Porn's Fine Lines (IB Art) - Karishma, Tiff L, Sonnia

This podcast illuminated the case of men possessing Japanese comics that depicted underage characters engaging in sexual acts. The speakers argue between freedom of speech and artistic expression in regards to the controversial nature of these creations being harmful to society, particularly children. There was a recent update in policy stating that nay kind of child pornography, real or fiction, would be prosecuted. Christopher Handly (age 38), the man in question, possessed over 1200 comics, graphic novels, and DVDs but was only prosecuted for less than a dozen of them that included controversial content.

This issue boils down to the battle of freedom of expression versus the good of society. In this, the concepts of reason/logic and the arts. Reason, the voice of society, is saying that this form of art is inappropriate and unacceptable by the established standards. They would say that the artists of these works are simply creating child pornography and trying to pass it off as artistic expression. But in the world of art, freedom of expression applies. The point of things like creative arts is to allow artists to express their individual voice. To condemn an artist’s work for being inappropriate could be seen as censorship.

This article highlights several questions. Firstly, what is art? What is appropriate art? What is "controversial art"? Why should people possessing "controversial art" be prosecuted? In this case, we see the struggle between freedom of expression through art versus the good of society in regards to shielding the human eye from "controversial subjects". Speaking from reason, the voice of society's point of view, it is important to censor certain types of art because they can lead to larger problems. However, isn't art supposed to open the eyes of society? Aren't artists always trying to paint new concepts in order to help the mind spread its horizons? Although some subjects may seem wrong, from an artist's point of view, it is not right to restrict them because art can be interpreted in many ways. There is no one way to look at art; therefore, it can be argued that "controversial" subjects are simply interpreted wrongly by society. Thus, to preserve one of our greatest values, the freedom of expression, it would be going against our principles to condemn someone’s artistic depiction, and prosecute someone for possessing that kind of artwork, especially seeing as he had not showed that it had influenced his behavior in any negative way.

When this issue is boiled down to the most basic concepts, it is one that happens often nowadays. Censorship in the past, and even today, is essentially the same battle; the right of an individual to express himself, versus the good of society. This is why we have PG-ratings and R-ratings for movies, even comics like the ones aforementioned, to protect the younger part of our community. And perhaps it is not always in the form of art. It could be a book of radical, controversial new thoughts; a voice of Communism amongst a community of democrats. But even today, when our world has come a long way in its openness, there are always issues of controversy regarding what should and shouldn't be exposed in our community, for the sake of our moral values.