Slashdot Mirror
Comics Code Dead
tverbeek writes "After more than half a century of stifling the comic book industry, the Comics Code Authority is effectively dead. Created in response to Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, one of the early think-of-the-children censorship campaigns, and Congressional hearings, the Code laid out a checklist of requirements and restrictions for comics to be distributed to newsstand vendors, effectively ensuring that in North America, only simplistic stories for children would be told using the medium of sequential art. It gradually lost many of its teeth, and an increasing number of publishers gave up on newsstand distribution and ignored the Code, but at the turn of the century the US's largest comics publishers still participated. Marvel quit it in 2001, in favor of self-applied ratings styled after the MPAA's and ESRB's. Last year Bongo (publishers of the Simpsons comics) quietly dropped out. Now DC and Archie, the last publishers willingly subjecting their books to approval, have announced that they're discontinuing their use of the CCA, with DC following Marvel's example, and Archie (which recently introduced an openly gay supporting character, something flatly forbidden by the original Code) carrying on under their own standards. The Code's cousins — the MPAA and ESRB ratings, the RIAA parental advisory, and the mishmash of warnings on TV shows — still live on, but at least North American comic publishers are no longer subject to external censorship."
I don't know about the MPAA or the others, but i know the whole point of the ESRB was that it was a voluntary measure the video game industry took on itself in order to avoid something like the Comic Book Code getting created by an outside group. So it's not external censorship and it's really kind of weird to put it up as an example of the Comic Book Code's "cousin" living on. It's really a good example of the _right_ way to inform consumer about what's in the content they're consuming without being subject to censorship.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Gay characters are harmful to children? Children who might be gay themselves, and feel like monsters since they aren't aware that being gay is fine since they are never exposed to positive examples of it, in say, comics?
How does this kind of idiocy exist?
While schemes like the MPAA and ESRB systems are good in theory (rate the content, allow people to make their own decisions), the market realities of them basically end up resulting in "no adult content allowed". No one will stock or publish an ESRB AO game, just like no theatres ever show NC-17 films. As such there is no money in them, and the end up never being made.
Just the fact people doesn't know other publishers outside the voluntary control means the control has some efficacy, probably by making commercially nonviable to be outside of it. This is, in practice, censorship, isn't it?
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
*Ding dong the witch is dead*. And good riddance. Censorship has no place in a freedom loving society and its really appalling that Republicans who blather on about freedom are the first to support authoritarian censorship. Censorship and other social conservative ideas generally makes a society by condoning violent behaviour and sanctioning supression and violence against others who have views, expression or opinions some do not like.
Skin never hurt anyone, the idea that nudity or sex is bad (or psychedelics for that matter) is completely concocted by society, these things are victimless, as a society we should let individuals make up their own minds and decisions, rather than have a authoritarian government and the right wing religious organisations, the private quasi or defacto governmental form of that, watching over our every move.
I prefer more of a western European model, with a socially liberal atmosphere and little or no censorship, nude beaches etc, and governments that concern themselves with making sure people have food, housing, good jobs, and health care, and education, rather than obsesssing over imposing arbitrary ideologies on people. As a social libertatian, that is what we believe in and leads to a truly safe society.
The idea that nudity is wrong is, in fact, a lie. It is a lie promulgated by oppressive religious ideologies that are designed to control, enslave and indoctrinate peoples minds. It is opposed to individual liberty and rationality, that people should have individual self determination rights and things which do not deprive others of their own freedom should not be enacted. Nudity is victimless, it takes away no ones right to not or to wear clothes as they prefer. In fact, laws against nudity take away our right to make these choices for themselves. Nudity is truly harmless, and there is much more of it in Europe. Yet Europe is far safer than the US and has much less violent crime, an overall safer society.
The most socially conservative places in the world, such as Iraq, or Afghanistan are also the most dangerous and violent.
Ironically the country that Republicans seem to want is one where public school has been replaced by bible school, harmless. natural and innocent things like nude swimming have been banned, and with children dying on the street from starvation and treatable medical conditions, massive military and industrial prison complexs and so on.
We will all be better off when we evolve past medieval religious ideologies and systems of oppressive social control designed to take away individuals freedom, not preserve them.
I haven't collected since I was a kid...actually I've never collected. I just got them and read them until the covers literally fell off. But, those young readers were the pool from which adult readers sprang. Creating titles that everyone could read is what made the industry so ubiquitous. Now, it's a boutique niche with drastically reduced readership. Maybe that's made it more satisfying to the adult readers, I don't know.
I had a friend in college who collected and bragged about the value of his collection with the confidence of a basement full of gold bullion. That was before everyone figured out the only readers left were just the collectors, and the valuation formulas were all wrong. Kind of like their own economic bubble.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Smoking bans are in place because you are igniting a caustic material in a public area. Your smoking affects others around you and that's where your rights start to seriously fade fast. Think about this logically, why would it ever be ok to light things on fire in public and subject others to the results of said fire? In no way do you have an inalienable right to ignite chemicals in public places whenever you feel like it.
Good-bye
Now maybe Batman and Robin can be honest about their love.
Archie Comics spokesman mentioned the whole "we're not going to have any women in refrigerators" just because we're dropping the comics code, which is somewhat ironic, as the woman in that particular refrigerator came to be as a direct result of the comics code authority interference. Originally in the Green Lantern story the incident occurred in, the woman in question was supposed to be brutally murdered, but the comics code didn't want people to see a murdered woman, so instead, they had her put in the refrigerator and alluded to it instead. Nice work, comics code.
First off, we are not talking about public parts. We are talking about private businesses. So already, you're using a strawman fallacy to attack a completely different situations than the one I'm talking about.
Second off, IF I OWNED MY OWN ESTABLISHMENT that consenting could enter into, and take a dump on the table - AND THIS IS WHAT MY CLIENTELE WANTED TO DO - Who the fuck are you to tell me I can't? If I open MY doors to the public, all of a sudden the public gets to tell me what to do?
But yea, anonymous coward, way to talk about something completely different and irrelevant. You win the internet.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
You are missing the part where the self-censorship was coerced under threat of government censorship.
There were several large movements in the government to censor all media via government agencies similar to the FCC. In fact, one of the reasons the FCC has such broad powers over television and radio content is because the broadcast industry couldn't come up with a workable system similar to the MPAA or RIAA.
The MPAA, RIAA, and CCA were the various industries' attempts to avoid complete disaster in the form of government censorship. It is not like the industry leaders for these groups got together one day and said "Hey, you know what would be really great? If we set up an independent board to rate our movies for us so parents would know whether they want their kid to see our movie or not! Yeah! Wonderful idea! Lets all pitch in and help out!"
Rather, they got together and said "SHIT! We're gonna get fucked in the ass by the government if we don't do something! What if we set up an independent board of reviewers to rate the movies for us? Would that work? Maybe, lets try it."
They were coerced deals worked out between Congress and the various industries in order to avoid censorship laws that would completely destroy those insustries. They are about as voluntary as forcing a slave to put on his own shackles at gun point.
The death of the CCA does prove, however, that the industries have within their own power the means for escape. The gun is still pointed at movies and music though; comics were never targeted as hard as movies and music because they simply are not as popular. Books are rarely censored because it is a lot harder for a book to qualify as obscenity (one of the criteria is that it cannot have any redeeming social value - a hard thing to say about any literary work). Too people are simply not as interested in written smut as they are illustrated smut. Prior to the 60's, though, many important literary works were banned in the US due to isolated passages that could be considered obscene. Since the Supreme Court rulings required both a prurient theme throughout the work and no redeeming literary value, almost all books are back in.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
And until "real" censorship, i.e. government mandated censorship, happens, this will stay dead. Let's hope for a long resting in peace.
The only reason such "codes" could fly is that the makers of art had to rely on a distribution system that could force such arbitrary restrictions on them. Write to our code or we don't publish, and if we don't, nobody worth mentioning will. You will not sell your comic, you will not show your movie, your game will never be sold.
Now, the internet makes the whole scheme crumble. You don't sell my game, my comic book, my movie and nobody in the US does? So I sell it through a publisher in another country, and unless the US forbids import of the game (and unless they plan to swing that censorship hammer, they won't), I couldn't care less for your "code of conduct". People who are fed up with your "coded" content will gladly look abroad and with global shipping, yes, it might cost them a bit more, but they get what they want. Whether I pay 5 bucks for a comic I don't want or 8 for one I do is not going to break my neck financially.
But it sure will break yours, since I'm not the only one who can't care less for your "coded" crap.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So...what you're saying is that consumer demand for NC-17 and AO products is pretty low, therefore content providers don't produce much of it?
No, AO games sell fine when they aren't AO. Look at GTA: San Andreas. It sold fine, then it became rated AO and was removed from store shelves at the time, despite the fact that the content couldn't be normally accessed. It wasn't any merits of the game itself that caused it to be removed from store shelves, but rather a pointless rating system by the ESRB.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
And this seems to reveal why US comics are so dull and boring compared to comics from the rest of the world. It's made so blunt by various code and censorship that it it's completely nonsense.
Go look at stuff like Bernhard Prince, Largo Winch, Modesty Blaise, XIII, Garth (Not to be confused with the DC Comics character with the same name), Thorgal, Asterix, Axa...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Just wait until the next issue when they realize that Comics Code was *NOT* dead, but instead placed in suspended animation when his arch nemesis switched the translator module causing a brain cascade failure... And in all that time, Comics Code was in an alternate reality, getting stronger, leveling up....
Next issue.. Comics Code returns!
That ownership of property means you can do what you want on your property within law.
Second hand smoke is poison. You can't poison people on your private property. Selling is legal, sex is legal, selling sex on your property is illegal. And no one is telling you that you can't smoke in your own bar after hours when no one is there. You still have that freedom. You just can't enter into an employment contract that makes your employees slaves, nor requires that they be poisoned every time they show up to work, whether they are working in public parks or your "private" establishment.
That's a strawman representation/response to tyranny of the majority, which is the weakest part of democracy.
So you support it while hating many things that come from it? Or do you not support it? Tyranny by the majority is a natural result of democracy, and if you think it's such a problem, what other governmental structure would you prefer?
Tyranny of the majority is a real problem to be addressed with real discourse, not comparisons to dictatorships and Hitler and such.
You brought up Hitler not me, and, in case you didn't know, Hitler was democratically elected. Democracy leads to Hitlers, not protects us from them.
Learn to love Alaska