T Campbell's Blog
Writer of Penny and Aggie, Fans (also called Faans), Rip & Teri, Search Engine Funnies and A History of Webcomics. Experienced webcomics editor, currently seeking full-time work and working on strange and interesting new things...Friday, April 14, 2006
Sex, Truth And Manga.
Eric Millikin has a write-up on the latest version of a story that seems to come around every few years: Is There COMICS PORN In Your LIBRARY? Short version: Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics displayed the full range of material available in manga, including stuff that would get an NC-17 rating over here, and horrified some teenage boy and then horrified his mom, so... BANNED IN THE USA, baby.
Update: More and more accurate information about the case here.
One detail of note: this library does have a section for more "adult" material, but the exact meaning of "adult" was a little diluted by the fact that Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts were in there too. I think the critical consensus is that those are family books. Having grown up with a younger brother and younger cousins, I'm a little sympathetic to parents who would like a bit of help navigating the choppy waters of modern entertainment. It's harder than most non-parents think. That "adult" section should be better maintained. But punishing the Manga book for an incompetently maintained section just says "scapegoat" to me. That, and "laziness."
I stopped short of reproducing actual porn in History, but there is a section on sex comics and a few uses of the F-word. Balancing appropriateness and honesty is difficult in any comics survey... I didn't want to compromise the book's teaching function by repelling readers. But if you take the censor-friendly route all the time, you may end up with cases of ignorance like the one of my own youth. I didn't learn about the existence of sex comics until college, when I finally got around to reading Watchmen.
(Watch some close-minded governor somewhere read this post and conclude that Watchmen is a sex comic that needs to be banned. Just watch.)
(Hey, you! Gov! Stop! I WASN'T SERIOUS!)
Update: More and more accurate information about the case here.
One detail of note: this library does have a section for more "adult" material, but the exact meaning of "adult" was a little diluted by the fact that Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts were in there too. I think the critical consensus is that those are family books. Having grown up with a younger brother and younger cousins, I'm a little sympathetic to parents who would like a bit of help navigating the choppy waters of modern entertainment. It's harder than most non-parents think. That "adult" section should be better maintained. But punishing the Manga book for an incompetently maintained section just says "scapegoat" to me. That, and "laziness."
I stopped short of reproducing actual porn in History, but there is a section on sex comics and a few uses of the F-word. Balancing appropriateness and honesty is difficult in any comics survey... I didn't want to compromise the book's teaching function by repelling readers. But if you take the censor-friendly route all the time, you may end up with cases of ignorance like the one of my own youth. I didn't learn about the existence of sex comics until college, when I finally got around to reading Watchmen.
(Watch some close-minded governor somewhere read this post and conclude that Watchmen is a sex comic that needs to be banned. Just watch.)
(Hey, you! Gov! Stop! I WASN'T SERIOUS!)
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stuff that would get an NC-17 rating over here
Errr... well, no. No classification system over here uses NC-17. :)
(Film and video: 18, in practice, is a middle ground between R and the original intent of NC-17. It applies to both cinema and video, and there are more severe consequences for letting an under-18 into the theatre for it. R-18 is a video only rating indicating that the work can only be sold in licensed sex shops, and is only assigned to out-and-out pornography. I don't remember how the games certs work.)
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Errr... well, no. No classification system over here uses NC-17. :)
(Film and video: 18, in practice, is a middle ground between R and the original intent of NC-17. It applies to both cinema and video, and there are more severe consequences for letting an under-18 into the theatre for it. R-18 is a video only rating indicating that the work can only be sold in licensed sex shops, and is only assigned to out-and-out pornography. I don't remember how the games certs work.)
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