John Mortell’s blog

For a large variety of reasons, both personal and practical I hate whenever I see censorship in pretty much any form. Given my own inclinations towards liberalism and what would be called ‘political libertarianism’, and more generally for the practical reason that, in my experience, whenever there is censorship of items, it generally tends to be becuase the people calling for the censorship don’t ‘get’ the item in question I tend to assume that censorship is often a knee-jerk reaction to the unknown or frightening rather than something that’s neccessary.

Two recent news items that I have seen in the last 24 hours have left me feeling rather angry and raging against the stupidity of the so-called ‘moral majority’. The first one is reported here where Joe Duffy (Ireland’s resident fuckwit Jerry Springer) gets himself in a tizzy over the fact that Batman comics aren’t always suitable for children while the second one is about a British law that makes it illegal to view certain kinds of pornography, even if the pornography itself is not illegal.

With regards to the Batman issue in question (its one of the ‘All Star Batman and Robin issues which I’ve talked about before), I find that I can agree to a small extent with the mother who called in, because the issue in question, and the all-star Batman series in general is not suitable for children and Titan books, the comics publisher who is reprinting this material for the UK market should look at the content of the issues more before deciding to advertise the books to children. However, what got me rather annoyed, was the assertion by the guest from the rape crisis centre who blatanly asserted that people like me, who have been reading comics for years, and have been exposed to comics like ‘All-Star Batman’ are dysfunctional rapists waiting to happen. Now obviously, outside factors do play into rapists, and violent or abusive individuals will always find certain materials more stimulating. But, to suggest that because the Joker (in this case) date-raped a woman and kills her after showing misogyny in general, that I, or any other reader of comics, will do so is absurd. And yet, after Joe Duffy talking about this on his show and not finding anybody intelligent from the comics community to defend the books (the guys who were on his show defending comics, to put it mildly, didn’t do a good job), the impression that people have of the books will not exactly be the best. As a friend of mine put it on Gmail Chat today, and I’m quoting here:

yeah, but know in kitchens all across ireland, idiots who actually listen to duffy and value his opinion uncontrollable laughter are thinking that all those who read comic book readers are rapists

Now, this is probably going to go nowhere (I hope) but given the growing interest in Manga and French comics (but Manga especially) here in the English-speaking world,how long will it be before we see some ‘parents group’ jumping on this bandwagon?

But, what can one expect when in the Uk, the government has made it illegal to look at porn of a certain kind, even if that porn is not illegal? It’s that kind of ridiculous double-speak laws that make one fearful of the idea that we are moving to a society where these sort of knee-jerk ‘concerned citizens’ control us all. Whats most insidious about that law is that its going to make people who are perfectly decent individuals criminals in the eyes of the world simply because theire sexual interests diverge from the mainstream. The intellectual coherence of the arguement against ‘extreme pornography’ has all of the mental coherence of the homosexuals = future pedophiles or ‘Goths = future Columbine case’ arguements one hears every so often. Whats also interesting is how around 10 minutes in, the person being interviewed points out that the illegality of these images means that possession of these materials mean that people could be open to ‘legal revenge’ after a break-up in a relationship. Furthermore, they point out that the language used, comparing these people to peadophiles or murderers is grossly over the top. Anyway, have a look or listen to both of the links I provided.