The Last Temptation of Christ: The Protests and the Effects on Censorship

Censorship seems easy enough to define and yet arguments remain over what exactly constitutes censorship. For instance, are First Amendment rights being violated by not allowing certain words or images to be broadcast on network television or does this merely constitute common sense measures to protect children’s undeveloped minds from being exposed to things they are not yet capable of processing? And if this is just common sense, then why is banning Huckleberry Finn from school libraries censorship? What about movie ratings? Is that censorship?

Censorship is far more complicated than one person refusing to let another read or watch or listen to something. The sad, sorry history of the protests against the movie The Last Temptation of Christ should stand as a shining example of how attempts at censorship almost always result in the opposite of the intended effect in the short run, though in the long run the intentions of those who desired to suppress the expression of free speech ultimately were realized.

Those speaking out the loudest for suppression of The Last Temptation of Christ were, unsurprisingly, those who had not seen it and for whom the film represented a threat not just to their religious beliefs, but also to their pocketbooks. Jerry Falwell’s interpretation of free speech was made clear when he said, before having viewed the movie, that “Neither the label ‘fiction’ nor the First Amendment gives Universal the right to libel, slander and ridicule the most central figure in world history.” Of course, the label fiction actually is pretty much carte blanche to say whatever you want about whomever you want, but those who were protesting against the film apparently never distilled that information. At no point was The Last Temptation of Christ ever presented as an alternative truth to the gospels, i.e., it was never connected to any heretical gospel, but instead was clearly described as having been based on a novel.