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censorship : page 2 quotes sites books........
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Food Chain Barbie (Reuters Dec 29 2003) - A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a Utah artist's right to make nude photos of Barbie dolls being menaced by kitchen appliances.
Noting the image of Barbie dolls is "ripe for social comment," a three judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected toymaker Mattel Inc.'s appeal of a lower court ruling in favor of lampooning the popular doll.
The San Francisco-based appeals court ruled that naked photos of Barbie made by Kanab, Utah, artist Thomas Forsythe were meant to be a parody and could not affect demand for Mattel products.
Holding that social criticism was protected by the First Amendment, the court affirmed a 2001 federal court ruling for Forsythe, who had produced photos of nude Barbies in danger of being attacked by vintage household appliances.
Mattel had argued the photos infringed on their copyrights and trademarks. Forsythe had used Barbie dolls in absurd and often sexualized positions for his "Food Chain Barbie" photos. The artist had argued that the photo series, which also included a photo of Barbie dolls wrapped in tortillas and covered in salsa in a casserole dish in a lit oven, was meant to critique the "objectification of women" and "beauty myth" associated with the popular doll.
"Barbie is the most enduring of those products that feed on the insecurities of our beauty and perfection-obsessed consumer culture," Forsythe has said in defending his work.
photos from Food Chain Barbie page
and ananova.com news storyTom Forsythe site creativefreedomdefense.org
Tom Forsythe is mentioned in the book:
...The New Thought Police : Inside the Left's Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds - by Tammy Bruce
.. So let's get down to brass tacks. What did I say, in my now-infamous three-minute radio commentary last week, that got me fired? ... Below is the text I recorded -- and left a hard copy of -- with my KCRW engineer to edit, which he faithfully remembered to do, except for one small item. Now I will admit, upfront, that alluding to relations with my husband on the air is unusual for me. At 42, a tired mother of two, I'm the sort of public radio commentator who was, at the time of my being fired for indecency, in the middle of a five-part series not on the joy of sex but on the joy of knitting. However, having just seen Bette Midler's new show, still rollicking from her irrepressible vaudeville joke rhythms, I felt a well-placed comic bleep would be an appropriately bawdy (for public radio) homage. SHE'S THE BETTE
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But he DOES play guitar for Bette Midler on her MASSIVE new STAGE show -- there are TIMES when he STANDS within five FEET of her!... so I guess I have to [f**k] [the bleep should have gone here] him. ... [etc] I imagine Ms. Midler herself might have enjoyed hearing my paean, but now she never will and nor will you because not only is it not archived on the KCRW website, there's no record there that my show ever existed. Not even a vaguely worded "Technical Difficulties / Away on Assignment / Cosmic Gone Fishing" sign. At KCRW.com, it's eerie how quickly the Internet hole has closed over "The Loh Life," its glassy surface scattered with a cheerful potpourri of fresh music picks. And I was on for six years! Isn't it a marvel what they can do with the touch of a computer button nowadays? Sometimes? Sandra Tsing Loh from
her article: The Bleep That Never Was - Public radio
photo from salon.com |
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Her lightness of tone is in sharp contrast to the despair Sandra Tsing Loh felt after being told by Ruth Seymour, station general manager [of KCRW], on March 1 that she had been terminated. "I felt like my throat had been slit and my body had been thrown on a dumpster," she recalled. "It was a real hellacious experience."
She says she has been approached about reviving "The Loh Life" on other public radio stations, including KPCC-FM (89.3).
But whatever she decides to do next, she says it has to be something "productive, so that other artists don't become another fatality in this. Artists are very fragile creatures. ... It's a frightening place for an artist to be. Maybe I can do something."
from article Life after 'Life' - by Greg Braxton, Times March 20 2004
> interview by Douglas Eby : Sandra Tsing Loh....books by Sandra Tsing Loh :
Aliens in America
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The danger of censorship in the United States is less from business or the religious right or the self-righteous left than from the self-censorship of artists themselves, who simply give up. If we can't see a way to get out story told, what is the point of trying? I wonder how many fine, inspiring ideas are strangled in the womb of the imagination because there's no way past the gates of commerce.
writer, director Frank Pierson - President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
[LA Times May 26, 2003 - quoted in Utne, Sep/Oct 2003]
.. .. What I did not realize was that educational materials are now governed by an intricate set of rules to screen out language and topics that might be considered controversial or offensive. Some of this censorship is trivial, some is ludicrous, and some is breathtaking in its power to dumb down what children learn in school. ... One of the most charming informational stories that our committee reviewed was about a rotting stump in the forest that provided shelter and food to a succession of insects, birds, plants, and animals. |
.. .. The twenty members of the bias committee voted unanimously to reject this passage because, in their view, it contained a negative, demeaning stereotype of apartments and people who live in them. If this passage were included on a test, the panel claimed, poor inner-city children would be upset: “Youngsters who have grown up in a housing project may be distracted by similarities to their own living conditions. An emotional response may be triggered.” Diane Ravitch-
Randomhouse excerpts from her book
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My New Zealand heritage has made me afraid to show passion to that degree. It's a very much 'don't-get-so-excited' kind of a culture. And I'm envious of those people, and respectful of those people whose passion is expressed in their work. [Nicole Kidman in 'The Portrait of a Lady'] gets a bee in her bonnet, and she's off. She's excited. And the passion and the feeling is stronger than any sense of censorship, and I like that.
Jane Campion** [Associated Press, January 17, 1997]
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A paranoid ventriloquist (Bill Murray) tries to rid his vaudeville troupe of communists, and a 22-year-old Orson Welles (Angus MacFadyen) directs his Federal Theater group in an infamous stage production of "The Cradle Will Rock," closed down on the eve of its opening by U.S. soldiers.
Based on true events, "Cradle Will Rock" relives an exciting and dangerous time in American history, when individual courage prevailed over censorship, and artists risked their livelihood by continuing to perform and paint according to conscience." [Amazon.com summary]
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.. .. "More of the same, more of the same. What are we, surprised?" Carlin told The Associated Press... He blamed it on religious moralism, media commercialism and election-year politics. "The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things -- bad language and whatever -- it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition. ... "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. |
"Fear,
guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ...
It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."
"Mix that with TV or radio, and you've got a problem, he said. "What I always remind people is, radio and television and.. newspapers and magazines too, are advertising media. ... "When you have commercialism involved you have the kind of fear that advertisers are very afraid of offending some potential customer. They don't want to lose a sale. .... "And yet, they're very inconsistent -- on that Super Bowl broadcast of Janet Jackson's there was also a commercial about a 4-hour erection. A lot of people were saying about Janet Jackson, 'How do I explain to my kids? We're a little family, we watched it together ...' "And, well, what did you say about the other thing? These are convenient targets." Associated Press, Mar 13 2004 site : georgecarlin.com books by George Carlin : |
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...sites:...
The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics
"is a rights-based public policy organization dedicated to promoting freedom of thought. Our mission is to develop and implement public polices that preserve and enhance freedom of thought into the 21st Century."
Feminists for Free Expression (FFE)"..a group of diverse feminists working to preserve the individual's right to see, hear and produce materials of her choice without the intervention of the state "for her own good."Inquisition 21st century"FFE believes freedom of expression is especially important for women's rights. While messages reflecting sexism pervade our culture in many forms, sexual and nonsexual, suppression of such material will neither reduce harm to women nor further women's goals."
"represents a number of thinkers and writers opposed to the continuing tendency of society to adopt absolutist dogmas and doctrines, including those concerning Utopian egalitarianism, sex abuse and child pornography and the political correctness supporting them and spreading like a virus to other social elements."
National Coalition Against CensorshipOnline Censorship & Free Expression - a section of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Taboo News
"INFORMATION & OPINIONATED COMMENTARY ABOUT RECENT NOTABLE EVENTS FROM THE WIDE WORLD OF MUSIC, ARTS-CENSORSHIP, CULTURE WARS, MORALITY CRUSADES, DECENCY DEBATES, ET CETERA..."
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Peter Blecha. Taboo Tunes: A History of Banned Bands & Censored Songs
Judy Blume. Places I Never Meant to Be : Original Stories by Censored Writers
Music has always been a source of controversy, from "Puff the Magic Dragon" to "Cop Killer," Elvis to Eminem, Dylan to the Dixie Chicks, and Madonna to Marilyn Manson. In this extensively researched ode to scandal, historian and musician Peter Blecha recounts the travails of the musicians and songs that have dared to push the hot-button topics that polite society has deemed unacceptable. Filled with several centuries' worth of raunchy sex ditties, morbid murder ballads, blasphemous satanic songs, paeans to intoxicating substances, and outrageous political antics, this unique compendium uncovers the stories of censors' efforts to squelch these acts of expression.Mick Lasalle. Complicated Women : Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood
[Kirkus Reviews:] An overdue tribute to the myriad of strong and independent women film stars of pre-Code Hollywood (1929-34).LaSalle provides a detailed summary of an important five-year period in Hollywood history-the interval that preceded the strict censorship of films by the Production Code Administration under the leadership of Joseph Breen.Typically, the "Code" era is remembered in film histories as an age of production that was bound by the suppression of nudity and the proscription of obscene language. LaSalle argues cogently that the Code more dangerously demanded an adherence to conservative and rigid gender roles. Pre-Code films, he points out, were filled with self-reliant, intelligent, and sexually independent women.
This was a period dominated by powerful female stars-Mae West, Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Myrna Loy, Claudette Colbert, Jean Harlow - whose power and talent were undermined by a Code that made impossible all but the most chaste and wifely female roles.
Diane Ravitch. The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Children Learn
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