Should art be censored?

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.

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)

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

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.

In other words "free speech for speech I agree with". That's a slippery slope you are living on...

We associate the word 'art' with positive connotations and 'censorship' with negative ones, so I feel like a lot of us have the instinctive reaction of 'no, art should never be censored!' that we wouldn't otherwise have if it were phrased differently ^^; But yeah, it depends on what you count as 'censorship' - and I don't believe art (however you define it) should be given special treatment above any other forms of information.

I'm pro content warnings, like most people who commented this far. Some people say content warnings is censorship and bad for free speech, but I think content warnings can save free speech. We can apply content warnings liberally with little to no consequence if we go overboard and mislabel something (we can just unlabel it) - the same cannot be said if we destroy content that didn't need to be destroyed. If we label potentially harmful content clearly with the ways they might be harmful, then we don't need to destroy the content or prevent it from being created. It will protect information from being lost.

I'm generally against destroying content. I said somewhere else that I think all content should be allowed to exist, even if some of it should be buried under a mountain of content warnings, but on second thought I think there are some exceptions. If the content was created by harming real people, I think it should be destroyed if the victim(s) request it.

Curation/what people allow in the spaces they control is a bit muddier, in a world where everything is owned by someone. In my ideal world, everyone will have a small space they have complete control over, where they can banish anyone for doing anything they find objectionable for any reason, where they can feel secure. And the rest of the world will be owned by no-one and anyone can say anything (provided they warn others of what they're about to say beforehand if it's something that could hurt people). But when all our public spaces are owned privately, 'their platform their rules' can very much end up being suppressive in practice.

For instance, I think nazis etc can have parades as long as they are surrounded by people holding signs that say something like (CW: nazism, antisemitism, homophobia, [whatever else nazis yell about at their parades idk I've never watched one]). Which I think by itself will eliminate harm caused by nazi parades just as effectively as outright banning them, because who's going to take them seriously with that preamble?

Well, one might ask what, exactly, does your question mean by "censored". Often the word means something as common as preventing small children from viewing material they cannot deal with. Or it can be as extreme as book burnings and jail time for the artist. Each person answering your question has their own idea of what they think you're asking & what they think others are answering, but they may be wrong.

here's no broad "should" or "should not" for art censorship. You need to look at specific cases-- it's an issue of artistic meaning, context, institutional power, and platform. I work in the Museum field and the conversation surrounding how monuments of racist leaders were being vandalized by protesters in the US a few years ago really highlighted the complexity of "censorship."

In my opinion these vandalized monuments would, ideally, be removed from public spaces and re-contextualize within museums with the vandalism and protest as a part of its new meaning. I wanted this to happen because as public monuments to racists, these artworks empowers White Supremacists while at the same time disempowers marginalized people. If taking the statue away from a public place and/or recontextualizing an art piece is "censorship" then I am pro-censorship in this case.

Which leads to a more important point-- censorship is also often an issue of platform/ space. Unlike some people who saw the irreparable damages done to these statues as another form of "censorship." I am ok with their vandalism because 1) these monuments belong to dominant history; U.S institutions have given the stories behind these monuments so much platform tat their destructions do little to erase their story. Eeryone knows who Columbus is; tearing down his statues won't change that. 2) These monuments take up space that could belong to other stories that were "censored" by virtue of being left out of histories. People were up in arms about how protesters were destroying the "histories" represented by these monuments, but they never considered that these protesters' histories weren't represented by any monuments. Their act of vandalism is an act of monument-building in itself.

To be straight forward, these monuments were given their platform by a bunch of powerful White men a long time ago to forward a White Supremacist agenda. These men also actively deplatform stories of any marginalized groups, which in itself is an act of censorship. When talking about censorship, it's important to consider what power gives the art platform, what has already been platformed, and what has already been censored.

Complicated, but good questions.
To answer them in short:
Yes, some art should be forbidden, quickest examples: porn of kids, art where it is known that the model(s)/artist(s) were abused/forced to do it, where art is directly calling for violence/killings/etc. Things alike should be not tolerated and forbidden by law, in my opinion.

Regarding censorship. It depends on the target audience, art accessibility and FYI trigger warning about the content.
If the art is meant for adults and it can be accessed by adults only - no censorship is required (only FYI trigger warnings required so that people could make an educated decision whether to click or not). If the art is meant for underage kids, ideally it shouldn't have any trigger content (or in exceptional cases - very light, marked with warnings before entering/viewing).

If the art is meant for both kids and adults and the art does contain trigger content - it must at the very least contain very clear trigger warnings, recommendations not to read for underage kids and why. The particular site could forbid the underage kids to read the trigger content (e.g. by utilizing the age info from profile form), or enforce 2 versions of the art (one accessible by kids only and censored, the other version uncensored for adults only).

In short: as long as the content is not meant for kids, the art should not be censored, but entail trigger warnings where applicable.

The owners of the site decide on the rules for content on their site, of course.
That being said, if the site/art is meant for adult content (and has clear trigger warnings), it should not be hunted down for containing NSFW art for the sole reason that 'kids could find it'. The kids (and everybody else) take responsibility for their actions the second they choose to disregard the warnings and proceed to click to the adult/trigger content.

Absolutely, but the point is their voices are often silenced because it's speech that some people don't agree with. So prioritizing protecting the voices you don't agree with, as a general rule instilled in all people, is what protects minorities and victims' voices :]

But yeah, the solution isn't to ban hateful stuff (unless it directly calls for harm which is apparently already covered by other laws). Let the hateful stuff exist, but point to it and say 'this is harmful in X Y Z ways, do not look at it if you are vulnerable to X Y Z' :]

EDIT:

I know you're not - I am :] To combat our biases, I think it's necessary to actively prioritise the ideas we disagree with; if we think we're treating them 'equally', chances are we're actually favouring the ones we agree with. “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression" - this is the generalization of that idea.

I wasn't saying one be prioritized over the others. And yes Protest boycott and make it clear that hate isn't tolerated.