The book “Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics” has been removed from the San Bernardino County libraries following a complaint from a Victorville mother that the book contained graphic sex scenes. I hereby withdraw my previous praise for the library.
More on this as it develops.
…And lazy parents everywhere heave a heavy sigh of relief. Seeing as today apparently is “Make Your Library Safe for the Entire Family Day”, I urge everyone to go to their local libraries, grab every copy of “offensive” literature they can get their hands on (if you’re unsure of what is “offensive”, here’s a short list of some authors and books that have been “banned” from other libraries past and present to get you started: Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Jonathan Swift, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the King James Bible, and each of the Harry Potter books) and take them out into the street for a public burning. Hooray!
I think there are some interesting political undercurrents going on with the library management situation at the library in question – at least it sounded like it was part of a county library system that was going to be taken over by the city. It all sounds wacky to me, and it is insane that people would remove a widely circulated book from the adult section of a public library.
All that article mentions were the politicians outside the library demanding the book’s removal and new policies to be in place to “prevent” this from happening again. I’m willing the cut the library itself some slack. It appears they had no choice but to comply.
[...] It’s titled Manga: Sixty years of Japanese Comics, and it became the subject of controversy “after local woman’s 16-year-old son told her the book contained illustrations of sexual acts and sex with animals,” Gonzalez notes. More on the controversy at MangaBlog, “an ongoing conversation about manga”. [...]
Boingboing notes today, April 21: FOLLOWUP
San Berdoo bluenose orders removal of scholarly manga book from public libraries
Bill Postmus, the chairman of the board of supervisors in San Bernadino County, California has banned Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics from public libraries, citing it as obscene. What a jerk.
The 2004 trade paperback, written by Paul Gravett and published by Harper Design, is a history of Japanese comics, and includes, in several chapters, discussion of adult comics that depict sex and violence. The violence was apparently not an issue, nor was the fact that the reproductions of panels that feature sexual situations were, as far as we could tell, all R-rated and treated in a serious, scholarly way. Postmus’ statement and the local newspaper coverage made much of the fact that the book contains “sex with animals,” but we couldn’t find it; we must not have looked as hard.
[posted by Mark Frauenfelder]
Manga. Bah.
Total crap.
Doubly so for non-Japanese who read it.
My first troll!
Now I feel like a real blogger.
Gravett’s book, Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics, is one of the best resources which gives insight into the Japanese culture and the art form of contemporary manga (comics). To ban this book only shows the naive and eletist judgements made toward a very ancient yet very popular art form. Moreover, the banning of this book shows the narrow mindedness of people who aren’t willing to take the time to appreciate the vast historicity Japan has with image as story telling, and to be frank, it this all reeks of snobbish prejudice towards (not only art) but towards Japanese people as a whole. My Japanese wife and I were both shocked and sickened by the ignorance sponsoring the banning of educational books like Gravett’s.