“If I had my way, there wouldn't be any Harry Potter. I would burn every book, movie, shirt, toy, and item that dealt with Harry Potter's witchcraft. Perhaps when the Lord Jesus Christ returns, I will get my wish.”
–David J. Stewart
www.jesus-is-savior.com
Most Americans are arguably sensible, reasonably rational human beings. For that vast majority, Harry Potter, the adolescent wizard that has captured the hearts of mind of children worldwide, is not much of an issue. While the literary value of the novels can be debated, its hard to argue that anything that inspires children to read in today’s TV-dependant society can be a bad thing. It’s hard to argue that anything inspiring adults to read can be bad.
As David Stewart’s quote shows, though, for some Americans, Harry Potter poses a very real, and very terrifying threat to the nation’s youth. A Google search for “Harry Potter Satan,” yields 1,160,000 hits, with such titles at the top as “Harry Potter: Satanic Godsend Mainstreaming Witchcraft,” “Harry Potter and the Antichrist,” and my personal favorite, “Harry Potter: Satan’s Little Darlin’.” It’s evident that a large group of people are still concerned with the effects of black magic in their every day lives.
Acclaimed children’s author, Judy Blume, herself a repeated target of the book-banners, says the danger is not in the books, but in the dismissal of those who would have them banned. It’s easy to pass off the authors behind exposingsatanism.org as wackos that no sensible person would give credence to. They are a minority of reactionaries trapped in a Dark Ages mentality, no danger to the sensible citizen.
Why then, do their stories make the nightly news? Why are Harry Potter book releases and film premiers being protested? Why are the Harry Potter books being pulled from school libraries? It only takes a handful of parents voicing discontent to cow a superintendent into making a snap decision and banning a book (Finan). Through all this, the sensible people remain silent, and the damage is done.
Censorship laws are as Un-American as apple pie, and have been a scourge to our Bill of Rights since the very inception of the nation. They promote intolerance, instigate violence, and destroy lives. They are the greatest enemy of a free state. Each one should be fought with tooth and claw until the law is repealed, which is what makes censorship and morality laws one of the most fundamental necessity in the growth of our culture.
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it’s done quite well for mankind. Our demand for explanations has taken us into the deepest trenches of the ocean, through the emptiness of space, and into the twirls of our own genetic makeup. Scientists like to point out that man is just an animal, but the closest any other animal has gotten to our level of cultural and technological advancement is to live in our homes as our pets. Man needs to know what is going on around him.
“A balbale to Inana as Nanaya” shows that as far back as the Sumerians man was writing about the nature of his sexuality. “unsurpassed in ladyship, a throne , a man in the house, a throne ...... a woman in the shrine (pa-pah), a gold ornament,” is racy language for men writing in clay with blunt sticks. Ancient man did not keep his sexuality behind closed doors as is the vogue today. “The Song of Solomon,” Roman erotic artwork, and the Satyr plays of ancient Greece show quite graphically that as soon as humans discovered a media to express themselves, the first thing they wanted to describe was their genitalia. Vonnegut tells us in “Slaughterhouse 5,” that only two years after Louis J. M. Daguerre revealed his photographic techniques to the French Academy, his assistant, Andre Le Fevre was arrested for attempting to sell a photograph of a woman having sexual intercourse with a Shetland pony (Vonnegut, 51).
Censorship for sexual material is a phenomena barely a couple millennia old, but the restriction of ideas and beliefs have been around for many years. After the fall of Akhenaten around 1335 BC, the Pharaoh’s successors, Ay and Horemheb organized a campaign to return Egypt to polytheism after Akhenaten declared the Aten as the only true god of Egypt. His temples were dismantled, and the names of Akhenaten and his Atenist successors were removed from the official kings lists in an attempt to erase all memory of the blasphemous king (Wikipedia). In his book, Moses and Akhenaten, Ahmed Osman argues that the fallen king, and the Hebrew leader that instituted monotheism were one in the same, fleeing execution in Egypt for his beliefs.
In 339 BC, Socrates was forced to commit suicide for "refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state" and "of corrupting the youth,” (Eyewitness to History). It took surprisingly long for the Catholic Church to get in on the game. The first index of prohibited material didn’t get published until some time between 1557 and 1559, and not being suppressed until 1966 (Mayl). By this time, they had already butchered uncounted populations through use of Crusade and Inquisition, so offing a few artists here and there must not have seemed like that big of a deal.
China adopted their first censorship law in 300 AD (Mette, 2001). Seventeen hundred years later, it remains a hot topic in the news. According to CNN, China has between 30 and 50,000 people monitoring web use, and users are being jailed for criticism of human rights abuses, and "incitement to subvert state power.” Major Internet Corporations have opted for money instead of free speech, with crimes ranging from filters in Google China, to Yahoo helping to identify a suspected dissenter who received a ten-year jail sentence (CNN, 2006). It seems that Freedom of Expression is only important while inside US borders.
Likewise, while relatively open to the Internet in the early days, Iran has started cracking down on websites that offer material that may be morally or politically objectionable. While the government claims its restrictions apply mainly to pornography, Hossein Derakhshan found himself blocked while having such content on his site as “‘Five Things to Help Non-Iranians Know More About Iran,’ political observations and links to news stories.” (McLaughlin). Derakhshan claims the government is concerned with accessibility for new artists to publish and produce “Persian content.” A simple web-block seems like a slap on the wrist compared to the punishment meted out on Onan when he chose not to do his duty to God.
The United States, even with the Bill of Rights defending free speech, has always been willing to muzzle anyone whose ideas don’t jive with the mainstream. In 1873, the Post Office expanded a ban on obscene material, preventing such novels as “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “Tropic of Cancer,” and James Joyce’s “Ulysses” from entering the United States (Infoplease). This was the “Comstock Law,” which restricted “”any obscene, lewd, or lascivious book, pamphlet, picture, print, or other publication of vulgar and indecent character," but "any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of contraception or procuring of abortion (Fepproject).”” While we’ve all seen pictures of Adolf Hitler wading through an ecstatic crowd throwing books on a massive pyre, we like to forget it happens here, according to Robert Atkins, as late as 1981:
Books recently burned in the US include: "Slaughterhouse Five" at Drake, ND, in 1974; "Of Mice and Men," at Oil City, PA in 1977; "Values Clarification" at Warsaw, IN, in 1977; "The Living Bible" at Glastonia, NC, in 1981; and copies of the "National Geographic," Disney comic books, and "Fifty True Tales of Terror" in Omaha in 1981.
Throughout the 1980's Jason Voorhees grew from a “frightened retard” living in the woods around Crystal Lake, to a pop icon, and boogeyman for teenagers worldwide. Franchise producer Sean Cunningham and his crew found a simple formula–young people being mercilessly slaughtered for taking part in such social taboos as drug-use and premarital sex. Jason’s machete carved himself a place in history that has spawned 11 movies, and countless novels, comic-books, music, and shameless imitators for more than 25 years.
Paramount Pictures was embarrassed by the “Friday” franchise, but couldn’t ignore the profit. As Anthony Timpone, editor of Fangoria Magazine describes it, the films were “ugly stepchildren that they just put out there to make a lot of money (Schwarz).” From 1980-1984, Paramount released four “Friday the 13th” films, grossing collectively more than $130,000,000, with the total budget of the four not exceeding 7,000,000 (Wikipedia). Parents and religious groups rallied against the films, accusing the films of being morally objectionable, filled with explicit sex and violence (Schwarz).
Paramount did not give in until 1989's “Jason Takes Manhattan,” with it’s $5,000,000 budget only bringing in less than $20,000,000. This was not even enough to keep Jason in the grave, as the franchise was quickly picked up by “The House that Freddy Built,” New Line Cinemas. Jason may be the king of the “Slasher” genre, but he has a full Round Table in his court, with Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Chucky, Leatherface, and a host of other maniacs slicing and dicing their way into America’s heart. This type of film remains a target of moral groups, especially as fans demand more and more gruesome content. Adam Marcus, director of New Line’s first Jason film, the inappropriately named “Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday,” was a childhood friend to Sean Cunningham’s son, and was on-set during the filming of the original film. In regards to the genre’s detractors, Marcus says, “What these groups seem to forget, no matter what they are protesting, is that they are only helping us sell tickets (Schwarz).”
In 2004, comedy-actor-turned-historian, Mel Gibson released his religious epic, “The Passion of the Christ,” a graphic retelling of Jesus’s last days. The majority of the film’s 2 hour running time is devoted to the relentless breaking of every part of Jesus’s body. He is pummeled, strangled, scourged, and crucified, with his most traumatic wounds occurring onscreen and frequently in slow motion. With all his bloodlust, Jason Voorhees would be hard pressed to spill the amount of blood shed in any given scene of “The Passion.” As a long time gore-hound growing up with Jason and the lot, along with the early blood-feasts of Peter Jackson, and such films, it took me three sittings to get through “The Passion.” While the blood never seems to be the right color when Jason delivers a killing, or on occasion corners of mats, or edges of latex appliances can still be picked out, the Icon team went for extreme realism, to the point where some critics have said, “If Jesus actually received the amount of punishment dished out in this film, he would have been dead three times over before arriving at Calvary,” or “Unrelentingly anti-Semitic, excessively grotesque and overly narrow in its scope.” (Westoff & Verstanding). It would be hypocritical to chastize Gibson for his gore after spending so much time defending Jason.
Hypocritical indeed! “Gibson departed considerably from the usual formula for marketing a film: a small TV campaign, no press junkets, etc. The film was, however, heavily promoted by many church groups, both within their organizations and to the general public, in some cases giving away free tickets.” (Wikipedia). Groups like Outreach (www.outreach.com, www.thepassionoutreach.com) gave advice to help bring this movie to audiences, with such ideas as showing G-rated trailers in church, buying blocks of tickets, or entire showings of the movie, and even distributing “Passion-themed” copies of the New Testament scriptures. (The Passion Outreach). I think the most telling word in these sites is “purchase.” There seems to be very little thought put into giving away tickets.
What’s good for the goose doesn’t appear to be good for the gander. If what Jason does will warp the minds of the children who see him, what will become of the children brought by smiling parents to watch “The Passion?” More than 2000 years of bloodshed in the name of a man that asked for peace seems to be enough answer for that question. “The Passion” was frequently accused of anti-Semitism, resulting from scenes depicting Jewish leaders going above and beyond to see Jesus killed, even while Pontius Pilot fought to save his life, and demons appearing in the faces of Christ’s attackers. In the summer of 2006, Gibson allegedly broke into an anti-Semitic tirade after being arrested for drunk driving (Anderson, 2006). To quote Cindy Lauper, “I see your true colors, that’s why I love you!”
Censorship has been a source of controversy in the United States for many years. While the Bill of Rights protects our freedom of speech in almost all cases but “obscene” pornography and yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, artists such as Robert Maplethorpe, Mike Diana, Jock Sturges, and Jello Biafra have found themselves harassed, blacklisted, and even jailed over supposedly controversial photographs, artwork, or music. Profanity and vulgarity may be crass and inappropriate, but hardly reason to ruin a person’s life. This however, is exactly what Tipper Gore and a collection of “Washington Wives” attempted to do with the PMRC starting in 1985, going as far to hold Senate hearings concerning the sale of explicit music. Such performers as Frank Zappa, Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, and John Denver spoke before Congress, where they were grilled about their lyrical content and whether or not parents should know what is being said. The goofy dialogue between Snider and Al Gore, revealing Al and Tipper’s strange hospital bondage fantasies, which, no doubt, could be considered very desirable pornography in some circles. Snider points out that several of Tipper’s complaints were about T-shirts she made up altogether, which Gore explains that Tipper was talking about Twisted Sister, and she was also talking about T-shirts with women handcuffed to beds. She never said it was a Twisted Sister shirt. (Transcript, 78). We hear the same tactic used by the Bush Administration today with the hazy connection between al Qaeda and Iraq that can never seem to be confirmed. Walter Pincus and Diana Milbank cited in the Washington Post numerous instances of Bush and Cheney confirming that Iraq and al Qaeda are working together, despite the findings of the 9/11 Commission.
By picking Senator Joseph Lieberman as his running mate in the 2000 election, Gore showed that his war against the arts was not over. No sooner had he been announced that Lieberman was appearing on talk shows proclaiming “This matter is going to be something that Al and Tipper, and Hadassah and I are going to work on, because we care about the moral future of our country.” (Smith) It seems our moral future was at stake whether we picked Bush or not. In November 2006, the Democrats swept floundering Republicans out of power, regaining both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994. Those of us who saw a red sky just over the eastern horizon breathed a sigh of relief. During the failed coup attempt by John Kerry in 2000, many people told me, “It can’t get worse than Bush.” That is the kind of belief that brings the more wicked men into power. All they need to do is pretend they’re the good guys for a little while. We can’t let the fall of a tyrant blind us to a more subtle enemy. The founders of our country knew that a government couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing, that was a job that had to be left in the hands of the people. Man will always want to seek out that which he has been told he can’t have. Censorship will always be fought, and it will always be struck down with time, but we cannot ignore the way its use helps our culture grow.
Works Cited
“A balbale to Inana as Nanaya” The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Jeremy Black, Graham Cunningham, Esther Flückiger-Hawker. 2002 http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr4078.htm December 3, 2006
“Akehenaten” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten December 5, 2006
Anderson, Brooke “ Police: Gibson arrest 'without incident'” CNN.com 31 July 2006 http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/30/gibson.dui/index.html December 4, 2006
Atkins, Robert, “A BRIEF AND IDIOSYNCRATIC HISTORY OF CENSORSHIP.” The File Room. http://www.thefileroom.org/publication/atkinshistory.html December 5, 2006
Blume, Judy. “Is Harry Potter Evil?” New York Times, 22 October 1999. http://judyblume.com/articles/harry_potter_oped.html November 29, 2006
“Censorship: In the United States,” The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed., Columbia University Press 2006 http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0857225.html December 5, 2006
“China's 'Net policies in spotlight” CNN.com 9 April 2006 http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/03/08/china.web/index.html December 4, 2006
“Cuneiform Script” Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform December 3, 2006
“FACT SHEET ON SEX AND CENSORSHIP” The Free Expression Policy Project. 30 November 2006. http://www.fepproject.org/factsheets/sexandcensorship.html December 5, 2006
Finan, Chris “Chris Finan, ‘Speaking Freely’ Transcript,” First Amendment Center, 28 June 2000. http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/about.aspx?id=13344 November 29, 2006
“Friday the 13th (film series) Box Office Take” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th_%28film_series%29#Box_office_take December 4, 2006
Genesis 38:8-10 King James Version
Lauper, Cindy “True Colors” Lyrics Domain. http://www.lyricsdomain.com/3/cindy_lauper/true_colors.html December 4, 2006
Long, George, M.A. “Codex Theodosianus.” A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D. John Murry, London, 1875
Mette, Newth “The long history of censorship.” Beacon for Freedom of Expression July 2001. http://www.beaconforfreedom.org/about_project/history.html December 4, 2006
McLaughlin “Iran keeps an eye on the bloggers” CNN.com
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/07/16/iran.blogs/ December 3, 2006
Mayl, Paul Halsall “Index librorum prohibitorum, 1557-1966 [Index of Prohibited Books]” Modern History Sourcebook. 1998 http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/indexlibrorum.html December 5, 2006
“Outreach ideas” The Passion Outreach. 2003. http://www.thepassionoutreach.com/ideas.asp December 4, 2006
Osman, Ahmed. “Moses and Akhenaten.” Bear & Co. Rochester, Vt. 1990
“The Passion of the Christ, Promotion” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_of_the_christ#Promotion December 4, 2006
Schwarz, Jeffery, “The Many Lives of Jason Voorhees.” 2002.
Smith, Terrance, “Lieberman vs. Hollywood.” PBS.org 15 August 2000. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec00/lieberman_8-15.html November 29, 2006
Stewart, David J. “Harry Potter CENSORED” Jesus-is-Savior.com http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Wicca%20&%20Witchcraft/harry_potter_censored.htm November 29, 2006
"The Suicide of Socrates, 399 BC," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2003). December 5, 2006
Vonnegut, Kurt “Slaughterhouse 5.” Dell Publishing, New York. 1969
Jeffery Westoff, Marc Verstanding “The Passion of the Christ” Rotten Tomatos 2004 http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/passion_of_the_christ/ December 4, 2006
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec00/lieberman_8-15.html November 30, 2006
–David J. Stewart
www.jesus-is-savior.com
Most Americans are arguably sensible, reasonably rational human beings. For that vast majority, Harry Potter, the adolescent wizard that has captured the hearts of mind of children worldwide, is not much of an issue. While the literary value of the novels can be debated, its hard to argue that anything that inspires children to read in today’s TV-dependant society can be a bad thing. It’s hard to argue that anything inspiring adults to read can be bad.
As David Stewart’s quote shows, though, for some Americans, Harry Potter poses a very real, and very terrifying threat to the nation’s youth. A Google search for “Harry Potter Satan,” yields 1,160,000 hits, with such titles at the top as “Harry Potter: Satanic Godsend Mainstreaming Witchcraft,” “Harry Potter and the Antichrist,” and my personal favorite, “Harry Potter: Satan’s Little Darlin’.” It’s evident that a large group of people are still concerned with the effects of black magic in their every day lives.
Acclaimed children’s author, Judy Blume, herself a repeated target of the book-banners, says the danger is not in the books, but in the dismissal of those who would have them banned. It’s easy to pass off the authors behind exposingsatanism.org as wackos that no sensible person would give credence to. They are a minority of reactionaries trapped in a Dark Ages mentality, no danger to the sensible citizen.
Why then, do their stories make the nightly news? Why are Harry Potter book releases and film premiers being protested? Why are the Harry Potter books being pulled from school libraries? It only takes a handful of parents voicing discontent to cow a superintendent into making a snap decision and banning a book (Finan). Through all this, the sensible people remain silent, and the damage is done.
Censorship laws are as Un-American as apple pie, and have been a scourge to our Bill of Rights since the very inception of the nation. They promote intolerance, instigate violence, and destroy lives. They are the greatest enemy of a free state. Each one should be fought with tooth and claw until the law is repealed, which is what makes censorship and morality laws one of the most fundamental necessity in the growth of our culture.
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it’s done quite well for mankind. Our demand for explanations has taken us into the deepest trenches of the ocean, through the emptiness of space, and into the twirls of our own genetic makeup. Scientists like to point out that man is just an animal, but the closest any other animal has gotten to our level of cultural and technological advancement is to live in our homes as our pets. Man needs to know what is going on around him.
“A balbale to Inana as Nanaya” shows that as far back as the Sumerians man was writing about the nature of his sexuality. “unsurpassed in ladyship, a throne , a man in the house, a throne ...... a woman in the shrine (pa-pah), a gold ornament,” is racy language for men writing in clay with blunt sticks. Ancient man did not keep his sexuality behind closed doors as is the vogue today. “The Song of Solomon,” Roman erotic artwork, and the Satyr plays of ancient Greece show quite graphically that as soon as humans discovered a media to express themselves, the first thing they wanted to describe was their genitalia. Vonnegut tells us in “Slaughterhouse 5,” that only two years after Louis J. M. Daguerre revealed his photographic techniques to the French Academy, his assistant, Andre Le Fevre was arrested for attempting to sell a photograph of a woman having sexual intercourse with a Shetland pony (Vonnegut, 51).
Censorship for sexual material is a phenomena barely a couple millennia old, but the restriction of ideas and beliefs have been around for many years. After the fall of Akhenaten around 1335 BC, the Pharaoh’s successors, Ay and Horemheb organized a campaign to return Egypt to polytheism after Akhenaten declared the Aten as the only true god of Egypt. His temples were dismantled, and the names of Akhenaten and his Atenist successors were removed from the official kings lists in an attempt to erase all memory of the blasphemous king (Wikipedia). In his book, Moses and Akhenaten, Ahmed Osman argues that the fallen king, and the Hebrew leader that instituted monotheism were one in the same, fleeing execution in Egypt for his beliefs.
In 339 BC, Socrates was forced to commit suicide for "refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state" and "of corrupting the youth,” (Eyewitness to History). It took surprisingly long for the Catholic Church to get in on the game. The first index of prohibited material didn’t get published until some time between 1557 and 1559, and not being suppressed until 1966 (Mayl). By this time, they had already butchered uncounted populations through use of Crusade and Inquisition, so offing a few artists here and there must not have seemed like that big of a deal.
China adopted their first censorship law in 300 AD (Mette, 2001). Seventeen hundred years later, it remains a hot topic in the news. According to CNN, China has between 30 and 50,000 people monitoring web use, and users are being jailed for criticism of human rights abuses, and "incitement to subvert state power.” Major Internet Corporations have opted for money instead of free speech, with crimes ranging from filters in Google China, to Yahoo helping to identify a suspected dissenter who received a ten-year jail sentence (CNN, 2006). It seems that Freedom of Expression is only important while inside US borders.
Likewise, while relatively open to the Internet in the early days, Iran has started cracking down on websites that offer material that may be morally or politically objectionable. While the government claims its restrictions apply mainly to pornography, Hossein Derakhshan found himself blocked while having such content on his site as “‘Five Things to Help Non-Iranians Know More About Iran,’ political observations and links to news stories.” (McLaughlin). Derakhshan claims the government is concerned with accessibility for new artists to publish and produce “Persian content.” A simple web-block seems like a slap on the wrist compared to the punishment meted out on Onan when he chose not to do his duty to God.
The United States, even with the Bill of Rights defending free speech, has always been willing to muzzle anyone whose ideas don’t jive with the mainstream. In 1873, the Post Office expanded a ban on obscene material, preventing such novels as “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “Tropic of Cancer,” and James Joyce’s “Ulysses” from entering the United States (Infoplease). This was the “Comstock Law,” which restricted “”any obscene, lewd, or lascivious book, pamphlet, picture, print, or other publication of vulgar and indecent character," but "any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of contraception or procuring of abortion (Fepproject).”” While we’ve all seen pictures of Adolf Hitler wading through an ecstatic crowd throwing books on a massive pyre, we like to forget it happens here, according to Robert Atkins, as late as 1981:
Books recently burned in the US include: "Slaughterhouse Five" at Drake, ND, in 1974; "Of Mice and Men," at Oil City, PA in 1977; "Values Clarification" at Warsaw, IN, in 1977; "The Living Bible" at Glastonia, NC, in 1981; and copies of the "National Geographic," Disney comic books, and "Fifty True Tales of Terror" in Omaha in 1981.
Throughout the 1980's Jason Voorhees grew from a “frightened retard” living in the woods around Crystal Lake, to a pop icon, and boogeyman for teenagers worldwide. Franchise producer Sean Cunningham and his crew found a simple formula–young people being mercilessly slaughtered for taking part in such social taboos as drug-use and premarital sex. Jason’s machete carved himself a place in history that has spawned 11 movies, and countless novels, comic-books, music, and shameless imitators for more than 25 years.
Paramount Pictures was embarrassed by the “Friday” franchise, but couldn’t ignore the profit. As Anthony Timpone, editor of Fangoria Magazine describes it, the films were “ugly stepchildren that they just put out there to make a lot of money (Schwarz).” From 1980-1984, Paramount released four “Friday the 13th” films, grossing collectively more than $130,000,000, with the total budget of the four not exceeding 7,000,000 (Wikipedia). Parents and religious groups rallied against the films, accusing the films of being morally objectionable, filled with explicit sex and violence (Schwarz).
Paramount did not give in until 1989's “Jason Takes Manhattan,” with it’s $5,000,000 budget only bringing in less than $20,000,000. This was not even enough to keep Jason in the grave, as the franchise was quickly picked up by “The House that Freddy Built,” New Line Cinemas. Jason may be the king of the “Slasher” genre, but he has a full Round Table in his court, with Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Chucky, Leatherface, and a host of other maniacs slicing and dicing their way into America’s heart. This type of film remains a target of moral groups, especially as fans demand more and more gruesome content. Adam Marcus, director of New Line’s first Jason film, the inappropriately named “Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday,” was a childhood friend to Sean Cunningham’s son, and was on-set during the filming of the original film. In regards to the genre’s detractors, Marcus says, “What these groups seem to forget, no matter what they are protesting, is that they are only helping us sell tickets (Schwarz).”
In 2004, comedy-actor-turned-historian, Mel Gibson released his religious epic, “The Passion of the Christ,” a graphic retelling of Jesus’s last days. The majority of the film’s 2 hour running time is devoted to the relentless breaking of every part of Jesus’s body. He is pummeled, strangled, scourged, and crucified, with his most traumatic wounds occurring onscreen and frequently in slow motion. With all his bloodlust, Jason Voorhees would be hard pressed to spill the amount of blood shed in any given scene of “The Passion.” As a long time gore-hound growing up with Jason and the lot, along with the early blood-feasts of Peter Jackson, and such films, it took me three sittings to get through “The Passion.” While the blood never seems to be the right color when Jason delivers a killing, or on occasion corners of mats, or edges of latex appliances can still be picked out, the Icon team went for extreme realism, to the point where some critics have said, “If Jesus actually received the amount of punishment dished out in this film, he would have been dead three times over before arriving at Calvary,” or “Unrelentingly anti-Semitic, excessively grotesque and overly narrow in its scope.” (Westoff & Verstanding). It would be hypocritical to chastize Gibson for his gore after spending so much time defending Jason.
Hypocritical indeed! “Gibson departed considerably from the usual formula for marketing a film: a small TV campaign, no press junkets, etc. The film was, however, heavily promoted by many church groups, both within their organizations and to the general public, in some cases giving away free tickets.” (Wikipedia). Groups like Outreach (www.outreach.com, www.thepassionoutreach.com) gave advice to help bring this movie to audiences, with such ideas as showing G-rated trailers in church, buying blocks of tickets, or entire showings of the movie, and even distributing “Passion-themed” copies of the New Testament scriptures. (The Passion Outreach). I think the most telling word in these sites is “purchase.” There seems to be very little thought put into giving away tickets.
What’s good for the goose doesn’t appear to be good for the gander. If what Jason does will warp the minds of the children who see him, what will become of the children brought by smiling parents to watch “The Passion?” More than 2000 years of bloodshed in the name of a man that asked for peace seems to be enough answer for that question. “The Passion” was frequently accused of anti-Semitism, resulting from scenes depicting Jewish leaders going above and beyond to see Jesus killed, even while Pontius Pilot fought to save his life, and demons appearing in the faces of Christ’s attackers. In the summer of 2006, Gibson allegedly broke into an anti-Semitic tirade after being arrested for drunk driving (Anderson, 2006). To quote Cindy Lauper, “I see your true colors, that’s why I love you!”
Censorship has been a source of controversy in the United States for many years. While the Bill of Rights protects our freedom of speech in almost all cases but “obscene” pornography and yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, artists such as Robert Maplethorpe, Mike Diana, Jock Sturges, and Jello Biafra have found themselves harassed, blacklisted, and even jailed over supposedly controversial photographs, artwork, or music. Profanity and vulgarity may be crass and inappropriate, but hardly reason to ruin a person’s life. This however, is exactly what Tipper Gore and a collection of “Washington Wives” attempted to do with the PMRC starting in 1985, going as far to hold Senate hearings concerning the sale of explicit music. Such performers as Frank Zappa, Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, and John Denver spoke before Congress, where they were grilled about their lyrical content and whether or not parents should know what is being said. The goofy dialogue between Snider and Al Gore, revealing Al and Tipper’s strange hospital bondage fantasies, which, no doubt, could be considered very desirable pornography in some circles. Snider points out that several of Tipper’s complaints were about T-shirts she made up altogether, which Gore explains that Tipper was talking about Twisted Sister, and she was also talking about T-shirts with women handcuffed to beds. She never said it was a Twisted Sister shirt. (Transcript, 78). We hear the same tactic used by the Bush Administration today with the hazy connection between al Qaeda and Iraq that can never seem to be confirmed. Walter Pincus and Diana Milbank cited in the Washington Post numerous instances of Bush and Cheney confirming that Iraq and al Qaeda are working together, despite the findings of the 9/11 Commission.
By picking Senator Joseph Lieberman as his running mate in the 2000 election, Gore showed that his war against the arts was not over. No sooner had he been announced that Lieberman was appearing on talk shows proclaiming “This matter is going to be something that Al and Tipper, and Hadassah and I are going to work on, because we care about the moral future of our country.” (Smith) It seems our moral future was at stake whether we picked Bush or not. In November 2006, the Democrats swept floundering Republicans out of power, regaining both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994. Those of us who saw a red sky just over the eastern horizon breathed a sigh of relief. During the failed coup attempt by John Kerry in 2000, many people told me, “It can’t get worse than Bush.” That is the kind of belief that brings the more wicked men into power. All they need to do is pretend they’re the good guys for a little while. We can’t let the fall of a tyrant blind us to a more subtle enemy. The founders of our country knew that a government couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing, that was a job that had to be left in the hands of the people. Man will always want to seek out that which he has been told he can’t have. Censorship will always be fought, and it will always be struck down with time, but we cannot ignore the way its use helps our culture grow.
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