I shall leave the philosophy of Bertrand Russell to Senator Keery to develop with the skill which I am sure he will bring to bear on it. Ranging on the other side of this, there is, of course, Aristotle and following him, St. Thomas and, surprisingly, Queen Elizabeth I who sponsored the Shakespearean drama in opposition to all advice given to her by the scholars of her day, Sir Philip Sidney being prominent among them.
I suppose the leading opponent of all of censorship of any kind was Milton, and Senator Keery might like to be reminded, through the Chair, that although Milton recommended, in the most extreme terms, liberty of every kind, he went on to make it quite clear that this did not mean that it would be possible "to tolerate popery or open superstition which, as it extirpates all religion and civil supremacies so itself should be extirpated".
Before dealing with the real problem of censorship and art, which is the reason why I am speaking on these lines, I want to deal with the simple matter of pornography. At this moment the law in the United States of America is that one must conform with three requirements before pornography is legally proved. I shall give only the third requirement and that is "that it be utterly without redeeming social value". If it has any redeeming social value then it is not pornography and is permissible.
The position with regard to pornography is that in fact if we go back to the meaning of the word we will find that it is the stock in trade of the oldest profession in the world and the evidence of the professionals on pornography as to the effect of pornography in assisting them in the pursuit of their trade is that it does affect behaviour. In arousing the passions that those ladies are concerned to arouse, they provide evidence which ranges wholly on the side of those who say it is the duty of the State to legislate for the improvement of and to prevent the corruption of man.
This professional evidence confirms a profound Christian insight into the corruptibility of human nature which has always pointed out the solid reality that if we look into our own thoughts and hearts we must realise how difficult it is for any man to live well. I am reminded of Chesterton's quip which went something like this—I may not have the exact wording:
The strange thing about man is that he is made in the image of God. He is the paragon of animals but he is not to be trusted.
The centrality of love, l'amour—this is an interesting point—among the passions, and its protean manifestations in all forms of desire and aversion, is a Christian insight anticipated by Plato but more interestingly confirmed by the scientific research of Freud. In rejecting the Supreme Court of America's view of this, I take the position that the evil of obscenity is a moral principle in which Plato, Aristotle and many others concur with Christianity. How great an effect it has on the human soul is another matter—it is a question of fact to be investigated.
I do not require the result of these investigations to take my position but I am informed that such investigations are being carried out and it is questionable as to the morality of the procedures adopted in ascertaining scientifically the truth of this Christian insight confirmed by the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition. I am dealing with sex only at the moment but it is quite common to hear people say that in their opinion it is much more objectionable to have scenes of violence permitted on the screen. These scenes of violence are seen immediately, in some way, to affect behaviour while erotic scenes are not considered as affecting behaviour.
As well as condemning erotic scenes I condemn scenes of violence, but, in fact, I shall be suggesting to the House that there are grave doubts as to whether cutting either of them can be considered as being the appropriate procedure when dealing with this particular art form. I would be interested if someone who is more attuned to the thought of what I call the Left— I, myself, am described as Left but sometimes I do not know what that means—could throw some light on the curious fact that the Left which is so critical of capitalism in all its manifestations never criticises, as far as I know, this appalling capitalistic institution of producing pornography.
The society in which we live is obviously an extraordinarily transitional one, a period which is practically post-Christian certainly in most of the previously Christianised world. Most of the world have come to accept a kind of philosophy of life which has not been expressed in any terms that one could intellectually accept. It is obviously leading to rejection as is evident in the conduct of the young. The affluent society does not produce the happy society. If we think about this we will realise that is not surprising. It is not specifically a Christian idea that there are higher and lower pleasures. This is not merely a Platonic-Aristotelian feature but is a feature of the stoic and the epicurean philosophy.
The epicureans thought that the object of life was to derive pleasure but one does not derive pleasure by simply seeking out its coarser forms. In fact one of the sayings attributed to Epicurus was "Do not increase but diminish my desires: this is the easiest way for me to achieve pleasure, to be happy"; and then there was the observation of Cicero: "When we withdraw the mind from pleasure and business, we separate the mind from the body and we learn to die". That is really what we are all living to do, learning how to die. It is interesting to note the combination of business and pleasure because, for many, business is a kind of pleasure; it is a kind of distraction from the other things they ought to be thinking about, an escape from themselves.
I am coming now to deal with the question of laws and what sort of laws you can and should have in dealing with this matter. Laws obviously cannot be concerned with preventing sin. Certainly they have been notably unsuccessful in achieving what they set out to do. They could not for example seek to prevent those acts in private which even elephants take care to carry out in private. The laws which in fact are only possible are laws which deal with the aspects of conduct which are predominantly social and are concerned with the common good, that is to say with the peace and prosperity of men and society. But laws that are good laws should seek to create conditions under which morality can develop.
Among those, not the least important is a law which preserves freedom for people from compulsion by others. Recently I went to buy a couple of detective books for a person who was sick. I picked up book after book and the covers were full of the usual stuff of photographs of half-naked women. I said to myself: "This must be wrong. It is an invasion of my privacy. I do not want to see those bloody women so why should I be required to? It seems to me to be that a law creating conditions under which I would not be forced to see those spectacles, that my freedom not to see them would not be interfered with, would be a good law."
Laws must, of course, as the Minister said—this is the effect of what he said—have regard to the level of expectations at any time, must have regard to what the people, for whom they are being enacted, will regard as just and therefore they may vary from time to time. We have here a Christian culture and an inheritance which we should seek to preserve but we must recognise the increasing difficulty we have in preserving it because with the increasing communications we are living in a world which is now furnished like a bawdy house.
I do not find criticism of films as seriously done as it ought to be done. There is an assumption which indicates complete lack of self-confidence, a lack of confidence in our own values, assumptions made which show a weakness in the critics. I want to quote one or two sentences from a psychological writing on the period of adolescence:
The individual may be compared to a violin. Previously the instrument may have seemed to be a cigar box strung with cat-gut. At adolescence it may seem suddenly to become a Stradivarius played on by varying forces. It sometimes responds as if played by a concert master, at other times as if by an untalented amateur. At times it refuses to produce music at all.
The point is not to be lost and that is all the evidence is that the exposure of adolescence to pornography can permanently endanger the whole stability of their psychology and the quality of the life they have to live. It is right to precede this quotation from C.S. Lewis with one from Milton, which is very good. C.S. Lewis says:
Without the aid of training emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.
Milton says in a magnificent passage:
He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures and yet abstain and yet distinguish and yet prefer that which is truly better he is the true war-faring Christian.
He then goes on with the famous phrase:
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for not without the dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring purity much rather. That which purifies us is trial and trial is by what is contrary.
Finally, he uses the words:
To sequester out of the world into Atlantic and utopian polities which can never be drawn into use will not mend our condition.
I am sorry to tell the House that I have not actually reached the main theme of my speech. I can see it is fascinating the Minister. Art is intrinsically and primarily good, for a man deprived of the pleasures of the spirit goes over to the pleasures of the body. Art teaches men the pleasures of the spirit. Arts are able to perform the same function for every type of man.
There is an interesting quotation from a debate in this House when the Censorship of Films Act was first enacted, that is an observation made by the father of our present Cathaoirleach when he intervened in the debate. He obviously had not given consideration to the solid fact that the film is a definite art form and a particularly cerebral one. He was drawn into the debate in some way. It is interesting to note he did not oppose the Censorship of Films Act. He thought it irrelevant, unimportant, but somebody made the point about the effect of a bad film on somebody. He said that this is a great problem for an artist.
He described how his friend, James Stephens, had written a book in which he described a man drowning himself and how a body was fished out of the Liffey and in the pocket of the clothing of the drowned man was found a copy of James Stephens's book. He comforted Stephens by saying that Goethe had had a like experience. He too had written a book in which he gave an account of a man drowning himself and again a body was fished out and in the pocket of the clothes worn by that drowned man was Goethe's work. It is a magnificent comment on Goethe and W. B. Yeats for Goethe reconciled himself by thinking of the number of people who had not drowned themselves as a result of reading his book.
Aristotle, if I may be forgiven for referring to him again, spoke of art as having three justifications, first giving a contemplative pleasure, secondly affecting a purgation of emotions which have been raised because they are real emotions and entertainment. Dewey, the American philosopher, adds as a fourth justification for art— and I can see that the Minister is going to give great attention to this—the value of communication and that it effects in fact communication between people, eliminates loneliness, and provides alternatives, as the drama and certain cinema do also, to other baser types of activities.
Shakespearian drama, for example. It is worth reflecting on that you had to come to the time of the modern cinema to have the same sort of numbers of people and the kind of people attending the play that attended Shakespeare's plays in the city of London. At the time Shakespeare's plays were produced there, as far as figures were established the population of London was about 100,000 and it is calculated that 30,000 people a week went to Shakespearian drama and that few of them were able to read. They all went for the joy of the story and the exciting themes which in fact, as we all know, Shakespeare dealt with.
On the question of why censorship? This becomes an immense and difficult problem because the cinema and the drama are arts which generally share the same object, the imitation of human action, and the imitation of human action with modern techniques raises very serious problems in that imitation leads to a further imitation in human conduct. The cinema is a new form of an old problem and a question for prudence to resolve— how prudently that natural thing, liberty, is in fact properly and wisely to be restricted.
Maritain distinguishes moral activity and artistic activity. In saying what I want to say about art I want first to quote from the great historian Lord Acton who said that it was because the fine arts represent all those forces in mankind that it was necessary to undertake the history of mankind to get them into focus. Art is concerned, Maritain says, with all that pertains to making it. What I now want to give is entirely a summary of Maritain's position. It will be long but I think that it is a useful one for the Minister's advisers to consider.
Art resides in the will and is a certain perfection of the soul. It is an inner quality or stable and deep rooted disposition that raises the human subject and his natural powers to a higher degree of vital formation and energy or that makes him possessed of a particular strength of his own. When a master quality has become developed it becomes our most treasured good, our most unbending strength because it is an ennoblement in the very kingdom of human nature."
Then he goes on to talk of the temptation of artists to devote all their powers to their art and in doing so damage their own souls. He comments that Wilde's observation that a man being a poisoner never stopped a man writing good prose, by observing that poison finally finished the prose writer.
On this question of the themes which it is appropriate for the cinema or drama to treat I think it is necessary to say that no theme can be excluded. St. Paul in his great observation—I have forgotten precisely the words— said "let certain things not be so much as mentioned among you" and he then proceeds to mention them all and obviously indicates the themes as being themes suitable for consideration.
Now the whole justification for an artist dealing with a theme is to be found in the Aristotelian idea of purgation, that is to say, that the emotion which is aroused—in fact there is a catharsis, that is a purging, and in this way in fact much evil action is avoided by every theme being treated with very great artistry. But every activity which is bad is not to be imitated, and I am left with the great difficulty in relation to this whole question of censorship, personally, that I take up the position finally myself that the intention of the artist is irrelevant to the consideration of the final work he produces. People who make and attend films which deal with themes may be unfitted in fact to treat and to consider the themes by watching the film because they are unable to avoid conniving at the evil they are depicting or viewing.
I am affected in this sort of view by the remarkable fact that the Minister may be able to give me some information on, but on the information available to me as far as I know there is no great work of cinema, of film, dealing with the appalling consequences of venereal disease. It is only in the last few months that people who were not brought up in the lore available to the children of medical practitioners who learned that Lord Randolph Churchill died of syphilis, and for the last 20 years of his life he was mad and in the most appalling degradation of circumstances. It is curious that while love is treated in the way it is, the consequences of permissiveness, as far as I know, have not been treated at all. Perhaps I am wrong in this. I would like to be told that I was.
But I do not want to just tell you what my difficulty is with regard to the making of a film. My difficulty is this —that we were all brought up to live with the idea of Bowdler as being anathema who bowdlerised Shakespeare and the Bible; and the Bible is very good by the way—"Blessed be the womb that bore thee and the paps that gave thee suck"; "and the Word was made flesh"—not soul be it noted. The true Christian tradition is that the body as well as the soul is recognised as being part in creation and to be respected.
On this matter of making films, as I understand this thing—and I am a man here requiring more information than I have—I have feeling that this is a subject too important to avoid treating despite the kind of dangers to which it exposes myself of being pompous. As to the actual making of films, it consists of cutting, that the director of the film makes a series of sequences and makes very much more film than he ever shows in the film he finally produces. The work of art is to cut the photographs, and the presentation of those photographs, of particular sequences, to cut certain things and leave in certain things. Now that therefore may leave us with the great difficulty intellectually of saying how it can be proper to cut the film which purports to be a work of art and purports because it is a sufficient catharsis, proper to be shown in public, because after all we cannot have a cloistered virtue and people must learn to be aware of the Christian teaching about their own weaknesses and how they can be controlled.
Something which might be considered on Committee Stage is that it should be perhaps open to a censor to say of a certain film that it would be seen generally or seen by a limited audience—presumably a reference to age—or that the film, though a work of art but of degraded art, is not one which in Ireland should be shown publicly. I am not sure that I like to leave in the power of the censor the ability to cut because this, for him, would be more than Bowdler did: he cut our paragraphs but he did not rewrite sentences.
I shall end with the observation that the same grounds which made dramatic poetry the primary object of Plato's concern when he was 20 remained his concern in his eighties. This thought makes the cinema more than anything else the outstanding social and political problem of our day. I made inquiries, but I may have been misled on this or did not pursue them enough and I do not think we get reports on the procedures attached to film censorship. Therefore, there may be a lot to be said for the establishment of a committee of appropriate persons to consider how censorship has worked in Ireland and to continue to review the operation of film censorship. This involves the whole question of pornography, whether it appears in films or otherwise, and the whole question of the wisdom of protection in society. It is, of course, a matter of prudence. We have the generation gap, and conditions are very different in 1970 to what they were in 1923. Therefore I should like to feel that some body of persons, of which I would not wish to be one, would consider this in all its aspects—legal, moral, artistic and otherwise.
