The power of government is ultimately based on force.
This is fine, as long as the force is being used against people who take your stuff or molest your relatives or invade other countries and take your oil. But when the use of force is threatened against those who do not initiate force, we have a problem.
And that is exactly what is happening in the movie marketing "debate". (Notice that the media loves to call it a "debate" so you'll forget that it's an issue of right and wrong, and think it's just an issue of subjective preference. Like less filling versus tastes great.)
The threat of violence underlies every statement made by government. The government does not ask movie studio executives to tone down the marketing of violent films to children. It threatens them. Movie producers know damn well that there might not be a law on the books today, but if they don't "voluntarily" do as they're told now, they'll be forced to do something eventually. It's the threat of force that makes a government "suggestion" a regulation.
Movie execs are just hoping that if they jump through some hoops now "voluntarily", they won't have to jump through one of those flaming circus hoops later.
Tipper Gore and the PMRC got record companies to "voluntarily" put warning labels on albums for the same reason that the movie studios are going to "voluntarily" alter their marketing. Because the gutless executives in both industries think they can postpone their limousine and red-carpeted entrance into the fully-regulated government-sponsored Academy Awards by one more year.
But the executives' very compliance with the government threats, or more specifically, their belief that such compliance is beneficial, proves that censorship is already here. If government's suggestions about the content of a Scream 8 commercial translates into action, we have censorship.
Now we're ready to address the beloved fine line. The fine line between censorship that's good censorship, and censorship that's bad censorship.
"Bad censorship" is when you tell an artist or journalist what he can or can't include in his work. "Good censorship" is when you help the motherfucking children.
It's "bad censorship" when you tell Robert Crumb to stop drawing pictures of Fritz the Cat getting pussy. It's "good censorship" when you tell the Evil Tobacco Company to stop drawing pictures of Joe the Camel taking a fucking cigarette break.
It's "bad censorship" when you tell the New York Times that they have to report the story about Al Gore accepting bribes from Texas personal injury attorneys for the Democratic National Committee. It's "good censorship" when you tell a television network that they have to hire more black actors. (Like what the world needs is more UPN sitcoms.)
