More KY News
A few weeks ago I posted about two library employees in Nicholasville, KY, who have been fired for preventing an eleven year old from checking out a graphic novel. I was quite pleased to see some opposing viewpoints in comments, particularly the folks who pointed out that were the book in question The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier that they could understand not wanting to lend it to a child.
Because these things are never simple, there are two updates that have come out since then:
First, the book in question was Black Dossier.
Second, they didn't just prevent the child in question from getting it, they allegedly checked it out for a year and didn't let anyone read it.
So, yes, it was the worst possible book from that series, but it was a blanket ban that they seem to have applied to every patron of the library, young and old alike.
Read on for more stirring the hornet's nest editorial thoughts!
Does that complicate the matter for me? Yes and no. On the one hand, I have not read Black Dossier and so cannot form an opinion based on my own experience of it. I actually own it, and have for some time, but have never gotten around to reading it. On the other, my kneejerk reaction is to oppose censorship and support access to information. Having seen some of the images from the book that are being posted online in other discussions of the issue, I agree that there is explicit sexual content. On the other hand, there was explicit sexual content in a number of books I was reading when I was a kid, books about human sexuality I was taking from the shelf and sneaking off to read before replacing them without checking them out so that no one would wonder why I wanted to read them. There was explicit sexual content in the V.C. Andrews novels I read (don't judge, one takes what one can get). Heck, there was explicit sexual content in health class the year I turned eleven.
That said, if I turn back the clock and imagine my nephews at age eleven seeking out some of the images I've seen today, yeah, it gives me pause.
Having thought about it for a day or so, my purely personal, in-no-way-representative-of-Pink-Kryptonite position is that it's better to have a book on the shelf than not and that if a book is going to be on the shelf it should be available to everyone with a borrower's card. If parents want to police what their kid checks out from the library then they should go to the library with their kid.
The library board held a public meeting this week to discuss the issue and from the sound of things the whole town turned out for it. In classic blind-to-irony style there was a preacher who handed out photocopies of offensive pages from the book so that everyone could understand why no one should be allowed to see them. There was a petition with nearly a thousand signatures asking that specific items from various media be removed from the library for sexual content. There was also a petition signed by local high schoolers asking that the board change its policy so that minors are not allowed access to all materials. There were also a number of speakers in favor of keeping the materials available, so it isn't an entirely one-sided discussion in that town.
To be honest, I don't have a horse in that race. I don't live in Kentucky, much less in Nicholasville, though it sounds a lot like the place where I did grow up (for reasons completely unrelated to this one issue). I don't pay the taxes that keep their library open and where I do live I would be extremely surprised by this turn of events. Still, questions of public access to materials some individuals think should be kept private or altogether banned are nothing new and comics in general have been at the center of such debates from their inception as a medium. If someone complained about Black Dossier in your library, what would you do? What if the debate then spread to other comics? Other books? I'm not saying that the answer at which I arrived is necessarily right for everyone but it is the one I would defend in my local library's board meeting and I think it's a question that anyone who values a given medium should consider.
"If This Is Not Pornography, What Is?" - The Black Dossier Hits Jessamine County Public Library Board Meeting [Bleeding Cool]
Klarion
Posted to editorial on 20 November 2009
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: Alan Moore, editorial, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
One thing really stuck out for me in that article you linked:
"And DeWayne Brewer, a Baptist pastor, asking for a little common sense, warned that if the Bible ever went into graphic novel form the banning committee would have something to really fret about then."
Very good point, that.
Anyway, I'd obviously be outraged if that happened here but I very much doubt it ever would. Nice thing about living in a larger city.