Censorship is the greatest enemy of arts and culture, and the weapon used against it. Culture and arts always flourish as censorship decreases and vice versa. The stronger and more dominant censorship is, the less distinction there is between works, which then turn into repeated copies.

In the space of the continuous ancient Arab tyranny, culture was excluded as the main condition for excluding society from the circle of action, so a thick wall of prevention was necessary to ensure that society remains closed and not exposed to any content until after this content is scrutinized, for fear of drawing the citizen’s attention to the need for change.

Censorship is not just laws defined by an authoritarian political regime but is much deeper than that. The conditions of official and especially political censorship can be dealt with sometimes in one way or another, but people’s censorship is one that is keen to firmly root the norms of society and defend them and does not hesitate to use religion as a pretext to prohibit any new viewpoint and to punish its owner.

It is the people’s censorship that rejects all topics that reveal the faults, backwardness, sectarianism, and narcissism of its society. It is the censorship of people who refuse to develop and integrate with what is contemporary, as they have not come into contact with others and have not faced their reality. They are a very large segment of society.

It is worth noting here that the official censorship is the one that steps forward and defends the social control and is the one controlling and issuing orders, raising and lowering the ceiling as it deems necessary.
The fields of theater, cinema, novel, and poetry in our Arab culture are in dire need of innovation and intellectual creativity, but these fields are unable to act in light of ambiguous official and social controls.

The artist is a highly sensitive intellectual and the owner of his art tools, and his real mission is to search among the rubble for expressive beauty and present it to people, and when the artist succeeds in that, he feels happy and ecstatic and tries to upgrade his tools and contents in his search for more giving and aesthetic action. An artist reaches his peak when His self-motivation intersects with the public concerns.

However, the artist is a human being and a citizen first, and in the absence of the citizen’s effectiveness and the limitation of his action, the artist automatically becomes incapable of performing his artistic tasks and functions, and in the best case, if he is helped by circumstances and luck, he turns into a professional performer of roles that do not allow his inner energies to appear, and do not express what is going on within him. The artist is governed by general absolutes, like everyone else.

The climax of hypocrisy in our deteriorating Arab situation is pushing artists to the media front to talk about peoples and their pain during the periods of stormy political crises, even if that is their right.

The matter is not one of their basic functions, but rather it is the function of the political class hiding in its burrows, so the artist in political affairs is nothing more than an ordinary citizen who has an opinion. His real and effective role is to present beauty and knowledge, and whoever separated the artist from this role is the one who tries to shove him to the forefront to alleviate the people’s resentment, distort the facts, and continue in his tyranny and control of public destinies.

He is a beloved artist who has achieved the equation of fame and public love. The distinction between the artist and the star artist is not a mechanical or simple act, as the matter is often subject to marketing games, which makes the comparison between the values of the artist and the star artist a tricky work of criticism that has its own particularities and problems.

There is a matter that must be highlighted. Whomever people call a star definitely deserves it because they love him, and they do not seek any material benefit from this description, unlike production companies that seek to manufacture and promote stars in order to achieve financial returns.

Stardom, in my opinion, is does not apply to TV drama (stars) artists, because their work or their continuous appearance is linked to the satisfaction of the political authority with them, as well as the fact that they are imposed on us in our homes, they enter our homes by force, and they are usually managed by political decision-makers who are interested in capturing every new talent that attracts Public view.

The star that is granted this title by the public is a cause of concern for the tyrannical political authority. His influence on the masses is overwhelming and, in most cases, independent.

Therefore, we notice the negligence of the authorities in theater and cinema production and development, where the audience gets to choose their star on their own, not as is the case in television, where the authority, through television, shoves its stars into our lives, so we choose one of them thinking that we are the ones who called him a star.

The historical drama did not give us much. On the contrary, it contributed to distorting history, so instead of delving into the problem or the obscured, it went to the agreed-upon, exaggerating glorification and holiness, and presented historical eras as if they were luminous with flawless, semi-god rulers.

What the historical drama has presented to us so far is nothing more than a school curriculum, official history that the victorious wrote about himself, or that was written later according to national, sectarian, or other prejudices.

Historical drama should call for disclosure, and raise the real questions. It builds a real bridge between the past and the present with its painful outcomes, and it is the one that illuminates our present and future and stimulates our progress, instead of invoking in us a pathological nostalgia for life in the past.

Cinema, the seventh art, is an art built on industry and technology, and to the extent that the artistic side needs freedom and imagination, the technical side in it needs technological progress and abundant funds. These four factors are almost non-existent in our country, or at least are kept absent.

Cinema in general is linked to the economic situation of the general public, because it is based on private spending, and the limited income in our countries, as well as the meager performances, has made cinema a sector with a folkloric character. It suffices to say that our country produces films that are not shown, or sometimes not even allowed to be shown, and even if they are shown, there are met with a lack of interest.

Real cinema is another thing, a rich world without limits, a world that does not stop giving and astonishing, in which the artistic elements, including the energies of the artist, are completed with the intellectual and industrial worlds of the film, forming a complete system called a film that deserves to be watched.

Real cinema is a different thing to television drama, just like the difference between the daily press and books. That is of course the case when they are both of high quality, not when one of them is of poor quality in the case of the quality of each of them, and when one or both of them are of low quality, which renders them equal.

In our Arab societies, power is the suppressant of every action, it is the source of fear and panic in the hearts of the people, and it is the power that punishes those who think about change, any change, not just political or democratic change or freedoms. It is an authority that seeks stability based on stagnation and tranquility, thus canceling any active movement.

This is why the authority seeks to transform the concerns of the masses, from public concerns, freedoms, and culture, to concerns about making a living, and searching for their lost social and economic security. In short, it transforms the movement of people into a movement with zero returns.

In Syria, the authority is the main criminal against cultural and artistic work, and what it claims in terms of interest, care, and financial support for the artistic side, is nothing more than a net aimed at keeping the artistic side under tab, manipulating its components, and subjecting it to one voice, which is the voice of the leader.

While the award is usually a sign of appreciation and distinction for the artist and the artistic work, it also aims to promote and sell works, which is what happens in the West in general, and this is the function of festivals. However, in our part of the world, the image appears reversed. The works produced in our country and nominated for festivals have already been promoted and sold well in advance. They could also emerge as winners, rendering the prizes valueless.

Granting prizes for television dramas such as Syrian works, for example, is not appropriate, because the works are below the level of the award’s idea and its nobility, for two reasons. The first is that the drama enjoys freedom, neither at the social level nor at the official level, and the second reason is the severe weakness of its techniques. Here, the award comes to perpetuate the status quo and deceive the next generation who will laugh at our description and evaluation of these fabricated TV works.

It is possible to find two or three works that deserve to compete for awards, but this small number is not sufficient to hold a festival and distribute awards, and therefore there is no competition at all, and drama makers do not seek awards as they care more about selling their works.

As for honoring ceremonies, they are automatic and have no real value, as they are not based on careful and critical evaluation and selection based on merit, and lacks a celebratory state that can leave a memory or an impact.