If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many 'bads' - bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even 'bad' white males. Only, when you write about 'bad' white males, they don't complain about it. And need I say that there are 'good' blacks, 'good' homosexuals and 'good' women?
The Central Propaganda Department is the highest-ranking censorship agency in China. And it has control over everything from the appointment of newspaper editors to university professors to the way that films are cut and distributed.
We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.
Cable had a latitude to move which created less censorship and bestowed upon the artists, the writers and the creators, more liberty to create their shows.
There are things I'm doing with 'The After' that would've never flown on 'The X-Files' and on network television, so it's more permissive. That's not to say that you want to abuse that. I think that a show like 'The X-Files' actually worked better as a network show with the restraints put on it, the censorship that was applied.
Chinese artists have been subversive over thousands of years, taking what they think of the government and embedding it in their art. There might be censorship of not going as far as they might.
Nothing is harmful to literature except censorship, and that almost never stops literature going where it wants to go either, because literature has a way of surpassing everything that blocks it and growing stronger for the exercise.
I have a very serious censorship office inside my head; it censors things that I could tell you that you would never forget, and I don't want to be the person to stick that in your brain.
