Okay this essay was done on November 3, 2009 for my English class, where we had to write about an author who has experienced censorship in some way. I was supposed to do this essay with my friend, but we'd gotten in a kind of spat and we'd just done separate things. Anyway, this is it. Personally I really like Neil Gaiman, his novel The Graveyard Book being one of my favorites. Coraline was a really great movie as well.
Neil Gaiman is the acclaimed author of fantasy and science fiction stories, some of which include Stardust, Mirrormask, The Graveyard Book, and Coraline. He as a writer, is friends with many famous people, including writer Terry Pratchett (author of Discworld), Diana Wynne Jones (author of Howl’s Moving Castle), Alan Moore (comic book author of V for Vendetta), and is even currently dating Amanda Palmer, singer of the famous “Brechtian punk cabaret” duo, The Dresden Dolls.
In 2006, a man in Iowa by the name of Christopher Handley received an express mail package from Japan that contained seven comic books. The package was intercepted by a Postal Inspector who applied for a warrant after looking through it and determining that it was illustrated child pornography, which he found as objectionable content. The police were contacted later and followed Handley to his house, where his collection of 1,200 manga books or publications, hundreds of DVDs, VHS tapes, laser discs, seven computers, and other documents were confiscated. Even if the offensive images were found only in a small handful of all the things that were confiscated, the government still prosecuted against him.
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund had come to the aid of Mr. Handley, as well as Neil Gaiman, who objectified against the government’s actions towards the avid comic book collector.
“If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said,” said Gaiman on his blog. “The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don't. This is how the Law is made. People making art find out where the limits of free expression are by going beyond them and getting into trouble.”
Gaiman has been defended by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (or CBLDF for short) as well, because a Chief of Police in Jacksonville, Florida ordered a comic book shop not to sell his comic book Death Talks About Life because she thought it promoted teen sex. The legal counsel of CBLDF talked to the Jacksonville Police Department about the First Amendment, and they shut up and didn’t object any further.
Gaiman also said, “In this case you obviously have read lolicon, and I haven't. I don't know whether you're writing from personal experience here, and whether you have personally been incited to rape children or give inappropriate hugs by reading it. (I assume you haven't. I assume that Chris Handley, with his huge manga collection, wasn't either. I've read books that claimed that exposure to porn causes rape, but have seen no statistical evidence that porn causes rape -- and indeed have seen claims that the declining number of US rapes may be due to wider availability of porn. Honestly, I think it's a red herring in First Amendment matters, and I'll leave it for other people to argue about.) Still, you seem to want lolicon banned, and people prosecuted for owning it, and I don't. You ask, What makes it worth defending? and the only answer I can give is this: Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you're going to have to stand up for stuff you don't believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don't, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person's obscenity is another person's art.
“Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.”
Lolicon or yaoi is a Japanese portmanteau of the phrase “Lolita complex”, which is a sexual attraction to younger girls by adult males, as portrayed in the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Lolicon comic books are more commonly known in Japan, where they originally began, and are a genre of comic books with childlike females being depicted erotically. Some critics say that lolicon contributes to actual sexual abuse of children, while others say that there is no evidence to support this, or there is evidence to the contrary. Some countries have attempted to criminalize lolicon comic books because of their sexual explicitness, pertaining to child pornography, but Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, and the Philippines are the only countries to have actually been able to do so. This itself is enough to say that Christopher Handley, a resident of Iowa, USA, shouldn’t be charged with such a thing as this, because it is not illegal to have such possessions, and isn’t harming anyone else. Sure, it may be irksome to law enforcement officers, but since there are no actual child porn victims involved, there shouldn’t be that much of a problem.
However, in May 2009, Christopher Handley pleaded guilty of owning the said obscene lolicon graphic comic books, most likely because he couldn’t afford to keep fighting in the trial. He could face a fine of $250,000 and up to fifteen years in jail. These results are not surprising, but disappointing, because as Gaiman said in a part of his blog, people have more freedom in the United States, and according to the First Amendment, Americans have the right to freedom of speech, and just because that Postal Inspector found the item suspicious didn’t mean that he had to report it as child porn, because, as stated previously, it officially isn’t. Neil Gaiman was right in defending the matter of Christopher Handley, and had the tables turned and Handley been released, it would’ve been a sign of freedom still standing in the United States.
Bibliography:
Trexler, Jeff. “Comics, Child Porn and the Law” Blogs at Newsarama. 23 December 2008. Newsarama. 3 November 2009. <http://blog.newsarama.com/2008/12/23/comics-child-porn-and-the-law/>.
Otakureview. “The Case Against Christopher Handley” Otaku Review. 11 December 2008. Otaku Review. 3 November 2009. <http://otakureview.today.com/2008/12/11/the-case-against-christopher-handley/>.
“Censorship” Wikipedia. 30 October 2009. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 3 November 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship>.
Vineyard, Jennifer. “Neil Gaiman on the ‘obscenity’ of Manga Collector Christopher Handley’s Trial” Splashpage MTV. 24 November 2008. MTV. 3 November 2009. <http://splashpage.mtv.com/2008/11/24/neil-gaiman-on-the-obscenity-of-manga-collector-christopher-handleys-trial/>.
Gaiman, Neil. “Why defend freedom of icky speech?” Neil Gaiman. 1 December 2008. Harper Collins Publishers. 3 November 2009. <http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html>.
“Lolicon” Wikipedia. 24 October 2009. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 3 November 2009. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon>.
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