Banned! Magazine

Exposing Censorship

June 2013

14

Violence Mystery

Kids and Violent Programming

28

Need for Censorship

50

The Movement to Censor

What Teens Read

Deciding What Young People Read

Multicultural

Religious Respect

Publishers Need to be Aware of Religion Boundaries.

by Jo Glanville

44

Public Interaction

Censorship and Politics

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd Asks Google to Stop Chinese Govenment from Censoring Web Searches.

by Maya Dollarhide

32

Media Industry

33

Cinema Industry

Parental Advisory

Films and the “Code”

by Maya Dollarhide

by James M. Wall

The Thoughts Behind Rap Music and its “Violent” Lyrics.

An Overview of Movies and Censorship

Beyond Education

80 Censorship in Schools

Deciding What Forms of Censorship Should be Explored in Public Schools.

by Ken Petress

Features

Content // Departments

17

14

What Teens Read

Who Gets to Decide What Young People Read?

by Cathleen Decker

20

Indecency on Radio

An Agency on a Mission Against Rap Music.

by Eric Nuzum

25

More Than Words Censorship in Modern Times

by M.J. Stephey

36

Play Cancelled Over Gay Content

Newport Beach High School says the Principal Shut Down his Production of Rent Because of its Gay Characters.

by Susannah Rosenblatt Banned!

01

June 2013

EDITOR IN CHIEF CHRIS ANDERSON Executive Editor Bob Cohn Managing Editor Jacob Young Deputy Editor Thomas Goetz Assistant Managing Editor Rebecca Smith Hurd Story Editor Sarah Fallon Senior Editors Robert Capps, Ted Greenwald, Jennifer Hillner, Laura Moorehead, Susan Murcko, Jeffrey M. O’Brien, Mark Robinson, Adam Rogers Products Editor Mark McClusky Senior Associate Editor Nicholas Thompson Associate Editor Chris Baker Assistant Editor Brian Lam Copy Chief Jennifer Prior

Screen Rebellion

104

Breaking the Law Films from 1930s’ that Formed Controversy.

by Michael Douglas

Explicit Content

96 No One Under 17

Senior Copy Editor Jon J. Eilenberg Research Editor Joanna Pearlstein Assistant Research Editors Greta Lorge, Erik Malinowski, Angela Watercutter Assistant to the Editor in Chief Peter Arcuni

The Story Behind the Independent Movie The Cooler.

Editorial Interns James Lee, Michael Reilly, Roger Thomasson, Jenna Wortham Editorial Projects Director Melanie Cornwell Editorial Operations Manager Jay Dayrit Editorial Business Manager Erica Jewell

by Richard Corliss

Contributing Editors Brian Ashcraft, Paul Boutin, Joshua Davis, Julian Dibbell, Patrick Di Justo, David Ewing Duncan, John Hockenberry, Carl Hoffman, Jeff Howe, Steven Johnson, Jennifer Kahn, Brendan I.Koerner, Rem Koolhaas, David Kushner, Lawrence Lessig, Richard Martin, Josh McHugh, Tom McNichol, Charles C. Mann, Oliver Morton,Annalee Newitz, Daniel H. Pink, Evan Ratliff, Spencer Reiss, Frank Rose, Federico Gutierrez-Schott, Steve Silberman, Bruce Sterling, Eric Steuer, Gary Wolf, Sonia Zjawinski Correspondents Stewart Brand, Po Bronson, Erik Davis, Cory Doctorow, Mark Frauenfelder, Simson Garfinkel, William Gibson, George Gilder, Charles Graeber, Lucas Graves, Xeni Jardin, Kevin Kelleher, Scott Kirsner, Steven Levy, Stuart Luman, Michael S. Malone, Wil McCarthy, Bob Parks, David Pescovitz, Paul Saffo, Michael Schrage, Peter Schwartz, Clay Shirky, Neal Stephenson, Brad Stone, Linda Stone Consulting Editor William O. Goggins Senior Maverick Kevin Kelly Acting Design Director Bob Ciano Director of Photography Brenna Britton Photo Editor Zena Woods Art Director Jeremy LaCroix, Donald Ngai Designer Allister Fein Designer Assistant Lee Decker Contributing Designers Beth Brann, Carl De Torres, Nova Wangili Deputy Photo Editor Carolyn Rauch Photo Associate Anna Goldwater Alexander Photo Assistants Susannah Bothe, Amy Crilly Photo Production Assistant Sam Murphy Production Director Michael Lee Associate Production Director Jeff Lysgaard Associate Production Manager Myrna Chiu Contributing Artists Kenn Brown, Saiman Chow, Bryan Christie, Tristan Easton, Emek, Don Foley, Nathan Fox, Freestyle Collective, Michael Guillete, Elliot Haag, hausgrafik.ch, Chuck Henderson, Dustin Amery Hostetler, Kenneth Hung, Dave Kinsey, I-dopa, I Love Dust, Nada, Hiroshi Nagai, Nginco, James Porto, Renascent, P.J. Richardson, Rinzen, Jameson Simpson, Christopher Sledoda, Studio Number One, Brian Thompson, volume one, Benjamin Wachenje, Martin Woodtli, Chris Wren.

Contributing Photographers Michele Asselin, Richard Ballard, Danny Clinch, Livia Corona, Dwight Eschliman, Brian Finke, Andrew Hetherington, Susanna Howe, Ed Kashi, Raymond Koch, Ziv Koren, Peter Lau, Michael Lewis, Mike Lorrig, Anthony Mandler, Craig Maxwell, John Midgley, Jeff Minton, Chris Mueller, Erik Pawassar, Joe Pugliese, Tom Schierlitz, Carlos Serrao, Art Streiber, Tomohiko Tagawa, Robyn Twomey, Sacha Waldman, Ian White, Kai Wiechmann, Jessica Wynne Founding Editor Louis Rossetto

Violence Mystery

50

Some Laws Restricting Violent Programming Encourage Some People to Speak Up.

by Jacob Sullum

Internet Being Watched

68

More and More Websites are in Danger of Being Banned. Government Regulations are Considering Age-Rating for Websites.

by Raymond Koc

90

Controversy in Contemporary Art

Challenging Masterpieces Also Need Freedom of Expression Throughtout the World.

by Sara Harrison

110

Rejecting Freedom of Speech A Debate Revealing Strong Points of View from Various Organizations in Favor and Against censorship.

by Jacob Sullum

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Banned!

02

June 2013

Martha Wills, a Middle School student from Colorado reading Whale Talk, a novel by Chris Cruther, one of her favorite books.

Lucy B.

Who Gets to Decide What Young People Read?

by Kelly Milner Halls

B

anned Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Association and the American Booksellers Association, runs from September 25 to October 2 in 2004, and shines a light on a garowing controversy in America – what should our young people read, and who should decide? Conservative groups like Colorado-based Focus on the Family stand on what they consider to be high moral ground and believe groups like the American Library Association undermine parental preferences. “…Every year this organization attempts to intimidate and silence any parent, teacher or librarian who expresses concern about the ageappropriateness of sexually explicit or violent material for schoolchildren,” according to Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy at Focus on the Family in a September 23, 2003 press release, “even the most hard-core pornography.”

ALA Intellectual Freedom spokesperson Pat Scales fervently disagrees. She admits parents have the right to steward their young readers, but not the whole community. “What one person finds offensive won’t be offensive to another,” she says.

“Our job as public librarians is to have a balanced collection of materials so people can make their own personal choices.” Does the ALA set library policy as Minnery suggests?

Absolutely not, according to Bonnie F. McClune of the Colorado State Library. “Our libraries are independent.” And statistics gathered by

Banned! 14 June 2013

the Colorado Library Association also dispute the claim that books are never banned. During the 2003/2004 fiscal year, thirty-two books were challenged in writing by library patrons across the state who found them inappropriate for a variety of reasons.

Of those 32 titles, three were banned from circulation – pulled from library shelves altogether. Five more were restricted – require parental permission to be checked out by minors. Four books were moved to more age appropriate library sections, four of the challenges were withdrawn, and nine book titles remained unchanged after careful, committee review.

Challenging Removal of Books from Libraries Twelve books were officially censored to some degree in Colorado in 2003/2004. Seven more are in library limbo, their fate’s undecided, according to the CLA. But several prominent Colorado librarians insist the figure is extremely misleading, because most challenges are undisclosed.

“During my 14-year career, I’ve dealt with more than 200 challenges,” says Douglas Public Library District director Jamie LaRue. “I’ve had 13 so far this year.” LaRue’s Castle Rock district is less than 15 miles from the Focus on the Family headquarters in Colorado Springs.

CLA Intellectual Freedom Committee member and school librarian Gene Hainer confirms, most challenges are unreported.

“Look at it this way,” he says.

“There are more than 1,700 schools and 178 school districts in Colorado. But only about 20 people are responsible for filing time consuming challenge. I’d say 95% are resolved without public intervention or written reports.” Why so little documentation? According to Hainer, it’s often a matter of job security. “Years ago, there was a book series called The Stupids,” he recalls. “My principal at the time told me to get it off the shelves. No discussion. Just do it.”

Hainer opposed the removal, but was forced to comply. “If you have a choice between your paycheck and doing what’s right,” he said, “it can be a tough choice.”

But even if the CLA modest stats are on target, the impact of each challenge can be far reaching. Consider the 2003 challenge of Whale Talk, a novel by Chris Crutcher in Fowlerville, Michigan.

The award winning story of a Kenn Brown

smart but tough multiracial senior determined to help a band of misfit swimmers earn letter jackets was selected by Fowlerville High School staff members as the One Book, One School reading selection. The book dealt with bullying, racism and domestic abuse – topics both students and administrators considered worth discussing.

More than sixhundred-and-fifty 10th, 11th and 12th graders carried home permission slips to read the realistic work of fiction. Only five parents, including Olivia Verfaillie, denied their teens permission to read Whale Talk, and they were immediately assigned a less controversial book.

Verfaillie was not appeased. She filed a written challenge against the use of the book as curriculum and demanded the school board take action. “Whale Talk is a vile, un-Godly, profane novel,” she said in the Detroit News. “My heart cries for the children who have read this book because…what we have subjected ourselves to stays within us and Satan can use that to

Michael Simmons, a Middle School student making an statement about the types of books assigned to his school.

Banned!

15 June 2013

our detriment…”

Fowlerville teens disagreed.

“I can speak on behalf of 99% of the students at Fowlerville High when I say that Whale Talk was truly amazing and inspirational,” wrote one anonymous Senior on Crutcher’s website. “It is unfair for one parent to try and dictate to other parents what their children can or cannot read.”

Parent’s Opinion Crutcher, a family therapist in Washington State, offered a different argument. “You do not, as an adult, have to like the story or agree with its messages to have a valuable conversation with your children.

I think we put ourselves in a tough position as adults when we refuse to hear our kids’ stories in their native tongue.”

Verfaillie won her battle to restrict the rights of so many others.

And yet, when Crutcher visited the school to thank his defenders after the swirl of publicity made the tone of his work crystal clear, again, only six students were forced to sit out the assembly due to parental objections. Civil rights activist, educator and author Julius Lester faced similar confrontations because of his book When Dad Killed Mom in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Offended by realistic use of language and violence in the story

One of the librarians from Fowlerville High School concerned about which books will be taken out.

Michael Lewis

Internet watchdog Parentsware.com seeks a more moderate solution, according to its anonymous editorial director. “We’re not a book review,” she says. “We’re a screening tool to help parents and grandparents raising children with traditional Christian values to avoid books with excessive violence, sexuality, homosexuality, and language.”

Screening may mean the Do we not have enough review of jacket copy only, as was confidence in our children true for The Garden by Elsie V. Aidinoff, but the ParentsAware. to allow them to read com spokesperson makes no serious, thoughtful books, apology. “When I write something even though those books about a book based on what’s on the book jacket, it’s like seeing may not hue to the a movie preview. It only takes a conventional line? few moments to know what the movie’s about and whether or not I want to see it.” Aidinoff admits her book is controversial. “It is a novel about the Garden of Eden seen through the eyes of Eve, with the Serpent as the hero,” she says.

But she wonders why adults have so little faith in a new generation.

“Do we not have enough confidence in our children to allow them to read serious, thoughtful books, even though those books may not hue to the conventional line? Youngsters are exposed to sex and violence nearly everywhere they turn: in video games, television, movies. And yet a phalanx of censors stands ready to defend young readers against what? Ideas? Thinking?

Making up their own minds?”

The gap between opposing camps may seem expansive. But Douglas Public Library District director Jamie LaRue, who has lost only one of the

“

of domestic abuse, a seven member committee voted 5 to 2 to ban the book completely in 2002, based on the challenge of one Jackson Hole Middle School parent. “Given how serious domestic abuse is in this country, given how many children have been killed along with their mothers by their fathers, given how many children have been orphaned by their fathers killing their mothers,” Lester says, “The novel attempts to deal with a serious issue from the point of view of children who carry lifelong scars of domestic abuse.

To focus on language and sexuality in the book is stick one’s head in the sand.” Tom Minnery, who also authored the book, Why You Can’t Stay Silent: A Biblical Mandate to Shape Our Culture may have applauded both victories, though he did not return our calls.

In the same 2003 Focus on the Family press release he said, “We encourage parents to reject the intimidation tactics of the ALA and to exercise their constitutionally protected rights.”

Looking for Solutions

”

200 challenges he’s fielded, believes bridging ideologies is often a matter of thoughtful communication, not battle lines. “These people are not our enemies,” LaRue says.

“They are using the library. They are encouraging their children to use the library. They are paying attention to what their kids read. They are even going out of their way to talk to a public institution.” He adopts a candid approach when a parent questions his collection.

“I often ask the parents if their children will grow up to live in a real and sometimes dangerous world,” he says. “Then I ask, ‘Where do you want your child to encounter this subject for the first time – at home while he can still talk to you, or out on the street?”

By addressing the core concern, which he insists is protecting the people they love, LaRue attains the impossible – compromise.

Precisely, says author Julius Lester. “That’s what democracy is about-choice. But the current political climate is one in which too many people seem to want to impose their beliefs in books, movies, television, and health (abortion, stem cell research) on others.

And that’s not what a democracy is about.” Freedom isn’t freedom, if we’re not free to disagree.

Jeff Minton

Margaret Lopez, 8 years old and peacefully reading a book she didn’t get to choose.

Banned! 16 June 2013

than Censorship in Modern

by M.J. Stephey

s Jeff Minton

ince 1982, the American Library Association has sponsored Banned Books Week to pay tribute to free speech and open libraries. The tradition began as a nod to how far society has come since 1557, when Pope Paul IV first established The Index of Prohibited Books to protect Catholics from controversial ideas. Four-hundred and nine years later, Pope Paul VI would abolish it, although attempts at censorship still remain. Here, BANNED! presents some of the most challenged books of all time.

Books from 1970 that were banned from the Library of New York City.

Jeff Minton

by Mark Twain

Candide

by Voltaire This classic French satire lampoons all things sacred — armies, churches, philosophers, even the doctrine of optimism itself. In search of “the best of all possible worlds,” Voltaire’s ever-hopeful protagonist instead encounters the worst tragedies life has to offer and proceeds to describe each in a rapid, meticulous and matter-of-fact way. The effect is equal parts hilarious and shocking.

(Imagine Monty Python circa 1759).

The book’s phrase “Let us eat the Jesuit. Let us eat him up!” became an instant catchphrase. The Great Council of Geneva and the administrators of Paris banned it shortly after its release, although 30,000 copies sold within a year, making it a best-seller. In 1930, U.S. Customs seized Harvard-bound copies of the book, and, in 1944, the U.S. Post Office demanded that Candide be dropped from the catalog for major retailer Concord Books.

In 1885, the Concord, Mass. Public Library banned the year-old book for its “coarse language” — critics deemed Mark Twain’s use of common vernacular (slang) as demeaning and damaging. One reviewer dubbed it “the veriest trash ... more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.” Little Women author Louisa May Alcott lashed out publicly at him, saying, “If Mr. Clemens [Twain’s original name] cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them.”

(That the word “nigger” appears more than 200 times throughout the book did not initially cause much controversy).

In 1905, the Brooklyn Public Library followed Concord’s lead, banishing the book from the building’s juvenile section, explaining: “Huck not only itched but scratched, and that he said sweat when he should have said perspiration.” Twain enthusiastically fired back, once saying of his detractors: “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” Luckily for him, the book’s

market-driven culture of the United States. Chewing gum, then as now a symbol of America’s teeny-bopper shoppers, pops up in the book as a way to deliver sex hormones and subdue anxious adults; pornographic films called “feelies” are also popular grown-up pacifiers.

In Huxley’s vision of the 26th century, Henry Ford is the new God (worshipers say “Our Ford” instead of “Our Lord,”) and the car maker’s concept of mass production has been applied to human reproduction.

As recently as 1993, a group of parents attempted to ban the book in Corona-Norco, Calif. because it “centered around negativity.”

Jeff Minton

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Nineteen Eighty-Four

by George Orwel

Jeff Minton

Jeff Minton

Times

fans would eventually outnumber its critics. “It’s the best book we’ve had,” Ernest Hemingway proclaimed, “All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”

Despite Hemingway’s assurances, Huck Finn remains one of the most challenged books in the U.S. In an attempt to avoid controversy, CBS Television produced a made-for-TV adaptation of the book in 1955 that lacked a single mention of slavery, or even any African American cast members to portray the character of Jim. In 1998, parents in Tempe, Ariz. sued the local high school over the book’s inclusion on a required reading list. The case went as far as a federal appeals court.

Brave New World

by Aldous Huxley

Huxley’s 1932 work — about a drugged, dull and mass-produced society of the future — has been challenged for its themes of sexuality, drugs, and suicide. The book parodies H.G. Wells utopian novel Men Like Gods, and expresses Huxley’s disdain for the youth- and

It’s both ironic and fitting that Nineteen Eighty-Four would join the American Library Association’s list of commonly challenged books given its bleak warning of totalitarian censorship. Written in 1949 by the Britishauthor while he lay dying of tuberculosis, the book chronicles the grim future of a society robbed of free will, privacy or truth. Some reviewers called it a veiled attack against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet ruler’s infamous “midnight purges,” though, oddly enough, parents in Continues in pg 26

Banned! 25 June 2013

Media Industry

T

Kenn Brown

he music industry’s selfregulation of lyrics through parental warning labels is drawing a not-so-fine line between black and white, an expert on music censorship says. Most of today’s CDs that carry the Parental Advisory label are from AfricanAmerican rap and hip-hop artists, author Eric Nuzum said during a lecture on music censorship at the First Amendment Center on May 2.

“In the ‘90s, a Florida circuit judge said that rap music could not be defined as music, because it wasn’t melodic,” Nuzum said, shaking his head in disbelief.

And just two week ago, he noted, a Federal Trade Commission report attacking the music industry used a list of CDs as examples of music considered “bad” for children. “Of the 35 artists on that list, 30 of them were black, and only three of those acts contained exclusively white members,” Nuzum said.

Even in the 1950s, he added, music censors believed outrageous myths like the one that claimed, “’Allowing white children to listen to black music will lead to the mongrelization of America.’ “And while the statement is outlandish, Nuzum said, it has actually been used “to justify suppressing music.”

“But what may seem like violent lyrics to some can also be seen as songs of protest,”.

Michael Duff wears a shirt that reflects his point of view on Rap music.

Banned! 32 June 2013

Parental Advisory Banning Music in the U.S

Nuzum, author of Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America, pointed out that attacks on music are not new. From the banning of Elvis’s pelvis on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in the 1950s to the banning of rapper C-BO’s (SeanThomas) album “Till My Casket Drops” in the 1990s, there has long been a huge push to censor music in the United States, he said. Nuzum recalled that today’s warning labels — used to alert buyers (aka. parents) to lyrics containing references to violence, sex or drugs — evolved from a single incident in the mid-1980s.

Tipper Gore, the wife of thenSen. Al Gore, bought Prince’s smash-hit album “Purple Rain,” which contained a song called “Darling Nicky.” After hearing the song’s allusions to masturbation, sex and one-night stands, Tipper Gore gathered a group of Washington wives and formed the Parents Music Resource Group, Nuzum said. “The PMRC met with the Senate in summer 1985 with a list of many demands, one of them being the parental advisory sticker,” Nuzum added, “and by 1990 the sticker graced albums [such as] Twisted Sister and 2 Live Crew.” “There were incidents [in which] that sticker (was used) as a de facto obscenity standard”.

Typical was an occurrence shortly after the advisory stickers got slapped onto albums. It involved 2 Live Crew in 1990 in Hollywood, Fla. Their album “As Nasty as We Want to Be” contained a song called ‘Me so Horny,’ which was deemed particularly offensive, Nuzum said.

The Thoughts Behind Rap Music and its “Violent Lyrics

by Maya Dollarhide

“It didn’t matter that the section of the song saying ‘Me so Horny’ was lifted from a line in “Full Metal Jacket,” a film nominated for an Academy Award”.

And the issue of race and music censorship also evolved in the ‘90s “with the appearance of gangsta rap,” he said. “Groups like NWA received letters from the FBI after releasing a CD that had a song on it, ‘F[---] the Police.” The FBI asked them never to play the song in concert.” What the authorities are not hearing, Nuzum said, is the reason for the music. “The interesting thing is, once you get past the violent overtones and the language you are basically dealing with political protest songs,” he added. “They are speaking out against your society and what [people] want to see changed.”

Though most of the censorship appears aimed at African-American artists, Nuzum said the attacks have in fact been broader than that. He used controversial singer Marily Manson as example.

Two years ago when the Columbine High School massacre occurred, Nuzum said, people in the media and government attacked Manson’s music as encouraging violence among Goth.

The First Amendment Center recently published a report, Violence and the Media.

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They are speaking out against your society and what people want to see changed.

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Cinema Industry

Film “Code” M and

the

An Overview of Movies and Censorship

by James M. Wall

“

No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standars of those who see it.

Kenn Brown

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The controversial erotic movie Caligula from Europe, adored by some and hated by others.

y first meeting with Geoffrey Shurlock was in a Hollywood restaurant, on La Cienaga Boulevard in the winter of 1965. At that time Shurlock was head of the Motion Picture Association’s production code office.

As a longtime film buff and a critic for a church magazine, I had sought him out for an interview. After determining that I was not just another moralist who wanted to influence film content, but someone who was genuinely interested in film, Shurlock relaxed and asked me a question that was very much on his mind: “We are trying to determine what to do about a picture in which director Sidney Lumet wants to include a shot of a woman’s bare breasts. He insists the scene is essential to the film, and, frankly, I agree with him. It is. But we ’ve never permitted that sort of overt nudity in a film. What should we do?”

That discussion took place 22 years ago. Even casual viewers of movies and cable television probably are aware that the film in question, The Pawnbroker, opened floodgates that have washed over us in a torrent of naked bodies, male and female. And that torrent combined with social change that has shifted cultural values and technological advances that have given movies access to our living rooms has raised, once again, questions about censorship and freedom.

To understand our culture’s current attitude toward movies and censorship, we need to make a brief excursion back to those naïve days before The Pawnbroker. The motion picture production code office was

established in the 1920s as a way for the industry to protect itself against local or national censorship. The office was first headed by Will Hays, a former U.S. postmaster general who knew little about movies but a great deal about politics and protocol. Hays was succeeded

by Joseph Breen, a devout Roman Catholic layman who at times ran the office as an outpost of the Catholic Church. The code itself was drafted by Catholics and included such strictures as: “No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it.

Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong doing, evil or sin.”

“There must be no scenes at any time showing law-enforcing officers dying at the hands of criminals.”

Hollywood and the Code The code — which had to be obeyed if a picture was to receive the office’s “seal of approval”— also forbade scenes in which a couple was in bed with more than two of their four feet off the floor. Words like “damn,” “hell,” “broad,’’ “tom cat,” “cripes,’’ “fanny’’ and “tart” were all forbidden.

Such restrictions sound quaint and archaic today, but from the ‘20s through the mid-’60s, various versions of this code guided the major Hollywood studios. The moguls who ran Warner Brothers, MGM, 20th Century Fox, RICO, Columbia and the other studios wanted the code for one reason.

The code worked as long as the film industry was largely a Hollywood centered monopoly. Through its influence on the code office and through its own strong Legion of Decency, the Catholic Church continued to affect the content of

films. For example, Shurlock told me of his experience with George Cukor’s Two-Faced Woman (1941) , in which Greta Garbo played twin sisters, one evil and one good. In the film the evil sister sleeps off camera, of course with the good sister’s husband, and the hapless man doesn’t know the difference. The code office approved the film, but the Legion of Decency threatened to give it a “condemned” rating.

So the studio compelled Cukor to shoot a final scene in which sufficient punishment is handed out for the adulterous activity between husband and sister-in-law. The code office was changed to the classification office in 1968 when it became apparent that protection of the industry required a different strategy. Television was aking away customers, more overtly sexual material was being imported from Japan and Europe, and public attitudes were changing. The Roman Catholic Church’s hold over its members was slipping. In the 1930s the church not only could order its members to refrain from seeing a particular picture; it could also forbid them to attend a theater which had shown a condemned film.

In those days, when the church spoke, the parishioners followed.

But by 1968 it was evident that this was no longer the case. Like its production-code predecessor, the classification system still very much in effect today, with its ratings of G, PG, PG-13, R and X classification.

Banned! 33 June 2013

The

Mystery of

Some Laws Restricting Violent Programming Encourage Some People to Speak Up

by Jacob Sullum

I

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Some critics say TV violence encourages imitation; others worry that it causes anxiety by making the world seem dangerous.

Banned! 50 June 2013

”

n 2004 a few dozen members of Congress asked the Federal Communications Commission whether the government could define and regulate “excessively violent programming that is harmful to children” without violating the First Amendment.

Last month, after thinking about it for three years, the FCC had an answer: Sure. Go ahead.

Emboldened by the FCC report, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va) plans to introduce legislation aimed at regulating TV violence any day now. If he takes the same approach he did in a 2005 bill he sponsored, he will knock the ball back to the FCC, asking it to define excessively violent programming and adopt measures to protect children from it.

Critics Define Violent Programming

There’s a reason no one is keen to define excessively violent programming. Anyone who tries will face insoluble practical and constitutional problems. Because opinions about what is appropriate for children vary widely, any definition of excessively violent programming would be attacked as too narrow, too broad, or both. Some critics say TV violence encourages imitation; others worry that it causes anxiety by making the world seem dangerous.

The most troubling violence, some say, is the “explicit” and “graphic” kind, because it’s both disturbing and desensitizing. Others worry about the “sanitized” and “glamorized” kind, which separates violence from its real-world consequences. I’d say CSI, Schindler’s List, and History Channel war documentaries are not appropriate for small children. Does that mean such programming should be banished to late-night hours, a solution the FCC proposes?

If not, what use is “time channeling”? If so, it’s hard to see why news shows covering crime and war, or sports such as football and boxing, should be exempt.

For those who worry about imitation of sanitized violence, even children’s cartoons are not appropriate for children. Should Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles be shown only between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.? Another FCC suggestion, forcing cable and satellite companies to offer channels “à la carte,” is even less promising.

Blocking entire channels is a clumsy way to shield kids from inappropriate material.

In any case, cable and satellite subscribers already have this ability; the FCC is just saying they shouldn’t have to pay for the channels they decide to block.

The effectiveness of these rules will be an important question when courts address their constitutionality, since content-based speech regulation generally can be justified only if it’s the least restrictive means of serving a compelling government interest. No restriction on violent entertainment has ever met this test.

As the First Amendment lawyer Robert CornRevere notes, regulations that take the context of violence into account would be scrutinized especially closely, because the government would be targeting speech based on viewpoint as well as subject. “Any attempt to regulate televised violence would face insurmountable First Amendment barriers,” he concludes.

Cable vs. Satellite TV

Although the FCC report obfuscates the issue, extending content regulation from broadcasting to cable and satellite TV is also constitutionally problematic. Advocates of broader regulation say it’s silly to treat programming that travels through a wire differently from programming that travels over the air, especially when the two are indistinguishable to viewers.

I agree. Given the tools parents have to filter what their children see, including the V-chip, ratings from producers and independent groups, and cable and satellite system

controls, the excuse for regulating content on any channel is weaker than ever.

The FCC’s quaint talk of “time channeling” betrays an old-fashioned bureaucratic mind-set. It seems regulators have not come to terms with an entertainment world in which a wide variety of programming is increasingly available, via DVDs, DVRs, downloads, and video on demand, whenever viewers want to watch it.

The route taken by that programming, whether over the air or over the Internet, through TV cable or through phone lines, by mail or by satellite, into computers or cell phones or iPods, should be legally irrelevant. Logically, the government has to choose between a lot more censorship and a little more respect for parents.

Fountain, a urinal signed with one of the pseudonyms under which Marcel Duchamp worked.

In 1915, the anarchic members of the Dada movement began to wreak havoc in Switzerland. Their impact spread through Europe, eventually taking root in Germany. Two of Dada’s best known German proponents are Otto Dix (1891-1969) and George Grosz (1893-1959), whose work developed into the genre known as Neue Sachlichkeit, and whose challenging brand of social and political satire is exemplified by Dix’s Erinnerung an die Spiegelsale von Brussel (1920). Such works led the National Socialists to brand their art as degenerate.

Dadaism made its way to New York, where a key figure was the French-Amer-

Bob Parks

1924 with the publication of Manifeste du Surrealisme by Andre Breton (1896-1966); activity was initially centred on Paris in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Surrealism’s most famous legacy is the precisely rendered, detailed fantasies of the Spaniard Salvador Dali (1904-89).

Paintings such as Hallucination Partielle: Six Images de Lenine sur un Piano (1931), sought not only to challenge the viewer’s taste, but also to disturb.

In 1960, the “godfather” of Pop art, Andy Warhol (1928-87), breached the boundaries between high and low art, placing the products of popular culture and consumer society in the revered space of the gallery

Sensation exhibition, the exhibition is one of the most controversial cases of attempted censorship.

Banned! 90 June 2013

Kenn Brown

Contemporary Concerns

Art

when the proud father, Paris-based Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) delivered Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to an unsuspecting public.

The shock waves sent out by this work are without doubt easier to appreciate than the aesthetic challenge posed by the Impressionists some decades earlier, whose gentle images have served the greetings card industry so well. Picasso replaced the unthreatening female nude with what appeared to be a group portrait of prostitutes, and he did so in a style that did not echo his Western ancestors, but that drew upon non-European art viewed

with his screen prints of food packaging and popular music and cinema icons, such as the Ten Lizes (1963) in the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

There are countless other controversial figures populating the art world of the 20th century, who have shocked the public and had censors champing at their bits, but, in noting some of the contributions of these key players whose work has become so familiar, we can appreciate the soothing effects of time. Furthermore we are able to see that the controversies of recent years continue.

Painting Part of the Sensation Exhibition in England.

Bob Parks

Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Picasso replaced the female nude with a group portrait of prostitutes.

s time has moved on and contemporary art has moved with it, controversy has somehow always managed to keep up.

Going back to the beginning of art historical study we can find cases of both individual artists and groups who have rocked the artistic status quo with their innovative contributions to the art of the day. The 20th century was no exception. 1907 is widely considered to be the year modernism was born,

ican artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). In 1917 he created what is perhaps his best known work, Fountain, a urinal signed with one of the pseudonyms under which he worked, R. Mutt. With this work, which was excluded from the first exhibition of the New York Society of Independent Artists, Duchamp simultaneously created the first ready-made and ignited the “but is it art?” debate that continues to rage to this day.

Surrealism was born from Dada and launched in

Michael Lewis

A

by his contemporaries as “primitive.” Through the following decades, Picasso continued his assault on the taste of the cultured classes with further explorations of “primitivism,” and most significantly with his development, along with the Frenchman Georges Braque (1882-1963), of Cubism. Indeed, Picasso’s long life enabled him to keep up his challenge for the best part of the century, but he was eventually superceded by other pretenders to the crown of king maverick.

I propose to consider here some examples of recent controversies from different corners of the globe, before focusing on the Sensation exhibition, which began at the Royal Academy of Arts in London (September 18thDecember 28th, 1997), before travelling via the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (September 30th-February 21st, 1999) to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York (October 2nd, 1999-January 9th, 2000). The exhibition is one of the most controversial cases of attempted censorship in recent years and raises many interesting issues related to the role of the media, the involvement of politicians and governments in the arts, legal issues, and matters relating to funding. It indicates the type of art capable of arousing such emotions in the public eye.

It is interesting that many

Michael Lewis

Everyone I have Ever Slept With by Gary Hume. A tent embroidered with the names of all her sexual partners.

Bob Parks

Der Bevolkerung inscribed in gothic letters by Hans Haacke.

According to Haacke, the work explores issues relating to the constitution and the changing conception of German citizenship, but for many the work reawakened unsavoury memories of Adolf Hitler’s pronouncements on “blood and soil”.

There would have been irony indeed if wariness concerned with mimicking the National Socialists had led to policies of censorship, but this was narrowly avoided when the installation got the go-ahead, winning the vote 260:258.

Australia

Dead Dad by Rom Mueck, an eerily life-like silicone model lying prostrate on the floor.

Piss Christ a work by Andres Serrano, a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine.

of the artists - there are 42 in total - are far from “notorious,” and their work is unlikely to bring them any such accolade. The works include a significant number of paintings, and while Jenny Saville’s works may pose a challenge because of her eschewal of models of conventional beauty, the clear, bold, colorful works of Gary Hume, Britain’s representative at the 48th Venice Biennale, seem positively tame. In the place of Tracey Emin’s bed was her tent, embroidered with the names of all her sexual partners, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995. The evident skill in the crafting of the piece does not save it from the critics of the show, and indeed of contemporary art, whose favored argument is to question whether such works “merit” the title of art.

The crescendo begins with the more clearly

are deemed puerile and infantile by their detractors; Great Deeds Against the Dead (1994) presents us with mutilation and castration, Ubermensch (1995), with its model of the scientist Stephen Hawking about to plummet off the edge of a cliff in his wheelchair, favors cruelty and insensitivity over political correctness, while Zygotic Acceleration, Bio-genetic, De-sublimated Libidinal Model (Enlarged x 1000) (1995) and Tragic Anatomies (1995) feature genetic freaks made up of girl mannequins morphed together, many with the Chapmans’ trademark phallus nose and rectum mouth.

Damien Hirst found controversy and fame in Britain for his practice of cutting up dead animals and preserving them in formaldehyde when he won the Turner Prize in 1995.

Several of these works are featured in the show, including perhaps the most famous exemplar, the shark, entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. A work by Damien Hirst, famous for cutting up dead animals and preserving them in formaldehyde.

Banned! 91 June 2013

Kenn Brown

American photographer Andres Serrano (b. 1953) found himself at the centre of a debate over an exhibition of his work at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in 1997. The main focus of the outrage was his work Piss Christ (1987), a photograph of a

Michael Lewis

The Holy Virgin Mary, a painting

by Chris Ofili. His work was branded blasphemous.

by Sara Harrison

Examining the Exhibition Catlogue

distressing Dead Dad (1996-97) by Ron Mueck, an eerily life-like silicone model lying prostrate on the floor, and Self (1991)

by Marc Quinn - a perspex sculpture of the artist’s head, filled with his own blood and displayed in a fridge, which disturbs in the tradition of the Surrealists. And then we reach the Chapman brothers and Damien Hirst. The shock tactics favoured by Jake and Dinos Chapman

Kenn Brown

Challenging Masterpieces Also Need Freedom of Expression Throughout the World.

crucifix submerged in urine, which the Catholic church had campaigned to prevent being included in the show.

Vandalism of the piece led to the exhibition being terminated. Indeed, the Sensation show was originally destined to travel to Canberra after New York, but, having witnessed the controversy it provoked there, the National Gallery of Australia decided not to stage it after all.

Kenn Brown

Censorship

Germany In 1998 the German parliament became the scene of artistic debate, as the proposed project by Hans Haacke (b. 1936) for the re-opening of the Reichstag in Berlin was met with criticism from all political camps. The U.S.-based German artist proposed to install a 70-foot trough, filled with soil brought by the parliament’s members from their constituencies, on top of which was to be inscribed, in gothic letters, Der Bevolkerung.

Exposing Censorship

July 2013

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Violating Language

Controversy Appears at the Time to Translate a Banned Book

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