Should art be censored?

[Lensing]

I got a question for you.
Should art be censored and when yes what art should be censored?
Should certain art be forbidden? And who should decide it?

[Kelheor]

I think it shouldn't. What we should practice is explaining things. I am pretty tired of how people pretend they don't have bodies and that their bodies are shameful, that guns don't kill, that blood exists. So when they meet the reality, they don't understand what's going on, they are afraid of themselves and everything around because it doesn't exist in their pure censored world.

[EverydayWonderlander]

In large-scale terms, blanket terms, no - I don't think so.

I think that it's more charitable to your fellow human to accurately warn for content when able, but I don't think that outright censorship is ever the answer. One of the most human behaviors is making art.

Art can be poorly made, disgusting, inaccurate, self-serving to the artist, and so on... but I think that censoring or forbidding certain art from existing is a great way to never have any genuine art at all. If a group was made the arbiter of artistic expression, their biases and preferences/subjectivity would always leave out what they personally think is worthless or bad.
It devolves quickly, like with the Comics Code Authority in the Hayes Code era of the United States; a current example in the U.S. is the TV Ratings board (to a lesser extent, the ESRB); we have people moving to ban queer books for existing in several states; Red Candles ("Detention" and "Devotion" games) having their work banned in mainland China because they contained slight criticism of the government; and the obvious extreme example are the book burnings and "Degenerate Art" in 1940s Germany.

To me, art is art. All art is worthy of defense until the point it veers into hate speech and/or tangible, immediate harm. We can examine works that we find reprehensible with critical analysis, but we can never learn anything if the art doesn't exist. The answer is often more variety rather than taking things away.

It's a very nuanced topic, of course.

[doitlikeomar69]

Never ever art is a explosion

[Lady_T_Musings]

Nope.

A fair warning to let folks know you might see something nsfw or a trigger warning should be all that's required in my op.

[NickRowler]

Most art should not be censored. I know some museums will move controversial art into special rooms. This happened to a art piece in a museum in DC. It was an old painting of someone who was either intersex or trans, don't understand why it needed a warning when none of the other nudes have it. I also think the drama around Piss Christ was stupid. Yeah it's gross but there was no need for death threats or people trying to get the US government to denounce it.

On the other hand...
Robert Mapplethorpe is a photographer known for taking very sexual pieces, sometimes getting into kinky/BDSM territory. While most of his art is not my cup of tea, I don't think they should be censored. However, he did come under fire for photographing children in a way that might have been exploiting them. And there was another photographer who did something similar. He went into nudist colonies and photographed the girls, and was trying to sell his work as "art". I don't think we should be using art as an excuse to exploit children.

[BoomerZ]

I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but yes it should depending on the audience and format. If your publisher is a all-ages platform, you have to know the rules of the game. I get that you want nudity, gore, etc in your comic/art, but that platform is not for you then. (generic "you", not the poster). Everywhere has a code of conduct. Everywhere has limits to what you can do. Art is not some special thing that is immune to this. We have elevated art to something almost religious in that it can't be contained in any way. It's not.
So when you have a site like Tapas or Webtoons that doesn't want sexual acts on it, that is their right to not have it. They want a all-ages site. Just like there are porn sites to post that kind of stuff on. It's all about who the audience is.

[sushy00]

I think it should not be censored at all. However there should be a filter over it so that if it is 18+, people under 18 can't view it. If it is very gore-y, there should be a warning first.

[darthmongoose]

It's a complicated subject because exploitative art is still art, art that contains graphic imagery that could traumatise people is still art, propaganda art that incites violence against marginalised people is still art. So if we follow the rule of "art can never be censored", people can put all sorts of hate speech and dangerous rhetoric out into the world and say "well, it's art" and so if you wanted to stop it getting seen, you'd end up mired in an argument about what counts as art. BUT if you do have the mechanisms to censor art, you run the risk of those rules being abused to oppress free expression and freedom of ideas.

So it's difficult because of the "tolerance paradox". I don't want people to be marching around on youtube wearing swastikas and encouraging people to oppress others, because I fear what tolerance of that intolerance would lead to... but a rule that prevents that also prevents documentary videos discussing historical accounts of that ideology and often even ones about why it's bad, leaving people ignorant.

It's hard to make a perfect set of rules. I think there are circumstances in which we should be careful what people are consuming. In a perfect world, everyone would have good critical reading skills to think about the messages in the art and media they consume... but that's not how things are. But then on the other hand, "we're protecting children from harmful content!" is the kind of rhetoric that's used to censor or ban even a pretty inoffensive content that happens to have gay or trans characters. I say this as a creator who makes pretty tame and inoffensive work I'm fine with my mum or my boss seeing that has several LGBTQ+ characters. It's bizarre to me to think of somebody reading my comic and saying "it's dangerous for people to read this!" when there are legitimately people who think it's for children, but there are countries where that'd be the case.

I'm not sure what I'd say is the best course of action for managing sensitive content. I'm not sure I'd necessarily fall on the "just let everyone publish literally anything and let anyone access it" extreme end of things, but I also think the puritanical censorship Apple imposes on Tapas is ridiculous and discriminatory in how it seems to disproportionally target queer creators and content, and prioritises censoring sexual content over violence or harmful themes and rhetoric or misinformation.

[Stargazer31]

I don't believe in censoring art, but I do think that gory stuff and erotic art/ other nsfw things should have a mature content warning, so you have some idea about what you're about to see, in case you're sensitive about it.

I don't like how books with LGBTQ+ content are censored for being "inappropriate" for just having LGBTQ+ people living their lives in them either. It's a nasty double standard.

[AlydaB]

Hmm... this isn't an easy question :I

I'm torn between 1: believing- as a matter of principle- that people should be allowed to freely express themselves without fear of being silenced and 2: my own personal opinion that some things shouldn't exist and should never be seen by anyone, least of all children.

As darthmongoose said, it'd be ideal if people knew how to protect themselves from everything they might stumble across on the internet and were wise enough to take things with a grain of salt, but that isn't the case and never will be. Especially for kids.

However, if you try to impose a set of rules for what can be shown and said, you run into another problem. Who gets to decide what needs to be censored? You're giving this entity/person a ton of power in allowing them to control the message, and they very well might use it to establish a "ridiculous and discriminatory" standard for what's acceptable.

I can say with certainty that kids shouldn't be able to so easily access stuff with sexual content, graphic violence, or harmful messages. As an adult, I'd like to be given fair warning so I can avoid this content as well. Everything beyond that in terms of censorship isn't so clear-cut to me.

Edit: (And even to that, one could ask, 'But what constitutes sexual content, graphic violence, or harmful messages?' My definition for these probably isn't going to be the same as yours. So.. actually, nothing is clear-cut after all -_-)

[CommissarTarkin]

That raises the question "what is censorship?"
Is disallowing the demonstration of certain art in public places and for a general audience censorship?
Is requiring to display a warning message before viewing something also censorship?
If so, then my answer is probably "yes".

But it's going to be extremely hard to decide what should be censored and how, that's true. Obviously, it should not be based on religious or ideological sensibilities - but what is left then? I guess, as a rule of thumb, art depicting explicit sexual acts and graphic violence should be censored, but even I can think of something that technically doesn't qualify as either yet still might make people want to tear their own eyeballs out. So I guess a clause like "something that causes severe psychological distress in the majority of the population" should also be added, to be applied on a case-by-case basis.

And I don't mean that all art should pass some sort of panel of censors to be released, I mean that if the overseeing body (some sort of municipal or regional committee perhaps?) receives way too many letters stating "X's paintings drove me to binge drinking in an attempt to forget what I saw in them" and "People cannot keep their lunch down and throw up all over the gallery", then maybe this art has to be examined.

[simonitropunk]

No, it shouldn't.

Art or any other types of work should never be censored. We all enjoy different things in-terms of artwork whether in drawing, movies, games etc... it's a deal-breaker for me if you censor things.. That's why I'm on the fence buying a PS5 since there have been games that were censored and that's a big no-no for me.

Just because you like a certain type of art that has nudity, sex, gore, violence etc... that doesn't make anybody be a bad person. To me, to each of their own. We played plenty of violent video games when growing up especially in my case playing the original Mortal Kombat when I was 8 and that didn't affect me in the long-run.

There's an art form for everybody to enjoy in different spectrums and personally, it should be free to do whatever type of artwork without restriction and you can always put warnings in-front just to let people know what's going to happen.

For me, I do show the bad things in my stories in front because hey, life itself doesn't censor itself. We always see bad things on the news whether in wars, crime, this and that. I'd rather have my art be upfront in all its context rather hide anything. I want my art to be honest more than anything. That's all I'm asking for and if there's a hint of censorship, there seems to be a lie somewhere so, I cannot accept that.

[ratscout]

Unless it is child porn (which some pervs might try to excuse as art), I don't think it should be censored. There is art out there that I'm personally not fond of or that offends my morals personally, but I wouldn't censor it. XD I think bad idea speak for themselves and that people being able to view them can only expose the idea for what it is LOL. But in general, I think putting an M rating on a videogame or putting an R rating on a movie should be enough to warn people away who won't enjoy it, and if the person still watches it, it's on them, not on the movie/videogame.

[Legendofgenii]

I don’t think nipples should be censored. I’m not even sure why that’s a thing really? We all have em.

[TroyVSTheWorld]

It really is up to the subject matter. Some forms of censorship are absurd: How can 4 letters, used in a specific string from a 26 letter alphabet, require censorship? Why is it that in most circumstances a male nipple is fine when a female nipple isn't?

On the other hand, there's forms of censorship I'm not opposed to. I mean, kids shouldn't be subjected to images of absolute horror, right? And I mean things worse than video game gore, you know. Things that can terrify kids psychologically.

Sometimes censorship does help in comedy, but for awhile I've been asking myself what its like being someone with the job of being a censor: There are people who get to hear the absolute best jokes you'll never hear on TV. And then there's the guy who has to stare at everyone's butts all day when censoring out the imagery in Naked & Afraid. You know, we all like to pretend that guy's job really sucks, but, I'm pretty sure that guy loves going into work every day.

[RobertBMarks]

I live in Canada, which is a country where free speech is protected, with the exception of hate speech. So, there are limitations. I am also the father of two children (my daughter is 3, my son is a newborn).

And my answer is no. Just, no.

Behind censorship is this distrust of the reader or viewer, and in my experience it is almost never warranted. Aside from which, it is my decision what I consume, and curating material for my children is my job as a parent, not some government agency's.

That said, curation is important. There's been a rash of pedophiliac books making their way into school libraries, and pedophiles have been trying to push the victim narrative in an effort to gain acceptance (and I pray to God it doesn't work). And, there is no world in which a school library should be used to groom future victims for pedophiles. But there's a big difference between deciding that a work is not appropriate for a school library and that nobody should be allowed to ever read it at all.

That further said, freedom of speech means that somebody can't prevent you from saying something - it doesn't mean that anybody is required to help you. Publishers have the right to nope out on content they find objectionable, and that does not constitute censorship.

And that's what I think.

[deesparta208]

This is one of those questions where you answer one way or another and you can go down a slippery slope. Censoring art silences the voice of an artist. When would it be appropriate to silence someone? Hate crimes and bigotry are issues that shouldn't be encouraged. Yet if you silence hate crimes and bigotry, those who use art to speak against it could be silenced for their portrayals of how evil hate crimes are.

Art can be controversial and make an impact in society. Art can challenge people and their beliefs. It can be used to uplift and to harm. Who decides if it is uplifting or harmful?

In 2017 in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA, there was a protest of a 2015 policy that allowed for a monument of the 10 commandments. The Satanic Temple brought in a statue of Baphomet to protest the state government allowing for the 10 commandments be placed at the state capital.

If evangelicals wanted to have their ten commandments on a state monument, the Satanists said that they too can provide a monument that represents them. No matter what your personal religious beliefs are you can't have only one side represented and silence the other. Allow both or remove both, that is really the fair option. So do you silence the artists who made both monuments or accept that both belong?

In the southern states in America there is controversy over monuments and statues of people who supported and fought for slavery. Protestors have forcefully removed some. Some cities and states are leaving these symbols of slavery and oppression up, and others are removing them and putting them in like a museum.

I feel that there is a place for these confederate monuments. No they shouldn't be celebrated or treated like heroes. However we need to remember our past and hope we learn from it. So these monuments should be kept some place safe away in like a museum.

All in all I feel that we should accept that there is art that we may or may not like or approve of. Censoring Art is not good.

[BoomerZ]

Just going to throw this out there to the people that in this thread said they support free speech but not hate speech. You don't support free speech. Speech you agree with doesn't need protecting, the stuff that is disagreeable does. And before anyone uses the "what if you threaten some one or call for the death of someone" example. That is a call to action, that is assault. That is covered by the law already. That is why nazi, black panthers and the like can have parades, their freedom of speech is absolute just like yours. (this is an american thing. no country other than america has this absolute)

[NickRowler]

Hate speech isn't "stuff you disagree with".

So it's difficult because of the "tolerance paradox". I don't want people to be marching around on youtube wearing swastikas and encouraging people to oppress others, because I fear what tolerance of that intolerance would lead to...

This statement.
People should not have to tolerate people who are intolerant. This isn't Merry Christmas vs Happy Holiday disagreement, it's people who speak ill of social minorities because they don't want those people to have rights or even exist.

Nazis are not good people at all, that is not a difference of opinion. Why should people tolerate them if their whole platform is hating everyone.