Lots of sites have picked up on the story of the San Bernardino County Library system pulling 13 copies of the book Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. The chairman of the county board of supervisors, Bill Postmus, has issued a press release:
“That book is absolutely inappropriate for a public library and as soon as I was made aware of it yesterday, I ordered it to be removed immediately,” Chairman Postmus said today.
Postmus also wants the library to come up with a plan to protect children from “inappropriate” materials and makes a vaguely threatening comment that the library needs to “take a closer look at what kind of material is appropriate to be purchased with taxpayer dollars.”
Icv2 has an article, and there’s an excellent discussion going on in the ANN Forums. Many of the commenters there have, unlike me, read the book (there’s one copy in our library system and it’s checked out), and Flip answers the question that’s buzzing in my head: What are those dirty pictures, really?
Pg 141: In a scene from Hideshi Hino’s The Red Snake, a woman covered with snakes seems to have an orgasm.
Pg 144: In a scene from Kondom’s Bondage Fairies “a nympho Tinkerbell and a randy squirrel” are having sex.
Pg 145: In an allegoric scene by Utatane (no title given), a dragon is deflowering a virgin to symbolize her first period.
Plus assorted violence, which doesn’t seem to bother anyone, and nudity, especially in a section on doujinshi. Flip’s take on the book is that it is not appropriate for children but it’s an important book that should not be removed from the library system altogether.
Over at The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon doesn’t seem to be too upset:
In general, I’m not all that worried about this kind of story because 1) what goes in a library is fair game for community discussion, and 2) the general trend is for smart filing and holding comics in high value. So my reaction to an article like this is more “that sucks; I hope they get with the times” than “manga and comics will never be understood” or “manga and comics are in trouble.” On the other hand, it’s obvious that another way to interpret this is that one is as a first shot in a crapload of specific attention to half-assed, dumb-as-a-rock, vaguely xenophobic cultural indictments with mid-term congressional elections looming.
I’m not sure I’d go as far as Tom on the second interpretation, but this bothers me on multiple levels. Let me count the ways:
1. The book was appropriately shelved in the adult section, most likely the art history section. The complaint that it was located next to anthologies of Peanuts and other kid comics is spurious. That section is designed for adults, not children, and adults like Peanuts too.
2. Because one mother complained that the book was inappropriate for her child, all 13 copies of the book have been pulled from the system. Now we mature adults can’t read it either.
3. A quick glance at the library catalog shows that they have lots of books that a parent might not want a 16-year-old to read: the novels of Erica Jong, the diaries of Anais Nin, a biography of Helmut Newton. Will the library pull all those books from circulation? Or are they making an exception for the manga book? Hint: There is no correct answer to that question.
4. The way this was done seems inappropriate to me. The head of the county board of supervisors overrode the library staff. On Wednesday, the Victorville paper quoted the collection development coordinator, Nannette Bricker-Barret:
It is the parents’ responsibility since the library does not act as a parent,” Barret said. “It is the library’s responsibility to offer a broad spectrum of materials, not to exclude materials.”
Ms. Bricker-Barret is a library employee who is presumably well trained and qualified, given how hard it is to get a library job these days. Mr. Postmus is not. That sort of from-the-top action is highly irregular and has probably pissed off a lot of people within the library system.
Ultimately, this is a First Amendment issue that just happens to involve a comics textbook. The library should indeed offer a wide variety of materials, and banning altogether a serious book because it legitimately includes sexually explicit material is just wrong. Moves like that make society as a whole more stupid. However, it’s also true that this sort of thing is more likely to happen with manga and other comics because people mistakenly believe that all comics are kid stuff. There is another danger, which is that people will swing too far the other way and assume that all comics, especially manga, are adults-only. Librarians are on the front lines here; they must defend their libraries’ right to carry a variety of materials. But users should be speaking up too.
I hope people in San Bernardino County will protest this long and loud, either by contacting the library system or by burying them in a flurry of trivial requests that other offensive books be banned. I’d start with Michelle Malkin’s In Defense of Internment, which is much more scary than any tentacle porn.
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The book was appropriately shelved in the adult section, most likely the art history section. The complaint that it was located next to anthologies of Peanuts and other kid comics is spurious. That section is designed for adults, not children, and adults like Peanuts too.
From what I remember of my Dewy Decimal, it would be apt for that book to be along side comic collections since collections of a type of art are often followed by critism of that art (IIRC, the cartoon arts are 741s), so comic strips will be before a book on manga.
Regardless, both the manga book and the Peanuts collections were deemed fitting for the adult collection. It might be argued that the Peantus collection “lures” minors to the adult collection, but the children’s end of the library includes a nonfiction section with a 700s section as well, including comic collections deemed apt for children and young adults.
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Somehow I keep expecting the ACLU to become involved in this. Recently in Houston there was a minor bru-hah-hah over Jenna Jameson’s latest book (How to Make Love Like a Pornstar, I think) in which some city official ordered the book removed from the library and the library complied. The ACLU then filed suit against the city since there is a clearly defined procedure for submitting materials for review if someone finds them offensive and wants them removed. The ACLU won and the book can still be found on the shelves. I wonder why they’re not getting involved in this?
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$#!@ i think i broke a nail !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
do u peeeeeeps llllluuuuuuvvvvvvvv peach girl booooooks ?????
Mike Philbin argues at The Open Critic that Hino’s The Bug Boy is a coming of age story … as such, and within that context it could be argued that Hino is as valid an author for the adolescent mind as Salinger and Catcher in the Rye is a valid work for the adolescent mind.
Than said, in a general obvious sense, Hideshi Hino is not suitable for children.
And, as part of a discussion about censorship, horror Manga of the sort being discussed is not better/worse than what happens on screen and betwixt the pages of novels everyday everywhere … narrow frightened folks will always seek to ban it, and self-secure libertarians will always seek to defend it
Regards, Peter Williams
ps … if the moderators of this blog are so inclined, links to Philbins Hino reviews can be had here: Hideshi Hino; Horror, Pathos and the Master of Manga.
I don’t think that is the question here. Hino’s stories were intended for older readers however the book that contains images from Hino’s titles is a reference title. One could say it could even be used for educational purposes. So should the book that has Hino and many other comics in it be banned even if the purpose is to educate or inform the readership about the various types of comic out there?