the word in the company of journalist, writers or artists and the hair will stand up on the back of their necks. And rightfully so. The First Amendment guarantees all of us that “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble or to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” What I would like to persuade you to do is to think about exercising this right of “petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances.”

All individuals have the right of free expression. and For every free expressionist out there, there is someone who will take the position of the censure. Not Censor but censure which is the free expression of moral disapproval. For as everyone has the right of free expression so does everyone have the right of freely expressing their disapproval toward something they deem inappropriate, they have the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

It seems that whenever someone burns a flag, sings a sexually explicit lyric or makes a racist remark they say they are Expressing Themselves freely, and when the censures come along to offer disapproval what do these expressionists do ?? They point to the First Amendment for authority. what’s ironic is that they are trying to use the force of government to suppress the freedom of the censures expression. I believe that if someone disapproves of some type of expression, they are free to denounce that expression, vocally, publicly and with as much force as they can muster. They can even call on others to join in, even society as a whole. Wouldn’t you agree that total freedom of speech and expression leads eventually to anarchy – a complete absence of government. What our tax dollars guarantee is the freedom for us, as a Society, as a whole, to govern ourselves and make the laws of the land as WE see fit.

This brings me to another free speech advocacy. Have you ever heard someone say that if it is not illegal then it must be OK to do it. I think you have seen it expressed when the flag was burned a couple years ago. Well that is Equating the law with morality. That’s what people do when they claim that anything tolerated by law must, in the name of freedom, be tolerated by Society as a whole. After some consideration I’m sure you could see that the result would be a society where we could not call into question any moral issue that isn’t illegal. For example, they could say that Its not illegal to curse and use other types of obscene language. Well If it’s not illegal to do it, why should it be illegal to put them in the lyrics of a song….can’t do anything about it – its not illegal. Not only is this a denial of the censures disapproval, but any moral issue raised would have to be followed by law – limiting the scope of free speech even more. Thus we cannot equate morality with the law.

I don’t know how many of you have seen the movie “The Dead Poets Society”, for those of you that haven’t, it is about a college professor played by Robin Williams who comes to a new school to teach some type of Literature or Poetry – I’m not sure. Anyway in one part of the movie, he has his class go out into a courtyard. Once there he has them to take the shape of a circle. He gets in the center and instructs them all to start walking. However, not only does he tell them to walk but he also give them explicit instructions to walk as they want to walk. He wants them to all develop a walk of their own – different from everyone else. Some of them start to walk slow, some fast some with their arms waving and some not waving at all. As the scene progresses the professor notices a young man who is standing, Leaning up against a wall. When asked why he isn’t walking he simply says the he is exercising his right not to have to walk. The professor agrees with him and goes on.

Now as the Professor carries out the experiment something quite interesting happens – even though they all began to walk as they wanted, expressing themselves and their attitudes in every step, within a few minutes THEY ALL had picked up the same rhythm and were walking to the same step. The point I think he was trying to make was that In Society no matter how different we try to be, or how different we are, by living and interacting with one another – overtime we develop a societal rhythm. Now that experiment worked real good for everyone except for the individual who had chose not to walk. Well as I sat there I began to think about, of all things an appliance we have. It was a blender, a three speed blender. Upon close observation you can see that the three speeds are Slow, Fast and Stop. Now I thought that was quite humorous. I never knew “Stop” could be a speed. It Opened my mind, and that’s what I have attempted to show you this morning, that “Not Walking” really is a form of walking, that “Stop” really is a speed and, that offering moral disapproval to someone elses free expression really is a form of your own free expression.

The next time you turn on the news and see a group of people calling themselves the “Moral Majority”, think about what they are standing for. Their social mobilization is not an example of repression but of freedom of expression guaranteed by the first amendment. Society will continue to walk together and attain a new “societal rhythm” generation after generation. As society changes its steps, and changes its rhythm, certain expressions and practices will continue to be controversial, be aware that these are all expressions of the times. The expressionists of the times will take society to new limits but not without the expression of disapproval. Somewhere within this lies the balance.