{"id":56024,"date":"2014-03-13T17:24:35","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T17:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=56024"},"modified":"2017-05-03T16:27:14","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T15:27:14","slug":"index-freedom-expression-awards-arts-nominee-lucien-bourjeily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=56024","title":{"rendered":"Index Freedom of Expression Awards: Arts nominee Lucien Bourjeily"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wBH62Nzp5VI\" width=\"700\" height=\"394\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Lucien Bourjeily openly confronted the Lebanese censorship bureau by writing a play Would It Pass Or Not? about censorship in Lebanon. The play was banned, exposing the farcical sensitivity of the censors and forcing them to justify their actions in public.<\/p>\n<p>The play was produced by March \u0096 &#8211; an anti-censorship NGO of which Bourjeily is an advisory board member.<\/p>\n<p>In conversation with Index, Bourjeily told of his bizarre encounters with the censor board\u2019s general when summoned to the bureau in Beirut on 28 August.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe play could not go ahead\u201d he was told \u201cbecause it was not realistic. It was exaggerated\u201d. \u201cTrue\u201d, said Bourjeily, \u201cit\u2019s fiction. Of course it\u2019s unrealistic and exaggerated. Otherwise it would be a documentary\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Bourjeily recounts the general turning to his subaltern and describing scenes from the play, asking \u201cwould such a thing happen here?\u201d, unintentionally and ironically echoing a scene in the play itself. When censors are censoring a play about censorship, things are bound to turn to farce sooner or later.<\/p>\n<p>Normally, Lebanon\u2019s censors will suggest changes to works that will allow them to pass \u2013 a joke removed here, a political remark erased there. But with Bourjeily\u2019s play, this was apparently not going to happen.<\/p>\n<p>The censors\u2019 next move was interesting: they would show, they said, that Boujeily\u2019s play had no artistic merit. On 3 September, General Mounir Akiki appeared on television bearing testimony from four \u201ccritics\u201d, each of whom said the same thing; that there was no artistic value in \u201cWould it pass or not?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Curiously, none of these critics were named, despite their views being taken very seriously indeed. One said that Bourjeily\u2019s play contained \u201ca defamatory hallucination indicating the absence of his artistic level\u201d, another that the play \u201cwas not related to the theatre, but rather with prosaic words. It does not meet the conditions regarding structure.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/freedom-expression-awards-2014\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Index Freedom of Expression Awards<\/a><br \/>\n#indexawards2014 The nominees are&#8230;<\/h3>\n<p>Nominees:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/advocacy-nominees-freedom-of-expression-awards-2014\/\">Advocacy<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/arts-nominees-freedom-of-expression-awards-2014\/\">Arts<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/vote-2014-digital-activism-award\/\">Digital Activism<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/nominees-freedom-expression-awards-2014\/\">Journalism<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Join us 20 March 2014 at the Barbican Centre for the Freedom of Expression Awards<\/em><\/p>\n<form action=\"https:\/\/rsm2.rsmsecure.com\/cpterminal\/cpweb.php\" method=\"post\" name=\"CTTcpweb\"><input name=\"submit\" type=\"submit\" value=\"Purchase Tickets\" \/><\/form>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/2014\/03\/index-freedom-expression-awards-arts-nominee-lucien-bourjeily\/\">This article was posted on 13 March 2014 at indexoncensorship.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lucien Bourjeily openly confronted the Lebanese censorship bureau by writing a play Would It Pass Or Not? about censorship in Lebanon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":53565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[8935,581],"tags":[6195,7381,5828],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56024"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56024"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87766,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56024\/revisions\/87766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/53565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}