Wednesday 28 January 2009

Stupid laws

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/4370072/New-pornography-laws-could-make-comic-books-illegal-claim-campaigners.html

More badly thought-out laws that will probably never get passed. Could this be any more vague?

“The Government defines an "extreme image" as any "grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise ... obscene" moving or still depiction of someone any "reasonable person" would think real being sexually injured or engaging in sexual activity with an animal or corpse.”

Why the hell are people worried about comic books? No “reasonable person” would think they’re real, unless they’re part of the Australian legal system*. I don’t remember Batman going around raping animals either.

“"A kick in the balls or a--- would constitute this, and a kick in the balls is a well trodden part of humour."”

Did they miss the part where it stated images “solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal” would only be affected? This is such a load of rubbish. You can say the only people worried about this are the guilty ones, but these fascist laws just encourage censorship and stupid fucking paedophile fanaticism. Catching actual criminals is the most important thing, and it’s never even been proven that looking at drawings is linked with real crime, so it would probably be wasted efforts anyway.

Disregarding the content of that kind of material, the difference between fiction and reality is the thing here that seems to be getting confused more and more. 'Extreme, disgusting images' is so subjective it makes me uncomfortable to think that what would fall into that category would be totally dependant on the personal tastes of one person. God, just stop the circulation of images of REAL children and real exploitation before worrying about what Kaworu Watashiya writes next. This kind of thing really pisses me off because it just seems like obvious scapegoating.

*This Neil Gaiman blog entry explains some things. I’m fond of this line:

“And, I should warn members of the Australian judiciary, fictional characters don't just have sex. Sometimes they murder each other, and take fictional drugs, and are cruel to fictional animals, and throw fictional babies off roofs. Crimes, crime everywhere.”

Lol.

4 comments:

Michael Powell said...

Do you remember Team American nad how it came with a warning that it showed puppets engaged in sexual acts?

Even though they had no genitalia! Because they were PUPPETS!!

The world is doomed, I tell you!

Blair said...

Haha, oh god puppetsex was all sorts of hilarious, but still made me blush for some reason.

Del said...

some high class psychiatrist discovered criminals and delinquents read comics in 1948.

In 1954 they said Superman was the play out of a dark fantasy for people who wanted to destroy people around them and punish them over and over, but stay invulnerable themselves.

Just before the 60s they said Batman and Robin were a whizz dream of homosexuals who lived together and were never wrong.

They said Wonderwoman was the exact opposite of a woman was supposed to be.

There were hearings. It almost closed the comic book industry down.

they said comic books was just a glorification of crime that taints kids minds. They even declared it more sadistic than Hitlers actions because it went straight to their minds.

They invented the 'comic book code'. Which meant they had to review every comic before it was released.

Eventually decades later, Stan Lee ignored the code and started doing his own thing and he didnt go to jail, and nothing bad happened. Comics got more love than ever. The people knew what they wanted and now we got our freedom back.

I doubt the readers will ever allow that shit to happen again.

Ever.

Comic Book history rulez, and if you know anything about it then you know this will never happen without a uber fight.

Blair said...

Mm, I watched something about the situation in America a few years ago was quite shocking they were so keen to turn on comics in those days. I don't think it will ever get to that stage now either, but I don't think we have anything like the Comic Book Defence League in the UK do we?