The Sorcerer's Apprentice is one of two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (the other being The Cheney Vase--and no, it has nothing to do the evil veep of the same name) now ensconced in the public domain. I've seen Apprentice, and it's pretty potent stuff--while I don't approve of censorship I can see why this one caused a tempest in a teapot.
This - reading this item we are now commenting on - this incident is typical of what i consider a bizarre phenomenon but which seems actually to be the norm: the need for a sponsor to actually hijack and control and rework and totally uncreate from its original nature the very thing it wanted to sponsor and allegedly perpetuate in the first place. This seems to be some sort of innate human derangement. There is probably a Master's thesis in here somewhere. It's akin, as far as I can conclude, to demonic possession. Or at the very least, looting at the monkey level.
"Censorship" is apparently a word with no real definition. A sponsor influencing content is not censorship. A government agency running your life is. there is a whopping difference in the flesh-and-blood reality of both yet they both have the same word assigned to both conditions.
Well, actually, Gomer, in this case the sponsor was a censor, at least as far as the network run goes.
Reasonably good definition currently offered by Answers.com: "A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable."
The Bloch story having been kinda spoiled for readers who've gotten this far, it's still worth reading.
Hitchcock published a PRESENTS: anthology that he and the various censors co-edited: STORIES THEY WOULDN'T LET ME DO ON TV. As the years went on, several times the banning was reversed. (As often was their wont, Dell broke the hardcover selection into two pbs.)
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The Sorcerer's Apprentice is one of two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (the other being The Cheney Vase--and no, it has nothing to do the evil veep of the same name) now ensconced in the public domain. I've seen Apprentice, and it's pretty potent stuff--while I don't approve of censorship I can see why this one caused a tempest in a teapot.
I've never seen it, but it sounds like fun.
This - reading this item we are now commenting on - this incident is typical of what i consider a bizarre phenomenon but which seems actually to be the norm: the need for a sponsor to actually hijack and control and rework and totally uncreate from its original nature the very thing it wanted to sponsor and allegedly perpetuate in the first place. This seems to be some sort of innate human derangement. There is probably a Master's thesis in here somewhere. It's akin, as far as I can conclude, to demonic possession. Or at the very least, looting at the monkey level.
"Censorship" is apparently a word with no real definition. A sponsor influencing content is not censorship. A government agency running your life is. there is a whopping difference in the flesh-and-blood reality of both yet they both have the same word assigned to both conditions.
Well, actually, Gomer, in this case the sponsor was a censor, at least as far as the network run goes.
Reasonably good definition currently offered by Answers.com:
"A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable."
The Bloch story having been kinda spoiled for readers who've gotten this far, it's still worth reading.
Hitchcock published a PRESENTS: anthology that he and the various censors co-edited: STORIES THEY WOULDN'T LET ME DO ON TV. As the years went on, several times the banning was reversed. (As often was their wont, Dell broke the hardcover selection into two pbs.)
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