What the Banning of Maus and V for Vendetta Tell Us About Comic Book Censorship; CBR, February 1, 2022

Tommy Ebbs, CBR; What the Banning of Maus and V for Vendetta Tell Us About Comic Book Censorship

"What is of particular interest is the fact that both Maus and V for Vendetta are innately political texts. While Maus is a genre-bending memoir about the Holocaust and V for Vendetta is a fictional tale about an anarchist revolt, both books deal with themes relating to fascism and authoritarianism. In 2014, Russia banned Maus due to it featuring the swastika on its front cover during a crackdown on anything involving Nazi paraphernalia, even though the comic is one of the most anti-fascist works in all of fiction. In 2020, China also banned the film adaptation of V for Vendetta, and although no official reason was given, the Guy Fawkes mask from the comic and film was worn by many Hong Kong protesters during the 2019-2020 unrest.

While the rationale of removing the books from Tennessee schools is due to a belief that it will make students “uncomfortable”, many of the books are written by members of the LGBTQ+ community and address issues related to race and gender. When the CCA was first introduced, comics were still in their infancy and regarded as children's entertainment that did not address social and political issues. Since then, however, both Maus and V for Vendetta have been considered challenging literary works that deal with political topics in a mature fashion. This is an incredibly concerning development, considering how both books are anti-fascist and deliberately warn against the limitation of free speech and the curbing of artistic expression, as well as what can happen when these issues go unchallenged."

Brace Yourself in Act II: Trigger Warnings Come to the Stage; The New York Times, November 18, 2018

Michael Paulson, The New York Times;Brace Yourself in Act II: Trigger Warnings Come to the Stage

"Trigger warnings have, of course, become part of the college experience, surviving mockery and concerns about censorship to win acceptance, if not broad approval. Now demand for those warnings is spreading among the wider public. “People who have grown up with warnings now expect them,” said Becky Witmer, the managing director of ACT Theater in Seattle."

WHAT IF ‘STAR TREK’ WERE FREE? HOW THE STORIED SCI-FI FRANCHISE COULD INSPIRE COPYRIGHT REFORM; Newsweek, March 5, 2018

Andrew Whalen, Newsweek; 

WHAT IF ‘STAR TREK’ WERE FREE? HOW THE STORIED SCI-FI FRANCHISE COULD INSPIRE COPYRIGHT REFORM

"CBS and Paramount are unlikely to see things the same way. While Star Trek: Discovery press releases trumpet the “ideology and hope for the future that inspired a generation of dreamers and doers,” plans for streaming market domination depend upon exclusivity. The metaphor equating artistic expression and property has become so ingrained that companies regularly reduce their consumers to provisional licensees, subject to whatever controls the copyright holder decides upon, even long after the point of purchase.

“Star Trek stands on the shoulders of giants. It exists because they plundered some of the most interesting stories and memes of science fiction, just as all science fiction writers do, to tell their own story. And to argue that when they did it that was the legitimate progress of art and whenever anyone else does it, it's theft, is pretty self-serving and kind of obviously bullshit,” Doctorow said. “It's a ridiculous thing for a law to ban something that ancient and fundamental to how we experience art.”

Countering the monopoly exercised by copyright holders will require a broader social realignment, under which people come to understand art as a shared cultural endowment, rather than product—a mindset beyond capital."

Current copyright regime makes entertainment industry boring; The Daily Texan, June 18, 2017

Usmaan Hasan, The Daily Texan; Current copyright regime makes entertainment industry boring

"The current system of copyright and intellectual property protections quells artistic expression gives consumers the short end of the stick.

Mickey Mouse, as a property of Disney, enjoys bipartisan support in Congress. He was created in 1928, and under the existing copyright regime of the time, Disney’s right to Mickey should have ended in 1956 at the soonest, 1984 at the latest. Yet with some Disney magic, without fail, Congress expands copyright protections every time the Mickey is about to lapse into the public domain.

The hypocrisy coming from Disney is staggering. It has gained its immense wealth by monetizing properties in the public domain – like Cinderella, a centuries old fairy tale owned by no one – lobbying for copyright protections for those properties, and then reworking properties while constantly expanding the lifetime of their protections. It is a company that has managed to exercise artistic reinterpretation of cultural touchstones while making it nearly impossible for others to do the same. In fact, Disney has made its wealth by making movies on at least 50 works in the public domain."

'Charging Bull' sculptor calls for New York to remove 'Fearless Girl' statue; Guardian, April 12, 2017

Jamiles Lartey, Guardian; 

'Charging Bull' sculptor calls for New York to remove 'Fearless Girl' statue

"Siegel and Di Modica have asked the city of New York to remove the statue, which became something of a phenomenon when it was first installed earlier this year, and tied by many to the global Women’s March movement. They say the city should place the “Fearless Girl” somewhere else where it no longer relies on the “Charging Bull”. “The work is incomplete without Mr Di Modica’s Charging Bull, and as such it constitutes a derivative work,” Seigel said, noting that the statue of the girl, hands on her hips, only becomes “fearless” because of the much larger, aggressive bull.

Siegel pointed to a 1990 copyright statute that grants visual artists the right “to prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to [the artist’s] reputation”.

In addition to the removal of the statue, Di Modica was seeking unspecified damages from the city of New York. Siegel said, however, that his client had not filed a lawsuit yet and is hoping the city – specifically its mayor, Bill de Blasio – will come to the table with the artist in good faith. De Blasio recently extended “Fearless Girl’s” permit through March 2018 and has called it a symbol of “standing up to fear, standing up to power” and doing what’s right. Seigel said the “inescapable implication” was that Di Modica’s bull became “a force against doing what’s right”."

Youth Symphony Cancels Program That Quotes ‘Horst Wessel’ Song; New York Times, 3/4/15

Michael Cooper, New York Times; Youth Symphony Cancels Program That Quotes ‘Horst Wessel’ Song:

"Jonas Tarm had won the kind of opportunity most young composers can only dream of: the New York Youth Symphony had commissioned a piece from him and planned to play it this Sunday at Carnegie Hall. But the youth symphony pulled his piece this week after learning that it includes a musical quotation from the “Horst Wessel” song, the Nazi anthem.

Mr. Tarm, a 21-year-old junior at the New England Conservatory of Music, said that his nine-minute piece, which is about conflict, totalitarianism and nationalism, also incorporated the anthem of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with each one quoted for about 45 seconds. In a telephone interview he said that he was stunned by the symphony’s decision to pull the piece, which he described as an act of censorship...

The orchestra’s decision was criticized by the National Coalition Against Censorship.

“Some audience members may have painful memories associated with the official music of oppressive regimes, but that should not mean that any work that references this music must be silenced,” Svetlana Mintcheva, the coalition’s director of programs, said in a statement. “Attempts to sanitize contemporary art do not protect young people or survivors of oppressive regimes; they can only succeed in suppressing the voice and violating the vision of creative artists, as well as in impoverishing public conversation about important, though disturbing, issues.“"