Phyllis Beveridge Nissila

This is not an advertisement per se for a movie called “I Can Only Imagine,” which is a Christian testimony based on the song by Bart Millard, although the film comes well recommended.

Rather, this post is a timely addendum to how freedom of speech might slowly be curtailed by the powers that be, curiously, in a vaguely similar fashion to what happened in the fictional town of Nollop in Mark Dunn’s  satire Ella Minnow Pea about which I recently blogged. The examples excerpted below are similar to his story in that letters make up words and there are those who don’t like certain words. They want to get rid of them, you might deduce…

Dunn’s little satire, noted by one critic as a “light-stepping commentary on censorship and totalitarianism” reveals just one (clever and evolving) method of curtailing freedom of speech. Perhaps here, in the reviews of the movie mentioned above, is yet another way–in the real world–to keep certain words out of sight. Here is another method of chipping away at speech, specifically, by inserting “***” where the word “God” should be.

Of course there are innumerable ways to keep the real words from the eyes of those someone, somewhere believes should not be exposed to them. For a couple of methods that immediately come to mind in this Easter season are, well, re-naming what used to be “Easter Vacation” to “Spring Break,” and as for the Christmas holiday, stirring up some kind of problem around the simple expression “Merry Christmas”. Of course these methods have been “chipping away” for years, now.

(Makes you wonder why those words and expressions re: that belief system? [1])

Anyway, see what you think about my “find” yesterday when I looked up the reviews of the movie from the Fandango website that I copy/pasted for you, here:

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[1] Hmmmmm, words and expressions from other belief systems seem to pass by the (censorship?) checkpoints without such problems…

By the Way: Happy Easter!

(Image by Claire Beveridge Gumbs)