Art & Creativity Quote by Michael Berryman

Censorship, in Michael Berryman's telling, isn’t a sleek policy debate; it’s an old, almost primitive reflex dressed up as public virtue. His blunt phrasing, even the grammatical roughness of “There was times,” does some of the work: this isn’t an academic defining terms, it’s a working actor pointing at a pattern he’s seen repeat. The word “strange” lands like a raised eyebrow. Not evil in the abstract, not complicated in theory - just weird, revealing, embarrassingly human.

The hook is the mismatch he spotlights: people don’t burn books because paper is dangerous; they burn them because the ideas inside threaten a certain order, or even a certain self-image. “Because they didn’t like what people were doing” shifts the target from texts to behavior, from language to life. That’s the subtext: censorship is less about protecting an audience and more about controlling a community. The book becomes a scapegoat for anxiety about change, dissent, or nonconformity.

Context matters with Berryman because his career is rooted in cult cinema and outsider roles, often in genres that moral panics love to police. From horror to exploitation to taboo subjects, he’s adjacent to art that gets labeled “dangerous” not for what it directly causes, but for what it allows people to imagine. His line quietly argues that censorship is rarely about decency; it’s about discomfort. The bonfire is just the most theatrical way to admit it.