A virtual demonstration against censorship

A Second Life user films a demonstration opposing the virtual world’s ban of Rose Borchovski’s The Kiss, which was intended to be shown at SL’s 7th birthday celebration.

For more about the incident, see “Second Life Censors Machinema Film Over Artistic Nudity.”

It’s not about the children: “Revolutionary Voices” pulled from public library

We were gratified to learn of a kind mention last week from librarian Lizzy Burns in her thoughtful blog A CHAIR, A FIREPLACE & A TEA COZY concerning one example of the kind of work the NCAC does every day. You can find the original post here.

The latest wrinkle in the story: Revolutionary Voices has been pulled from not just the Rancocas Valley School library but now also from the Burlington County (NJ) library system. It’s not just “about the children” (as one enthusiastic book-puller allegedly put it); simply stated, no adults can read Revolutionary Voices in the Burlington County (NJ) library either.  The forces of reaction are having their way.

Our sources tell us that a female member of a local “912″ group approached the Burlington County Library staff to complain about Revolutionary Voices and push for its removal there too, sometime close to when the book was pulled from the Rancocas Valley school library, since “kids might find it [in the public library] also.” Instead of following the BCLS formal challenge procedure, the staff (under director Gail Sweet and library commissioners including Patrick Delany, whose name appeared on and then disappeared from a local 912 group member list earlier this spring) quietly pulled all available copies of the book off the shelves.

Today there are no available copies of Revolutionary Voices in the their system; it was pulled without fanfare so that readers simply wouldn’t notice.  It is said that “free people read freely.”  That is not the case today in Burlington County, NJ.

Many thanks to Lizzy Burns for spreading the word about this important issue (and for the kind mention, ditto!)

A Conversation with Edward Albee, David Henry Hwang, Terrence McNally and Adam Rapp

The Free Speech Leadership Council gathered on June 23, 2010 for “Playwrights on Censorship: A Conversation with Edward Albee, David Henry Hwang, Terrence McNally, and Adam Rapp.” It was perhaps the first time ever these luminous playwrights conversed in the same room!  Time Out New York’s Theater Editor David Cote moderated the discussion and Jane Friedman, Chair of the Council, hosted the event in her Manhattan home.

The playwrights agreed that the censorship of their work can be both overt and insidious.  Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly have been challenged and criticized for their take on the “taboo,” be it sexuality, religion, or race. Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi remains his most censored work, as it was condemned by the Catholic League we it first premiered and a recent performance was canceled this year at Tarleton State University near Fort Worth, Texas. “I still have a fatwa on my life,” McNally remarked during the discussion.

Adam Rapp was so affected by censorship that he wrote The Metal Children, which premiered off-Broadway this Spring.  The play was inspired by the removal of Rapp’s book, The Buffalo Tree, from a high school curriculum in Pennsylvania. Numerous high school students and directors have faced censorship from parents and administrators for attempting to produce works like The Laramie Project, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, and My Name is Rachel Corrie.  NCAC even honored students from Connecticut’s Wilton High School at its Annual Benefit Celebration in 2007, when the students bravely protested the cancellation of their production “Voices in Conflict.”  When detailing his own account with The Buffalo Tree Rapp said, “I actually believe that it’s condescending to deprive kids of tough stories, especially if they’re artfully told.”

Second Life Censors Machinema Film Over Artistic Nudity

The online virtual environment Second Life headlines the latest censorship scandal: they took down an art exhibit because SL community guidelines do not allow nudity unless it is confined to a space that has a “mature” or “adult” rating.  The work in question was an installation based on Rose Borchovski’s Susa Bubble, an anthology of machinema films following the surreal, emotional adventures of a young girl.

One has to wonder as to what Linden Labs found so objectionable about this still from the film.  The figure here is slightly more anatomically correct than a Barbie doll and definitely less sexual.

It is somewhat idiotic that a virtual world environment, which states as its objective to be “free and open” and which has become a fertile ground for the development of new art experiments, should censor the almost weirdly asexual creatures in this image. But, as Borchovski says, “The worst part of censorship is not that which is censored, but the climate of self-censorship it imposes on all artists. Art is about having a voice. Art is about thinking differently and about thinking from fresh perspectives. When artists are not allowed to have a voice, culture is not allowed to progress.”

Filmmaker Peter Greenaway wrote a letter to Linden Labs in support of Borchovski.  “Like any self-respecting artist of course I am against gratuitous exploitation that demeans and insults intelligence and sensibilities but by your blanket censorship you are now doing both those things – insulting artistic intelligence and demeaning sensibility.”

This is not the first time Second Life has censored artwork.  A few years ago, a virtual statue called Burning Life, an homage to Burning Man, was censored because it was a statue of a nude woman.  For other examples, go to the pavilion of The Virtual Coalition Against Censorship, a Project of the Arts Program at the NCAC, to see more examples. The pavilion is on Commonwealth 3 (103, 81) (Click here to be teleported). No wonder SL’s population is dwindling –artists would no more want to create for a repressive political regime than for a virtual world with medieval restrictions on content.

Click to watch a video about the incident.

Indiana school board to review Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon”

As we reported in our latest edition of Censorship News, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon was recently removed from an Indiana high school’s AP English class on April 28 after a parent and school board members complained about its content.  Two days later, the book was returned to the class when a committee of educators and parents ruled in favor of keeping the book.

Too bad the story doesn’t end there.

The book is again up for review, now by the Franklin Township school board, which will hear an appeal of the committee’s decision at its June 21 meeting, leaving the fate of Song of Solomon in future AP classes uncertain.

In a joint letter, NCAC and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression write to urge the school to retain the book, saying:

The racial and sexual themes treated in Song of Solomon are essential to the fullness of this rightly renowned novel and are appropriate to the level of material that advanced placement students, most of whom will go on to college, must be able to read and consider.

That Song of Solomon conveys, through poetic and musical language, the sometimes discomfiting truths of life is hardly reason enough to hide it from our nation’s young people. In fact, that may be the very reason it should exist in the classroom.

Stay tuned for more updates following Monday’s meeting.

State Governments Use Money to Censor Movies Filmed In Their States That Disturb Their Sensibilities and Egos.

Should states withhold film incentive because a film criticizes its anti-immigration policies or shows too much violence, or because a state official just finds it “objectionable”?

As a way to bring business and revenue to their regions, various states have started creating tax incentives for filmmakers to make their movie there.  A film’s cast and crew can bring millions of dollars.   However, there is a troubling trend of states refusing the incentives in cases where the films express viewpoints state administrators do not like.

For instance, in Texas, the Film Commission is deliberating whether to award tax incentives to Robert Rodriguez “Machete,” which a promotional trailer presented as a revenge story aimed at anti-immigration policies. In Michigan, Andrew van den Houten’s The Woman was denied tax incentives, because it was  “unlikely to promote tourism or to present or reflect Michigan in a positive light,” and because of the “film’s subject matter, namely realistic cannibalism; the gruesome and graphically violent depictions described in the screenplay; and the explicit nature of the script.”  Utah denies incentives to any “objectionable material” and Georgia refuses support to any film with a NC-17 rating.

The viewpoints expressed in a film would have no effect on the economic benefits of shooting a film in a particular location. However, discriminating against viewpoints state officials disagree with would go directly against First Amendment principles. Money can be a powerful incentive in making art: denying incentives to a film that criticizes state policies on immigration, or whatever else, impermissibly uses government funds to discourage political speech.

No no, a cartoon, naked man in it, no, Apple won’t have it

Take a look at this panel from an iPad graphic novel app based on James Joyce’s 20^th century classic, Ulysses.

There is a part in the story where a character, Buck Mulligan, strips down and jumps in the Irish Sea for a swim. Here it is in Joyce’s original:

He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying tritely:
–Redheaded women buck like goats.
He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.
–My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I’m the _Uebermensch. Toothless
Kinch and I, the supermen.
He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his
clothes lay.
–Are you going in here, Malachi?
–Yes. Make room in the bed.
The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached
the middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a
stone, smoking.

The graphic panel was censored by Apple, who forced the artists to make edits in the iPad app. Why? According to Section 3.3.18 of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, Apple reserves the right to reject any application that, through Apple’s own “reasonable judgment,” may be considered “objectionable.” Now reasonable judgments do vary, but a cartoon male with a teeny willy??? We can see big trouble ahead where the Ulysses plot gets thicker. Just think of the graphic rendition of this rather famous passage:

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

It looks like you would likely have to plow through the notoriously complex prose – Apple is not likely to let any graphic representations of Molly’s sexual ecstasy soil your eyes.

UPDATE: Apple’s censors have decided to lift their ban on the webcomic of Ulysses.  The publishers of the comic, Throwaway Horse, received a call from Apple on Monday, June 14th.  They were told that the censors had taken a second look at the panels in question and realized that there was nothing obscene in them.  According to Throwaway Horse, Apple apologized and asked for the authors of Ulysses Seen to resubmit the comic for approval. Hopefully, it will be ready in time for the revelers to read it Bloomsday.

Apple has also decided to lift its censorship of another graphic novel adaption app, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.  The company had originally decided to censor this app due to the depiction of two naked men kissing.  Even though there was no frontal nudity, the censors only approved the comic only after the men were covered by black boxes.  On the heels of reversing their policy for Ulysses Seen, however, Apple also allowed The Importance of Being Earnest to be resubmitted for approval without the black boxes and called the comic’s rejection a “mistake.”

Teachers Get In Trouble for Teaching Students About Their Constitutional Rights

Two teachers at Norview High School in Norfolk, VA were recently put on administrative leave by the school after a parent complained about a video that she saw in Government class.  The video informed its audience on how to assert their constitutional rights during various encounters with police, such as during a car or house search. It was accompanied by a one page handout about a person’s rights when stopped and arrested by the police.   When the girl came home after school that day, she told her mother “You won’t believe what we are learning in Government. They are teaching us how to hide our drugs.”  The woman promptly called the school to complain about what was taught to her daughter, and the teachers were subsequently suspended.

There are two things that are rather irksome about these series of events.  First, why are parents are so ready to jump to conclusions and act on those assumptions?  It’s a little hard to believe that teachers would be lecturing their students on the best way to hide drugs from the police.  If the girl’s mother had just inquired as to what was actually taught that day, it would have been clear that this was Government class as usual, just an exercise in educating youth on the Constitution.

Second, and more importantly, why are schools eager to appease parents at the drop of a hat?  These are institutions filled with education professionals: teachers know what their students should learn and what the appropriate materials for teaching them are.  A school’s administration should trust that the teacher is making reasonable choices as to how a child is taught and with what.  In response to a parent’s complaint, they should first research the allegations. The administration at Norview High School, for instance, could have a gotten a copy of the leaflet given to students.  They also could have watched the video to see if anything inappropriate was shown.  Instead, the school acquiesced to the demands of one uninformed parent.  Sometimes, Mother doesn’t know what’s best.  That’s why we have schools and teachers.

Unfortunately, this is not a new problem.  Schools all over the country have bowed down to raging parents over something they don’t think is appropriate for their child.  It’s a distressing thought that a parent’s misunderstanding about a certain book or a particular lesson in school can translate into a child’s incomplete education.  Learning about an individual’s constitutional rights enhances one’s education and can even make for a better citizen.  School administrators need to have more confidence in themselves and their teachers.  They need to stick to what they believe is important for a child’s education.

Why would BP stifle information about the oil spill?

You might think that an accurate calculation of the amount of oil flowing into the gulf would be crucial to understanding the environmental impact of the spill.  You might also think that the nation’s top scientists would be a valuable partner to BP in the cleanup effort.  Apparently, BP would disagree.  Or do they have other priorities?

The oil giant refused to allow scientists to send measuring instruments to the site, and delayed releasing a video feed of the leak.  When it was finally made available, the company insisted that there was no “reliable” way to measure the rate of flow using the feed.  But scientists like Steven Wereley at Purdue University argue that there are in fact a number of proven methods for making just such a calculation, and have used the feed to calculate a rate of flow ten times higher than the rate BP was providing.

There are also a number of reports that BP, with the help of the Coast Guard, is trying to limit journalism in the disaster zone – more evidence of BP’s apparent efforts to coverup the extent of the damage:

•  A CBS film crew was threatened with arrest while filming an oil-covered beach.

•  The first question asked of a Newsweek reporter before being turned away from an island wildlife refuge was, ‘Is there any press with you?’”

•  A BP contract worker told the New York Daily News “There is a lot of coverup for BP.  They specifically informed us that they don’t want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence.”

There are a few reasons why BP might think it’s in their best interest to suppress accurate information and downplay the damage caused by the oil spill.  For one thing, the publicity is terrible for the company’s public image – shareholders have already been fleeing, and continuous bad press will make it hard to fight off calls for tougher regulations.  On top of that, accurate information about the extent of the damage will likely play a role in criminal charges and liability for what might turn out to be the largest tort in US history.

So, the cynical among us may not be surprised by the appearance that BP is trying to protect itself.  However, the company’s widely publicized efforts are not only counterproductive to the cleanup efforts, but may not be doing much good for their public image either.  They might be well advised to abide by what writer Brett Norman calls “the first lesson in disaster management PR: transparency.”

Fractured Fairey Tale

In one of the more recent public controversies to hit the NCAC’s arts advocacy radar, two murals from a series commissioned for a Cincinnati Arts Center (CAC) exhibition were recently destroyed – one vandalized by unknown actors, the other whitewashed by a disgruntled site owner.

The two murals, by former street artist Shepard Fairey (whose best known images include the ubiquitous Obey Giant and the likewise ubiquitous Hope poster of Barack Obama), were commissioned by the CAC to be mounted in and around Cincinnati on the walls of buildings offered by their owners. However on May 18^th, less than 48 hours after Fairey and his team had mounted one particular building-sized image of a child soldier with a rifle, building owner Michael Claypool had it whitewashed.  Said Claypool: “We had no clue what they were going to put up…we were not advised in advance. When it went up, we were the first to think it was offensive.”

Among the justifications cited by those against the image of the child soldier was the presence of an elementary school across the street. Members of the community, including Claypool, also argued that property rights afford him the privilege of whitewashing to his heart’s content.

(In a second episode later that week, another powerful Fairey mural was anonymously destroyed shortly after it was mounted. Residents had complained about images of police with nightsticks and the phrase, “I’m gonna kick your ass and get away with it.”)