Should art be censored?

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

This is not art

That's kinda where discussions can get "interesting" - some people assert that no one has the right or authority to designate anything as art or not-art except the artists themselves. But there are some things, like this, that pretty much everyone feels should be recognized by the public as not-art. So, how does society decide what is "unquestionable art" and "unacceptable art", and who gets to do the deciding? Don't feel obligated to answer, I intend that to be a rhetorical question & it's really a different issue than the one raised in this thread.

[thecrystalrook]

As a matter of fact, I don't support unrestricted free speech, precisely because of this. You do understand that there is no legal definition of hate speech in the United States, yes? I don't think I need to explain the danger of having something so unbelievably vague left up to the supreme court to decide on when, "I hate potatoes" can be just as easily lumped together with, "I hate this minority group."

"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."

This is not even the same class of censorship. Freedom of speech laws don't restrict private institutions from restricting what content they allow on their platform. The exact wording of the 1st amendment explicitly states CONGRESS may not restrict it. It only protects you from legal trouble. You still are not protected from freedom of societal consequences. You can still lose your job or get your ass kicked over something you say. It would be foolish for someone to think that because the government cant arrest them that they can say whatever they want with no consequence.

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

This is not the win you think it is.

[TheLemmaLlama]

I think the easiest solution is to just not put 'art' on a pedestal. Something can be art, abuse and child exploitation ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It's still wrong - calling it art or not-art won't really make a difference.

It's also related to the tendency to dismiss something as having 'no artistic merit' (i.e. not worth studying, analysing or paying attention to) because its creator was a terrible person. If something was a product of abuse and exploitation, we should destroy it, but don't insist that 'nothing of value was lost' and shame anyone who mourns the loss of any insights the work may have contained (as long as they're respectful to the victims and agree that destroying the work was a regrettable but necessary course of action). Saying that something had interesting artistic insights is not the same as defending it morally, but it can be hard to see if you think 'art => good' (and therefore 'bad => not art', and in turn 'claim is art => claim is good')

Also, not putting art on a pedestal means people don't get to use art as an excuse to do terrible things. It's only an excuse if people excuse them for it!

[BoomerZ]

ok freedom of speech does apply to some private companies if they have certain dealing with the government. And I don't want anyone deciding what "hate speech" is. Because what hate is to one is just vulgar to another, and to others is a non-issue. You don't want the government deciding that, or society for that matter. and 51% of the population forcing 49% to do something is horrid. Worst is a vocal 10% that knows how to ruin your life.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Insightful.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

51% of the population forcing 49% to do something is horrid

You're sort of touching on why a pure democracy (some call it true democracy) can be a nightmare.
But, we're drifting into politics & the OP may not appreciate the thread going there.

[Lensing]

As long as the discussion (drifting into polictics) is not drifting into people fighting everything is ok

[TroyVSTheWorld]

There's a line that had to be drawn when it comes to trying to emphasize with intolerance. Like, if you're using freedom of speech to say things that are actively harming the use of freedom of speech, I think it cosmically and unanimously defeats itself.

So, like, uh...We need to tolerate each other for our freedom of speech to simply even exist. When we use this freedom to create and spread intolerance, we are harming the very core of what the amendment is even for.

[samiluu]

I think art shouldn't be censored, but we should put a TW on some sensitive scenes and a +18 to avoid children sees some things they can't understand and can cause them trauma or anxiety

[SaceAmis]

Like how some sites want to verify your age by your phone number. They do it in Korea or China? I can't remember which one.

[scottlincoln689]

Did I miss the part where we established the definitions of what "Art" and "Censorship" are?
I think those things need clear definitions first. If we can't agree on the meaning of language we will fail at real communication and risk toppling into chaos.

[Lensing]

What is your definition of art and censorship?

I don´t agree with the part "fail at real communication and risk toppling into chaos
at all and the topic is the proof for that. I also don´t think art can be strictly defined
and censorship is also hard to define because it can mean multiple things. The open
discussion about it worked pretty fine

[powerplantanimations]

Honestly, after hearing about the whole Cuties fiasco.... YES lmao.

Creative freedom isn't an excuse for having children do things like dancing explicitly. That's not art. That's just being a degenerate. Never do stuff with children. The children acting business is already corrupt as it is. If you got a message that's supposed to be beneficial, then tell it a different way.

I also feel like some authors should self-censor themselves in order to keep a consistent tone? I've seen childish (like meant to be targeted at children) cartoons/comics that just... swear or show gore all of the sudden.

High Guardian Spice is a huge example of this where they have adults remind you that they have sex every five seconds, show blood when killing creatures, and drop (blatant) innuendos whenever they can. Even though the show is aimed at a young audience. The writers used Naruto as an excuse, but that show uses blood for narrative reasons.... and it's for teenagers. And sure, there's kid shows with innuendos all the time, but like... this show had more of an identity crisis if that makes sense?

There's also fetishes. HOO BOI. Keep your fetishes out of kid shows. The worst case of fetishism I've seen were the original Wonder Woman comics. If you guys know the writer... you know he's into some freaky stuff. He's not even subtle with the art lmao. When I was binging the comics I was like:

[NickRowler]

High Guardian Spice isn't for little kids, it's rated TV-14. I am not saying that makes it a "good" show, but I don't think something being poorly written means it should be censored.

On the other hand, Naruto is a kid's show and usually has a rating of PG or 10+. Naruto Shippuden used to run on Disney XD, tho very edited. A lot of Shonen Jump series in Japan are target as preteen/teens audience. A lot the stuff that is OK for Japanese kids is taboo in the US. That is why the age rating is 13+ for some anime/manga.

[UrMom]

High Guardian Spice is a huge example of this where they have adults remind you that they have sex every five seconds, show blood when killing creatures, and drop (blatant) innuendos whenever they can. Even though the show is aimed at a young audience. The writers used Naruto as an excuse, but that show uses blood for narrative reasons.... and it's for teenagers. And sure, there's kid shows with innuendos all the time, but like... this show had more of an identity crisis if that makes sense?

Lmao! To be fair, High Guardian Spice is technically M-rated, so it's not for children. Supposedly the tonal confusion is because the creators wanted to make a kid friendly show, Crunchyroll wanted them to make it mature instead, so they awkwardly added in stuff that would fit the rating. Which is why it is so jarring and weird and "why doesn't this stupid baby show have blood in it??". At least according to some stuff I've read.

Also hey man, don't be taking away Totsuzen! Neko no Kuni Banipal Witt (Catnapped) and Bartok the Magnificent. Those were some of my favorite movies as a kid, and Ludmilla's fetishy dragon transformation scene in Bartok just makes it more entertaining. (In all seriousness I do agree for the most part, although if the fetish is harmless like general furry stuff I don't mind it too much. Doubt kids will get it, worst that will happen is they'll grow up to wear fur suits and work for NASA.)

[Calculus_Homework]

NEVER!!!
GO WILD.
GO CRAZY.
GO ART.

[BOMB]

I think to answer your question I have to ask another one. What do we consider art?

I don't think art should be censored, no. Do i think that some art should be forbidden, maybe. There are instances when people use artistic media to create things that are not actually art, rather its propaganda, p**n, hate, lies with artistic elements. And this might be confusing because in many cases art seeks to express things that exist outside of itself.

Take for example (and I know this is a little extreme) drawings, videos, or paintings of child related explicit content. They utilize artistic media, and the person who made them might consider them art, but I think most people would agree a lot of it shouldn't exist.

How about a person who creates racist posters that promote violence towards people? I don't think anyone wants that.

But of course there's no way to stop people from making art like that. And it would be a challenge to come up with strict rules that dictate what goes too far or not without giving up artistic freedom to certain degree. After all, there are paintings of mothers breast feeding their babies that some people would call too explicit as if they were the same as child p**n, when most of us wouldn't see it that way. And there are plenty of old cartoons that were kinda racially insensitive that some people might want to erase, but I think a lot of people can understand TV and cartoons don't always age well. Deciding where to draw the line on things can be tricky even if the goal is to get rid of the extreme wrongs. I haven't given too much thought to all of this, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who likely sees what I mean.

In short do I think art should be censored, no. But it's important what we allow to be called art, because anyone can paint, draw, record anything. But not everything or everyone should have the protection of art.

[NickRowler]

I heard they only put the "mature audience" label because of the trans characters. From the clips I have seen and hearing people talking about it, the show seems to be for teenagers. And IMDB also has it labelled as TV-14. There is nothing in the show that makes it 18+, and this warning was sort of stupid because they don't do that to their imported shows which are far more violent and sexual.

[UrMom]

M and X ratings aren't the same thing, M is 17+, which is still teen age... although I guess it's not too far off from the X-rating, I mean the only real difference is non-sexual nudity vs. sexual nudity and implied sex vs. porn. But yeah, that could be possible. There's a lot of speculation on why that show is the way it is, I wouldn't be surprised if it was only labelled as "Mature" due to the trans characters, as dumb as that would be. I'll just agree and say it's 14+ then since that's less stupid than rating it as 17+. Lol

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Well, I did try to get clarification of what kind or degree of censorship the OP was thinking of when starting the thread but it seems the chaos of undefined terms was more appealing.