Most of what I will write about will be of my own formed opinions, if it offends anyone then just stop reading. It's as simple as that.
If you haven't gathered from my previous statement and the title of this segment, this is going to be about my opinion on censorship. Censorship is everywhere, in movies, in television, in media, even in your own house. Censorship is around so organisations and people stop chucking hissy fits about the content of almost everything. Though a lot of censorship has a right to be there, most of it is just highly offended people with narrow minds getting angry about anything against their own beliefs.
We are currently discussing censorship via banning books and whether we agree with it or not, I for one strongly disagree. I am an avid book reader and I for one hate it when books get banned for having controversial views of the world or religion or anything in general. I don't like the fact that there are books that I can't read because someone else was offended by it. It's like banning all licorice becausse you don't like the original flavour, take the hunger games for example. People tried to ban the book "The Hunger Games" because there's violence in the books and people actually believed that because of those scenes that it should be banned, especially for teenagers. The Hunger Games's main fanbase is teenagers and they adore this trilogy, it is much deeper than just violence. Am I the only one that found it weird that most teenagers were able to see deeper into the storyline and read the book for what it is, yet there were hordes of adults who didn't want their children or anyone elses children to read it, some of those adults didn't even read the whole story. Dark humor books tend to get banned alot too, honestly, banning a book because it's not your type of humor? It's absolutely stupendous.
Banning books is a rather silly idea, other than maybe books that are explicitly about how rape is good or something absolutely to the core horrible like that should definitley not be out there for anyone to read, otherwise we don't really need that type of censorship. If anyone was allowed to censor whatever they wanted the world of reading, media and life in general would become very biased to that one persons opinion. Lets say that a person who hated snakes now control every aspect of media, so they take away anything involving snakes whether it's pictures of snakes, scientific discoveries that involve snakes, snake skin bags, snake shaped lollies or even anything with the word snake! It would be horrendous!
Even with censorship, there are billions of ways to find and look at banned content. Remember when Beyonce tried to censor this photo of her from her performance at the superbowl? No one person can rid the internet and everyone of anything, it's always going to be somewhere, whether it reside in someones usb, blog or even big websites where everything is watched and recorded.
But there is one thing i could get behind, Labeling what is inside and putting a recommendation on the books like they do with movies and other forms of media without banning certain age groups. So if it had extreme violence it would have a little label on the back so everyone would know if there's any controversial claims, violence, religious or suggestive themes. If this were to happen the responsibility of what content you read in completely in the hands of the consumers and no one can say that they didn't know what was in the book. You can't sue an author for a book they published if the content is labeled on the outside where you can see it, some people might try but those who do are probably doing it for much pettier reasons.
I don't think that anyone is going to start labeling books anytime soon due to the fact that the media in this century is concentrated, but for now there is one simple strategy that can make everyone happy. If you are offended by a book because it's against your beliefs or you just don't like it, just stop reading.
Also I found an interesting website with very good points on censorship and its impact on different people suh as librarians, authors, teachers and what not. There's a quote on here by Judy Plume as well.
"In this age of censorship I mourn the loss of books that will
never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced --
writers’ voices, teachers’ voices, students’ voices -- and all
because of fear. How many have resorted to self-censorship?
How many are saying to themselves, “Nope...can’t write about
that.Can’t teach that book. Can’t have that book in our
collection. Can’t let my student write that editorial in the school
paper.”
I myself quite like this quote because I also believe censorship really does have an impact on everyone, whether it is good or bad.
If you haven't gathered from my previous statement and the title of this segment, this is going to be about my opinion on censorship. Censorship is everywhere, in movies, in television, in media, even in your own house. Censorship is around so organisations and people stop chucking hissy fits about the content of almost everything. Though a lot of censorship has a right to be there, most of it is just highly offended people with narrow minds getting angry about anything against their own beliefs.
We are currently discussing censorship via banning books and whether we agree with it or not, I for one strongly disagree. I am an avid book reader and I for one hate it when books get banned for having controversial views of the world or religion or anything in general. I don't like the fact that there are books that I can't read because someone else was offended by it. It's like banning all licorice becausse you don't like the original flavour, take the hunger games for example. People tried to ban the book "The Hunger Games" because there's violence in the books and people actually believed that because of those scenes that it should be banned, especially for teenagers. The Hunger Games's main fanbase is teenagers and they adore this trilogy, it is much deeper than just violence. Am I the only one that found it weird that most teenagers were able to see deeper into the storyline and read the book for what it is, yet there were hordes of adults who didn't want their children or anyone elses children to read it, some of those adults didn't even read the whole story. Dark humor books tend to get banned alot too, honestly, banning a book because it's not your type of humor? It's absolutely stupendous.
Banning books is a rather silly idea, other than maybe books that are explicitly about how rape is good or something absolutely to the core horrible like that should definitley not be out there for anyone to read, otherwise we don't really need that type of censorship. If anyone was allowed to censor whatever they wanted the world of reading, media and life in general would become very biased to that one persons opinion. Lets say that a person who hated snakes now control every aspect of media, so they take away anything involving snakes whether it's pictures of snakes, scientific discoveries that involve snakes, snake skin bags, snake shaped lollies or even anything with the word snake! It would be horrendous!
Even with censorship, there are billions of ways to find and look at banned content. Remember when Beyonce tried to censor this photo of her from her performance at the superbowl? No one person can rid the internet and everyone of anything, it's always going to be somewhere, whether it reside in someones usb, blog or even big websites where everything is watched and recorded.
But there is one thing i could get behind, Labeling what is inside and putting a recommendation on the books like they do with movies and other forms of media without banning certain age groups. So if it had extreme violence it would have a little label on the back so everyone would know if there's any controversial claims, violence, religious or suggestive themes. If this were to happen the responsibility of what content you read in completely in the hands of the consumers and no one can say that they didn't know what was in the book. You can't sue an author for a book they published if the content is labeled on the outside where you can see it, some people might try but those who do are probably doing it for much pettier reasons.
I don't think that anyone is going to start labeling books anytime soon due to the fact that the media in this century is concentrated, but for now there is one simple strategy that can make everyone happy. If you are offended by a book because it's against your beliefs or you just don't like it, just stop reading.
Also I found an interesting website with very good points on censorship and its impact on different people suh as librarians, authors, teachers and what not. There's a quote on here by Judy Plume as well.
"In this age of censorship I mourn the loss of books that will
never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced --
writers’ voices, teachers’ voices, students’ voices -- and all
because of fear. How many have resorted to self-censorship?
How many are saying to themselves, “Nope...can’t write about
that.Can’t teach that book. Can’t have that book in our
collection. Can’t let my student write that editorial in the school
paper.”
I myself quite like this quote because I also believe censorship really does have an impact on everyone, whether it is good or bad.