just an essay...

Hello there!
been so long since i last post....to add something new in the mean time...below will be an essay i wrote for some competition, hoping to win an ipod as the prize, but sad to say none...maybe the judges didn't liked my bashing and accusations and frankly the tone and content was not exactly "educational healthy"...anyway i'll juz post it here and dn't kill me if it's something too dry to post on a blog....oh well...i dn't usually write such stuffs anyway...

Censorship kills creativity.Comment.

Censorship is the most vital and sensitive issue concerning films and generally the media. The main concern of my arguments, is with regards to film censorship.
First, what drives creativity? It is the space, freedom, choice and means that one can exhibit their mode of expression and communication. It is without restrains, the dare to imagine, to experiment, to create one’s piece of ‘artwork’ resulting from the pure blend of the creator’s feelings, imaginations, styles and their directions to create their unique piece of work, not tailored for the audience, but their own piece of art they truly want to show, a story they want to tell, or a statement they want to make, to simply fulfill the desires of communicating with the audience, hopefully to bring their point across through their work or to vision their proud work being showcased.
However, censorship has stifled such creativity to flourish and a pity to both the director as well as the audience who could have witnessed another masterpiece. Many films, especially political ones are met with the misunderstandings that the directors are trying to rebel, to mislead the audiences, to bring up again taboo subjects, history which should be buried as a means to voice their anger, to stir up interests to sell their films. More importantly, the audiences should know that the films they watch are for entertainment, the media is about entertainment, thus how can they literally take the meaning or facts of what they see? At best, it is just a well directed piece of masterpiece or artwork, which the audience can enjoy the ride through a well told story, indulging themselves in the excitement and experience of the interesting film and its cinematography. The films are told through the writers and directors’ point of view, thus its meaning are subjective and open to interpretations, thus they cannot be accused and blamed for misleading the audiences merely because of expressing their own views. Therefore an obvious example is, although a political film or a film about a national hero may be very sensitive, it may not be the intentions of the director to foolishly stir up criticisms for its own film or to glorify someone, it can be merely telling a story of one’s emotions and experiences when under certain circumstances. Thus, the audience should just enjoy the ‘journey’ with the characters in the film like reading a book, or enjoy the cinematography, the good script, well-written lines and acting, humor, exciting plot twists or just a subtle artistic experience. Because certain plots or images are vital to bring out the ‘feel’ or the ‘point’ of the film, just like a political film cannot do without political images or a revenge film cannot do without some sort of cruelty, just like the saying “revenge is a dish best served cold” , and the very reasons why these parts are censored, causes the films to lose its ‘taste’ and the core essence of the film, rendering it meaningless or incomplete. Therefore, we cannot ignore the impact of censorship on films.
Ironically, films that do not deserve such censorship treatments are treated cruelly while those that has much more detrimental effects are being generously shown such as those films with excessive or explicit sex scenes (which makes you question whether the quantity is really necessary) and the massive amount of advertisements making use of sexual themes to sell their products shown over your TV set at the prime times with the most audiences (including kids of course). A recent example is the film ‘Irreversible’ with long and explicit sex scenes being shown uncut in our local theatres which garnered much responses and criticisms. With profits realistically linked to media and entertainment, does it means that profits has the upper-hand and priority when it comes to censorship so much so that the marketing ploy to show such films uncut in order to bring in the viewership, can escape unharmed? While censorship remains ‘morale’ and ‘just’ when it comes to small, or less box office hits, or overseas seemingly unimportant art films, and letting other investments generated, films worthy as marketing tools, out the back-door, makes the purpose of censorship very questionable? What the audience need is something different, unique that will excite them or bring them through another artistic journey, and not being feed constantly with the mediocre entertainment trash that has ‘safe’ plots repeated endlessly that dulls the audience. And for every masterpiece to rise, it takes a 100 failed tries, thus when can we witness the next masterpiece, if censorship bites on the leg of creativity?