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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.
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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.
*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.
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.