A few years ago, whilst I was backpacking in America, I found myself in Chicago sharing a hotel with guests of the Jerry Springer Show.

It was back in the year 2000, when Springer was still at his peak, and before I knew it, I was at the NBC studios, chanting ‘Je-rr-y, Je-rr-y, Je-rr-y, Je-rr-y.'

Up until that eye-opening day, I was convinced that the whole show, or at least a good part of it, was fake. Before this day I would have bet my last cent, that the guests were people brought in from the street, paid to make a scene over some ridiculous dysfunction in their imaginary relationships, and that the fist fights were totally rehearsed.

But during my first morning in Chicago, I had the pleasure of having breakfast with some of the guests who later on that day were scheduled to appear on the show. To be more specific, I shared a table with a dwarf from Illinois who was in love with one-legged transvestite from Ohio, a black man with three gold teeth who hated his children because they were too black, and a dirty old man with a disgusting toenail fetish who was being stalked by three different women. As farfetched as all these stories sounded, by the time that I gulped down my first coffee, I was pretty much convinced that sadly, the show was all real.

In fact, much more than what we get to see on screen is actually real. The truth is that to make it on to the airwaves quite a lot of bits are edited out. Believe it or not, a lot of the prurience, foul language and blood baths are cut out, and the producers actually ‘try' not to exploit the most vulnerable.

They have strict instructions not to allow violence against women, not to mention children, and to control the level of ‘nakedness' on stage. Having said that, zoophilia, incest, homophobia, racism and prostitution are good to go.

Being in the audience of the Jerry Springer Show felt pretty much like having my appendix removed - I was glad that I had done it, but delighted at the thought that it was not going to happen again...ever. It was certainly an hour of my life that I will never get back.

I tried to relegate the memory of that experience to the back of my mind, but when the censorship farce exploded earlier this year, memories of those Springer guests started flooding back.

It started with the banning of the play Stitching, it continued with the debate about the infamous Luqa monument, and climaxed (excuse the pun) with Alex Vella Gera facing a possible jail term for his ‘rude' story.

Let's imagine that I didn't want to get into the debate of how ridiculous our censorship laws are (which I do), isn't it a blatant contradiction that we can watch marathons of The Jerry Springer Show during the day, whilst not being able to watch plays like ‘Stitching', in a dark theatre, late at night, where we'd pay for our tickets and be pre-warned about the ‘adult' content that we're about to be exposed to?

Is it possible that our authorities think that it is less ‘dangerous' to allow the general public to watch the vile, horrible, glamourized violence, not to mention the waste of airtime that is The Jerry Springer Show, and at the same time, disallow an educated theatre audience to rationally interpret a play like Stitching?

And if banning something pushes it underground, (this is the current excuse being used by both Parties not to temporarily stop fireworks until investigations are finalized), then doesn't this apply to ‘indecent, pornographic, and obscene' performances too?

What's more worrying, at least to me, is that our young ones, ‘supposedly' our most open-minded beings, Malta's future in fact, seem to have already been brainwashed to think that, obscene plays and films should be censored.

During a mock parliamentary session that was held last week, a group of secondary school students from various schools, made it clear that they do not believe that the Maltese are mature enough to decide for themselves whether or not they want to see a production that contains ‘indecent or adult' content.

To this effect, they voted to have ‘indecent' productions banned. According to them, such productions can lead to ‘copycat violence and subconscious harm.' Three members who voted in favour of this ban belonged to the Arts and Culture Party that originally presented the motion against censorship!

This year, Malta's criminal code was amended and that the legal punishment for ‘producing, circulating, or possessing material which could be deemed pornographic' was increased. It went from a fine of up to €465 and/or 6 months imprisonment, to a fine of between €1000 to €3000 and/or a maximum imprisonment of up to 12 months.

In 2008 alone, 621 people faced criminal procedures for blaspheming in public. The minimum punishment for this is a fine of €11.65, and/or three months imprisonment.

Whilst crack-baring vulgar men blaspheming in public are not exactly my cup of tea, let me put this in a wider context:

In the UK, the last person to be imprisoned for blasphemy was back in 1921.

The last attempted prosecution under the UK blasphemy law was back in 2007, when the group Christian Voice sought a private prosecution against BBC over its broadcasting of the Jerry Springer Opera. The court found that common law blasphemy offences specifically did not apply to stage productions, and they lost the case.

In the US there is no law to respect an establishment of religion. It is clearly not the business of the state to control attacks upon a particular religion. Instead most jurisdictions in the USA provide for strong penalties for crimes committed against a person because of that person's religion, gender, race, sexual orientation etc.

In Pakistan the law punishes defilement of the Quran with life imprisonment. It also prescribes the death penalty for the use of derogatory remarks in respect of the Holy Prophet.

As to which way Malta is heading...I'll leave it up to you to decide! info@alisonbezzina.com