Free press should live

By Mark Costello
Collegian Editor
April 25, 2007

One of my favorite books is Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Burgess writes the book in this kind of made-up language, a mixture of Russian slang and English, called Nadsat in the book. It has this curious effect on the reader: when someone else calls something horrorshow, you nod in appreciation. When someone says he or she is going to the mesto to drink something with knives in it, you viddy all and you wish to govoreet with your droog for a bit longer before he or she leaves you all on your oddy knocky.

The words above mean generally harmless things: horrorshow means good, mesto is a place or bar, viddy is to see or understand, govoreet is to talk, droog is a friend and oddy knocky means alone. However, vast portions of the book are dedicated to Alex, the 15-year-old antihero of the novel, tolchocking the red, red krovvy out of baboochkas and ptitsas—beating the blood out of old women and little girls. It is a book that describes vicious murders, heinous acts, violence, rape, mayhem and disorder.

And it is classic literature.

Describing a society falling apart under an increasingly fascist government, the novel takes a young man to the extremes of youthful delinquency, showing how totalitarianism seeks to control, not to fix, problems and social issues. As a seventh grader, I viddied all—the novel was rich and deep for my young mind, and gave me room to try on the different ideas Burgess was espousing.

Strangely, never once in my life have I ever beat the blood out of an old or young woman, or anyone for that matter. Yet, the media has honed in on Seung-Hui Cho’s tastes in movies, music, film and video games in an effort to account for his deviant behavior. Further, commentators are questioning the freedom of speech.

Unfortunately, Cho was a murderer, and the recent unveiling of two one-act dramas he wrote for an undergraduate drama writing course have led bloggers, commentators and general knee-jerk reactionists across the country to scream: “Why wasn’t he reported to the proper authorities for the nature of his writing?”

Richard McBeef details the deterioration of a mother/son/stepfather relationship: the son suspects the stepfather, Richard McBeef, a janitor for the CIA who used to be a pro-football player, chef and preschool teacher, has murdered his father to marry his mother. The son manipulates his mother into throwing pipes and brandishing a chainsaw at Richard McBeef who, at the one-act’s end, kills the stepson with one fell blow. The other play, Mr. Brownstone, concerns a group of school children who break into a casino and spend their time badmouthing their teacher, the titular character. They also sing the Guns’n’Roses song of the same title word-for-word. When they win the $5 million jackpot, Mr. Brownstone steals it from them. Hilarity ensues.

Ridiculous, borderline schizophrenic and generally poorly written, these plays had the right to be written and submitted free of censure, regardless of quality or creepiness. Ben Franklin said that “he who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither,” which I’m inclined to agree with. The deaths of Virginia Tech’s students are tragedies, each one chilling and heartbreaking independently of each other, but we cannot sign away our freedom from censorship out of fear. This is how fascism takes hold, friends—tragedy scares the populace into being afraid of its freedom. The people nod blankly as they give it away, and all art becomes propaganda. Literature can be scary, because it is free, and that’s what makes it beautiful.

costellom4@lasalle.edu