Serenity vs. Censorship
The TV show FIREFLY and its feature film SERENITY told of a motley crew of rebels fighting an oppressive regime. For real censorship we needed to look no further than University of Wisconsin in Stout. The trouble began after Theatre Professor James Miller put this poster on his door. Campus police threatened Miller with charges of disorderly conduct, and reported him to a "threat assessment team." Professor Miller than put up another poster that read "WARNING: FASCISM" that led to more trouble.
As word of the outrage spread via bloggers, a national outcry came to include actors Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin from the show. Finally the university police and their threat assessment team backed down. The university will now stage workshops on a forgotten item called the First Amendment. A college should be a place of free expression, but instead they reinforce uniformity of thought. Hooray for the Browncoats!
First they came for the Serenity fans, and I said nothing because they are a minority. Then they came for the Star Trek fans, claiming that Trekkies were attacking Star Wars fans. I said nothing because I don't watch Star Trek. Then they came for all science fiction fans, and I said nothing. Finally they came for me, and there was no one left.
3 Comments:
Fascism is almost everywhere today. Even the once reasonable countries of the antipodes have fascists roaming about their campuses. They made sure I was kicked off the last campus, without explaining why. Something to do with money, they said, although I was not in fact being paid. People who are not even physicists ban me from all their online discussions about physics, about which they are quite certain they know more, because the professionals welcome the flag bearing fascist groupies. And so on.
And now CERN are going to hold a FLT neutrino conference (Friday), from which all of us will no doubt be excluded, while people who never thought about neutrinos before OPERA will be welcome.
Frustrating, I know. Fortunately I am able to talk about the speed of light at many other conferences.
Post a Comment
<< Home