The Congruous Vacuum

The secret value of censorship.

When writers, singers and artists cannot directly address a subject like sex, even loving marital relations, they must find metaphors or even a sub-language to address any forbidden subjects. For example in the King James Bible, Genesis, male/female intercourse is written "he went into her". Now it seems today in poetry, song, or fiction people can write anything without it being censored or banned by society because we have this thingy called free speech. Unfortunately free speech has a desensitizing effect of dumbing-down popular culture. in the Victorian - era or earlier you could reference sex or other taboos but you had to insinuate it, be oblique, use metaphor. Since writers and talkers might be using a metaphor, pun, or subversion to reveal their true meaning, or a hidden meaning behind their remarks, readers and listeners had to be alert. All this sub-text creates fantastic amounts of sophistication, which we have a total lack of today. I am not for bringing censorship back or against free speech, but it is naive to say that this change in our culture has no effect, or is all good. Also, since sub-text and metaphor have lost a daily- regular or practical function, its function now is just aesthetic. And this aestheticism is a label that says, I wrote this, this way to sound pretty. Which is weak. So this enforced a way of writing that makes metaphors and sub-text seem functional, for example Period writing.

-shakabusatsu