Ideological anxiety and the censored text: Real lives—at the edge of the union¹

The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Paul Hamann, Gregory Campbell, and Dr. John Lucaites to the development of this essay. This project was supported by an Indiana University Grant‐in‐Aid. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the joint convention of the Central States Communication Association and the Southern States Communication Association, Lexington, KY, April, 1993.

This essay details the controversy surrounding the 1985 decision by the British Broadcasting Corporation's Board of Governors to withdraw a documentary entitled Real Lives—At the Edge of the Union. It also offers a reading of the film that attempts to understand how this particular text works as a radical reflection of ideological anxiety in Great Britain, and thus how the film functioned as an oppositional discourse to the prevailing orthodoxy of Thatcherism and British policy in Northern Ireland. Ultimately, the essay maintains the importance of sustained critical analysis of discourse censored by existing power structures to better understand the censoring impulse as one motivated by ideological uncertainty and ambiguity.

Notes

The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Paul Hamann, Gregory Campbell, and Dr. John Lucaites to the development of this essay. This project was supported by an Indiana University Grant‐in‐Aid. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the joint convention of the Central States Communication Association and the Southern States Communication Association, Lexington, KY, April, 1993.