Forum - View topicChicks On Anime - Censorship Part 1
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Raneth
Posts: 271 |
|
|||||
|
As far as porn causing societal harm, I've never read any definitive studies, but I do know of one study that examines a very similar, every day form of sexism-sexual imagery in advertising-and shows the effects it has in a laboratory setting. It's rather unsettling. Men who watched advertisements depicting women in sexual roles or scantily clad were more likely to respond to sexist words and generally treated women more poorly in a business like setting. If anyone wants to read it, the article is titled "The afterglow of Construct Accessibility: The Behavioral Consequences of Priming Men to View Women as Sexual Objects," by Rudman and Borgida. Granted, it's only one study, but IMO it has good external validity.
And on that note, my view of censorship is that as long as I don't have to see the porn lying out in bookstores blatantly, I'm fine with it existing. Perhaps it's the effects of living in puritanical America, but I don't want to see any more magazine titles like spoiler["Cum Guzzling Anal Sluts." ] in store windows. I also don't want to get women's panties in vending machines when I'm trying to win a DS. Porn is fine, in-your-face porn is not. |
||||||
|
||||||
billborden
 Posts: 73 |
|
|||||
This is one of the most annoying, and legally invalid, excuses for censorship. We cannot, and should not, create a world that is only safe for six-year-olds; we adults do actually have some rights to free expression too. Beyond that, if you have developed a good communication relationship with your children then seeing something on TV wouldn't be an issue. I know it may be a shock, but if you let your kids know that they can ask questions about what they see or think with-out getting in trouble, they actually do tend to come and and ask. If all you do is hide it (whatever the "it" is that disturbs you) you lose your chance to teach them why it's bad. In the end, that just makes kids more curious when they finally find an example of it, and, trust me, they will. My mother considered nudity/overt-sexualization bad, but rather than complain to the manager of the local bookstore that the cover of the SI Swimsuit issue was corrupting her kids, she explained--often in great detail--why it was bad. I may have grown-up to disagree with her on many points, but I also understand her reasons and because of that I was able to actually think-through my own as I grew to form my own opinion. I ended up having no real problems of depicted sex, but mom and I agree that there is way too much violence in most modern media. I hope I am passing this on to my own kids, and I actually have the faith that they can and will come to talk to me about moral/ethical issues when they run into them. In the end I trust that they will be able to at least form reasoned opinions as they grow. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
killertofu
Posts: 3 |
|
|||||
Casey, i for one am glad that there are people like you who feel that they are suited to be the arbitor of what does and does not constitute artistic value. i can only hope that the kinds of speech you find offensive and subversive are never made available for my consumption. also, if you believe that this post does not reflect my original intent as its poster, please feel free to censor it as you see fit. |
||||||
|
||||||
Cait
 Posts: 503 |
|
|||||
|
I feel like there is a key difference between government censorship and commercial self-censorship. Self-censorship is akin to a personal moral obligation, whereas censorship that comes from somwhere else is something that is being forced on someone (and Americans hate being forced to do anything). In a commercial society (like we have here in the US), the market is going to be a much better judge of what is "acceptable" because the market is interested in just one thing: making money. If something was so reprehensible as to actually be dangerous to even be available to people to experience, there would be nearly no viable market for it in the first place. "Sex sells," as they say, and it sells because it is something people want to see, whether or not anyone wants to acknowledge that fact. The fact that the porn industry in this country does enough good business for us to even know it exists is proof enough of that.
Setting "standards" is something, in my opinion, that should be left up to the people, not for the government to dictate to us. Because "community standards" are constantly changing, I see any attempt at setting a "line" that people keep discussion to be completely futile. The law would just have to get changed with each new generation, and often those laws will move at a much slower pace than the communitiy standard they claim to be defining. The only issue that the government should be concerning itself over is the actual (not perceived, but tangible) imminent safety of citizens (like the actual, not virtual, rape of children). Since there is no proof either way that pornography incites sexual violence, it should be left to the people, and the market, to decide and regulate itself. We seem far too quick to want to "pass a law" to force everyone to conform to our own personal moral will. |
||||||
|
||||||
Dargonxtc
 Posts: 4463 Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋 |
|
|||||
What about complaining enough to the company who publishes the material to the point of them deciding to make it unavailable for the public anymore, but with no government intervention ever made? Great read this week, will be looking forward to the next installment. 
Good job! |
||||||
|
||||||
Murasakisuishou
 Posts: 1469 Location: NE Ohio |
|
|||||
I agree, although I don't think it's that simple. When it comes to censorship I've always been of the 'if you don't like it, don't pay for it' school of thought, and if enough people decide that material isn't worth viewing then it won't make money and companies won't produce it anymore. Unfortunately, unmoderated sex and violence are exactly what the average consumer is more than happy to pay to see these days - oddly enough, our society seems to have censored itself of the more 'boring' material that, while it may still be worthwhile entertainment, contains neither of the above things. |
||||||
|
||||||
Axe-336
 Posts: 143 Location: Springfield, VA |
|
|||||
|
I'm wondering what boundary lines they're using for "Sexism" and "Homophobia"? Are they drawing a line at women being generally less assertive as opposed to American media where almost all women are assertive. There are a number of shows where a woman is all about pleasing a guy. And homophobia, do they mean when they comically portray a character who is either openly gay or "you're pretty sure"? I don't think its any great statement to say "I'm offended when a guy beats on his girl and everyone in the comic is either okay with it or laughing", thats just American sensibilities and our remarkable sensitivity to being PC born of our fairly unique culture. If it was the earlier example, say some of the personalities born of the harem and moe sectors, they're simply unrealistic, but I don't know why anyone would be offended by them. Maybe I'm just continually amazed by peoples ability to re-tread the same ground over and over as though something new will be uncovered there.
Now, something that was interesting was the concept of a Jack Thompsan style Manga/Anime censorship crusader. I actually remember having a conversation about that once and the conclusion we came up with was that since manga and anime are not from America, American's are less interested in tangling with it. Sure they could try to lean on American publishers, but nowadays "Un-edited Editions" are so popular (Like the unrated movies) it wouldn't do much good. And can you imagine an American group trying to go over to Japan to get them to clean up their act? They would respectfully decline and then laugh once he left the room. Our laws and emphasis on freedom of speech have little or no meaning outside of our country. I think most lawyers know this. Notice that its only ever been American developed videogames that have gotten really slammed. |
||||||
|
||||||
pleochroic
 Posts: 16 Location: vancouver island, canada |
|
|||||
i think there is a huge difference between those things that are pervasive in society, and those that are not. something you cannot escape from, that's all around you everywhere you look, is bound to influence people to some degree. sexism is all around us, it starts when a child is born. most parents are sexist, there is sexism in schools, on TV, in fiction, in manga, in anime. i think most people are perfectly capable of telling the difference between reality and fantasy. it's when reality and fantasy are quite close that the influence from fantasy might leak out into somebody's real life. men who have a skewed idea of women as subservient might find that belief supported by crappy porn, but crappy porn doesn't start those beliefs. i think you have a much harder time finding men who think real-life tentacle rape would be great, even if they could lay their hands on some wily tentacles. sexist pornography therefore plays a role, but not a decisive one, and frankly, i consider it silly to censor it when so much more evident sexism is everywhere. censoring it in art/entertainment won't make the real-life sexism go away. instead, confronting it in and through art is one way to make people more conscious of it. this is the main problem i see with censorship -- it goes after highly visible targets, which gives people the illusion that something is being done, while it does nothing whatsoever to attack the real problems. art is never the real problem. art is just a reflection of what might be real problems. eliminate the art, nothing changes. eliminate the real problems, the art will change too. but art will always explore the boundaries, and that is part of its role in society. art allows us to delve into the unknown, and even the darker parts of our souls without harming anyone else. we know how a lot of criminals get started -- through child abuse and child neglect. _that's_ what needs to be fought, not porn, not anime. next maybe we can tackle human greed; that ought to make for a much more peaceful world. ah, i can dream... |
||||||
|
||||||
Kaolin_Yatsura
 Posts: 64 Location: Texas |
|
|||||
Oh yes this is a wonderful point to make. At the tender age of 11 I asked my mother what sex was and guess what she told me. You know what I said..."Eww that's gross I don't want to do something like that!" You know what I didn't either, because my mother was open with me. When I did finally have sex it was ok for me to come to her and talk about it. When I started dating the man that I am now marrying she was open to getting me a doctors appointment. It was the same type of things that led me not to drink until two years into my college career. I could have alcohol at home on special occasions. So where was the mystery? There was no need to rebel because there was nothing to rebel against. There is far to much stuff that gets swept under the rug here that ought to be examined with a certain amount of detachment. I think that this kind of openness with the people who raise you allows you to be open about yourself and who you are. Most of the really motivated people I know who have a great amount of direction in their lives were raised by people who gave them the freedom to make mistakes and figure stuff out for themselves.
Yes I don't need to add anything to this I just think it ought to be reiterated. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2606 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
|
|||||
I had an experience similar to this with some of my students. They wanted to go to Hooters on their senior class trip and couldn't understand what the fuss was. Then their next comment was about how one of them had seen a woman breastfeeding in the mall and how offensive that was. When I pointed out that feeding babies is what breasts are for, they gaped at me in horror. Mind you, this was in a school district where I got in trouble for daring to teach The Picture of Dorian Gray...though they had no issue with me teaching the first two volumes of CLAMP's "Clover," which has some pretty strong images of violence. Of course, there were no nipples to be seen. 
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Godzilla_is_coming
Posts: 2 |
|
|||||
|
Casey displays a profound misunderstanding of Canadian law.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
AkiraKaneda
Posts: 61 |
|
|||||
|
After reading the article and the talkback, I realized that I had to respond to some of the thoughts that were expressed in both. As an anime fan for nearly 25 years and an author on the subject for over 12 years, there are some things that I think need to be clear for the conversation to have value.
First, Bamboo states that we live in a “very conservative society, where people still don't think that gays should be allowed to marry.” While I enjoy Bamboo’s writing and Shelf Life is a must-read every week, this statement is simply asinine. Only six countries in the entire world recognize gay marriage. Ours is the seventh – at least in terms of the fact that there are two states where you can be in a same-sex marriage. Only another 16 countries allow for civil unions; 11 states here recognize them, perform them, or have some limited domestic arrangement between same-sex partners. This means that we are actually on the progressive side of this movement. Considering that very few nations throughout the world actually recognize any sort of gay union – and some nations still have capital punishment for those who practice homosexuality – we are not conservative. We may just not be moving as quickly as some in the GLBT movement would like. But even with that in mind, we are not a conservative society. Virtually anything outside of child pornography is available for viewing, reading, and/or purchase via the Internet and various other sources. While there are still obscenity laws in some places that may prohibit other materials, the Internet has made most of these moot. In fact, the only thing that we tend to be “prudish” about is public nudity and nudity in places of public access (i.e. broadcast television stations); even then, by comparison, full public nudity (as opposed say to topless sunbathing) is not typically tolerated in Europe either. And it’s hard to say if public stances on things like smoking are coming from the conservative or liberal side of the argument…or perhaps simply someplace in the common sense inbetween. This also means that censorship is almost entirely regulated by those who produce books, movies, and other materials for public consumption. Apart from child pornography, you can do pretty much what you want. Most censorship comes from those attempting to make a product widely marketable. While some may argue that it hurts the “artists” behind those works, the truth is that most of them are not doing what they do to make art that will stand for 500 years but to make a living. The fact is, you can see edited versions of Pulp Fiction and Do The Right Thing on broadcast television, despite having been made by filmmakers that decry censorship. Directors realize that television and in-flight edits are just part of the game of making money on a film. They can also usually release a DVD/Blu-Ray cut that includes all the material that would have earned the film an NC-17 anyway. So when some editor puts a bikini on a woman in a nightclub (as I found when I compared my original City Hunter #1 manga to the American edition), it has less to do with breasts being objectionable and more to do with the average audience for City Hunter being of an age where parents might object. Ultimately, the key I see to censorship in the US is that materials deemed OK for 13-year-olds in Japan are not deemed the same for 13-year-olds in America. And the truth is, a parent deciding not to buy a title for their son or daughter is not censorship; it’s simply using one’s own judgment. You may disagree with their judgment, but as everyone in the discussion said pretty much, the right to vote by not purchasing an item is yours alone. We also have to keep in mind that censorship rarely changes the intent of the whole work. Mai the Psychic Girl was brought up in the discussion. When one compares the original comics to the unedited collections, you find (for example) a couple of pages of a young girl who is on the cusp of puberty naked in a tub whistling and examining her breasts, hoping that she (and they) might grow up. Does it explain the setting of the ending better – a rather controversial ending where the heroine’s chest is exposed for most of the final fight sequence? Yes. But is it necessary? No. In fact, given Ryoichi Ikegami’s penchant for hyperrealistic drawings of sex and violence, one can easily see the missing pages as not obscene but easily exploitative. And since the title was targeted to younger audience, it really wasn’t appropriate. More importantly, for years I went without reading the extra few pages and never felt I had missed anything. But what about the “true fan” who wants to see everything uncensored, just the way it was in Japan? I can appreciate that. For example, for years now I’ve been singing the praises of Windaria, which was a perfectly enjoyable movie until 30 minutes of it disappeared in the American version. But the truth is, I can get the Japanese version if I want. I’d prefer a beautiful version with English subtitles and an interview with the director, but I am old enough and smart enough to find the import if it means that much to me. And censorship won’t stop that. Banning might, but the truth is, so little is actually and truly banned in this country that it’s not worth talking about. Just because your local library doesn’t carry it does not mean that it’s banned as long as it’s still available for purchase. If you have the time and money, you can pretty much get what you want from Japan uncensored…keeping in mind that Japan does have its own censoring practices. But the article also brings out a subjectivism that is really discouraging. To say that all sorts of material that is disgusting to you personally is something that shouldn’t be banned or censored sounds very nice and appealing in our society. It seems nonjudgmental. But the truth is, all of us know when our own sense of decency has been violated, whether it’s by the torture porn of a young woman screaming for her mother in Hostel 2 or Overfiend’s tentacle “death by sex.” These things are disgusting. And it doesn’t take being a religious or even spiritual person necessarily to recognize it. To enjoy certain entertainments speaks of a seriously maladjusted mind. The “I don’t have to buy it” argument only goes so far because some materials do affect their viewers. A sober, rational individual can watch Overfiend and be disgusted without being permanently scarred, perhaps, but not every individual in our society is sober and rational. We might finally disagree on where some of those lines are, but there is nothing to be ashamed about for saying that some things go beyond the pale and should not be part of the entertainment of a civilized society. But to say that anything goes is essentially not society but anarchy. We also need to be cautious when talking about racism and homophobia, particularly around Japanese entertainment, because Japan is in many ways one of the most racist, sexist, and homophobic first-world societies in existence. How many strong black characters can you think of in anime? Many of them are racist stereotypes (though not many of those shows arrive here intact, if at all). The whole “maid/slave/harem” concept is incredibly sexist yet very prevalent, and seeing women as exclusively homemakers and child rearers is also a staple of Japanese society. And while we may see lots of shonen-ai and shoujo-ai titles, one only has to read them to see that very few of them have little (if anything) to do with real homosexual relationships. The idealized romanticism of Gravitation does not make Japan a society that is accepting of homosexuality. In other Japanese media, while homosexuals are not met with the resistance they find in some US quarters, they also are often used for comedic effect, and there are no realistic portrayals seen in Japanese media (this from a paper online worth reading from Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue3/mclelland2.html) I know this has been disjointed and longwinded, and there’s plenty more to say, but it just seems like we need to get beyond the politically correct nature of the discussion and really get to the heart of the issue. And the truth is, censorship is not that big an issue, not really, not unless you really think that a 13-year-old getting to gaze on an uncovered breast is that important. If he wants to see one, believe me, he’ll find one. Jason Huff www.theanimereview.com |
||||||
|
||||||
Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
|
|||||
I shall accept the view you seem to be expressing, if and only if the proposition "the depiction of X is something that should not be part of a society" can be demonstrated to follow by necessity from the proposition "the depiction of X is disgusting". Believing that the former statement is not something to be ashamed of, although something I see no reason not to accept, provides little merit to such demonstration. Should it be for the sake of those who are neither sober nor rational that you disagree with some of the views in the article, I shall respectfully withhold comment- that's an issue a little too technical for me to debate. I apologise if I interpret this paragraph incorrectly. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 2606 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
|
|||||
|
[quote="GATSU"]
This may be slightly off-topic, but what is the issue with "Song of the South"? The original books are still in print (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=uncle+remus&x=0&y=0), as are titles like Helen Bannerman's Little Black Sambo. And if we're going to mention things like the use of swastikas and the unfair portrayal of different races and genders, what about the way that some manga depicts religions? Nearly every magical diagram in manga features a Star of David (which has never offended me personally, but more religious types may take umbrage), and more than one story takes some pretty serious liberties with Catholicism, as Carl pointed out in "Anime in America." Have any titles suffered censorship for any of these reasons? Sure, I haven't seen a release of Natsuki Ando's "Mariappoi No," but "Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne" made it over. Are people in general just less sensitive to these issues? Or am I just opening a big ol' can of worms no one cares about? (Which wouldn't make it a very big can, I guess...I'll shut up now...) |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Cloe
Moderator
 Posts: 2728 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
|
|||||
Companies will obviously follow the flow of the market, so I suppose their decision to discontinue a title or not will depend on whether they think the controversy outweighs the profit or vice versa. As a consumer, I think it's fair for me to confront a business directly if they distribute something that bothers me that much (which has never actually happened, I have to admit; I'm similar to Mura in that I tend to ignore whatever it is I don't like rather than complain). Now, when lobby groups and courts become involved with defining "obscene" and construct laws to vindicate people who don't follow a certain moral code, that's a different story, and something that will be covered more in detail in next week's installment. Thanks for the question! |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group