Blog Post #3 - 6/9

I found an interesting article from the New York Times dealing with censorship and internet filters in China. The article talks about a video circulating on the internet about a “mythical” creature called the Grass-Mud Horse. The video features a song aimed towards children about the Grass-Mud Horse, that is courageous in the struggle against the evil River Crab. At first, the story of the Grass-Mud Horse is innocent. However, in Chinese, “Grass-Mud Horse” sounds almost exactly like an obscenity. Chinese intellectuals argue that this song was created purposefully to counteract acts of censorship from the Chinese government, which can be interpreted as the evil River Crab. Since the videos and idea of the Grass-Mud Horse has infiltrated the internet in such an expansive way, government filters have a difficult time censoring all of the web pages. You can read the article here.
In my opinion, so long as filters and censors exist, there will be people who find ways around them and stand up to the censors in order to promote and maintain their intellectual freedom. If this occurs, when do the people who censor decide to stop? There is no true way to interpret what a person says. Most likely, the song is meant as a protest to censors and the government, but maybe it isn’t. Who can truly say? If censors purposely look and search for items, web pages, opinions to filter, or purposely search and dig for reasons to filter something, theoretically, they will eventually end up filtering everything, leaving nothing left for anyone. However, this will never happen if people are fighting against censorship, especially in discreet and witty ways, such as the song of the Grass-Mud Horse. The article even states that a pro-democracy group, Charter 08, that is often filtered, could possibly be referred to on the internet as “Wang” in the future. “Wang” is a common surname in China, and attempting to filter the word “Wang” by separating the surname from the moniker for Charter 08 will be nearly impossible. Some people may think the way these anti-censorship groups are going about things is immature. However, in such a censored society as China, any way of fighting against filters and censorship is a good and powerful way.