Customer Reviews

Not In Front of the Children: "Indecency," Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Though the scholarly discussions of legal cases were trying (pardon the pun) to get through, they were worth the effort. They helped to dramatize the incredible amounts of time, energy, and emotion misplaced in the "harm to minors" protectionism racket. Due to her civil libertarian background, I was surprised to see her frequent attempts to present (or at least understand) both sides.

She points out that censorship itself may have "modeling effects, teaching authoritarianism, intolerance for unpopular opions, erotophobia, and sexual guilt." In her conclusion, she comes utterly to the point: "Censorship is an avoidance technique that addresses adult anxieties and satisfies symbolic concerns, but ultimately does nothing to resolve social problems or affirmatively help adolescents and children cope with their environments and impulses."

She revisits the virtues (for all of us, including children) of ambiguity, catharsis, and irony and says that the humorless overliteralism of so much censorship directed at youth "reduces the difficult, complicated, joyous, and sometimes tortured experience of growing up to a sanitized combination of adult moralizing and intellectual closed doors."

Bravo to this book. It's time that someone injected facts and logic into debates that primarily have been based on myths, fears, guesses, hopes, assumptions, and hysteria.

A previous reviewer wants to know why we don't have more data on how, say, pornography affects teenagers. One reason is that a controlled experiment would be nearly impossible: finding teenagers who haven't been exposed to any pornography is difficult enough, but for a scientist or social scientist to get approval from human review boards for the other half of the experiment (the teenagers that you're going to make sure have been exposed to plenty of pornography, to study its supposed effects) would be nearly impossible. But as the previous reviewer points out, we have a vast profusion of anecdotal evidence: pornography is widely available in Europe, which seems to have fewer of the supposedly pornography-related problems than does the United States. Second, since almost all teenagers voluntarily expose themselves to pornography, it's safe to observe that the vast majority of them suffer from no effects. Who are we protecting with laws prohibiting minors from obtaining pornography? Parents who cannot and will not deal with the fact that their 12-year-old son is always horny and quite probably already is sexually (if not emotionally or intellectually) an adult?

My reading group chose this book, because we felt that there weren't many books out there that focused on the topic of censorship and the protection of children and innocence. But while she brings up many issues that shows censorship as troublesome, she addresses them in such a dry manner that it became harder to read as the book became more or a summary of all the court cases there have been regarding the issues. It would be a great book for a communication or law class, but for recreational reading, it was very difficult for us as readers to get to the end of the book.

This book is a responsible and important study of how we rationalize censorship policies to "protect" children. The interests at stake here are as obvious as they are important. The freedom of expression has long been considered the touchstone of individual liberty and, in turn, democracy. Legally, we have enacted many safeguards to protect this essential aspect of our society, and continue to give mouth service to its importance. But, even as we tout the importance of such personal freedoms, both overseas and on American soil, we are sadly failing in one critical respect: we are not instilling these values in our children. Instead, we are showing them that an authoritative regime may censor and punish unpopular or offensive speech in the name of safety and conformity. We lecture students over the values of the freedom of speech while allowing schools inappropriately broad latitude in declaring student behavior inappropriate or dangerous if it even references violent or sexual themes. Anything considered "sexual" in nature is censored from school life entirely, and even sexual education classes suffer in their ability to inform and protect students.
What are teenagers learning about the importance of personal freedom when they see their peers suspended, expelled, and even imprisoned, for their artistic expressions? Students can legitimately complain that many primary and secondary schools unnecessarily subject them to enforced orthodoxy and repressive strictures, particularly in regards to sexual and violent imagry.
I agree with the author that this paternalistic censorship harms children in many ways, and her discussion of the "modeling effects" and the teaching of authoritarianism should not be dismissed lightly.
I can see how this book may be a slightly difficult read for those who haven't been to law school or haven't studied this subject matter previously, but it is worth the effort. You don't have to be lawyer to understand it, and perhaps the most importance audience for this book isn't.

I loved the book but I read it while I was attending a University as a student. I wouldn't recommend this outside of the classroom. It's a great book to discuss and dissect with other scholars. If you are looking for just some interesting to read... it starts off great but then the court cases might get a little dull. If you are into scholarly work and research then you'll love it.

Other reviewers have aptly summarized this book, touting its main value, a succinct summary of the developing censorship of 'offensive' media. I, for one, am disappointed that this book never looks beyond the legal realm to which its study is confined. Simply stated, the book sadly fails to explain why all the fuss? If we accept the thesis, underwhelming at best, that little evidence justifies the government's intrusions made under the banner of protecting the children, no effort is made to explain why this tactic is so pervasive or persuasive. When the government protects, who exactly is being protected, from what, and why?

The major focus of this book is to expound the history of ideas, legislation, and litigation to remove sexually offensive and violent material from reaching children. With the exception of occasional brief descriptions of sociological studies trying to find the effects of what children see on their behavior, little in the book directly addresses the actual impact of various kinds of material on children.

The author's conclusion is that there is no clear evidence that sexually explicit and violent material is harmful to children. Current standards in Europe are much looser in this regard, and there is no apparent behavior problem as a result.

The book speculates that the reason for this hard-to-observe linkage is that information also empowers children to make better choices, provides catharsis through the material rather than the experience, and isn't taken that seriously by children.

The history of perceptions about sexual practices is also explored.

Anyone who is a lawyer will be familiar with most of the laws and cases described here. Anyone who isn't may find the legal perspective a bit heavy in the book.

What the book doesn't address adequately is the increasing intrusiveness of sexually explicit and violent material into homes. Although there are plenty of references to Monica Lewinsky in the book, the main problem of the news coverage of the White House intern was that it was almost impossible to avoid. Having a teenaged daughter in the house who doesn't like to hear about such things, I was constantly amazed at how we could be watching some ordinary television show and the networks would break in with sexually explicit references to that case. We literally could not keep the "free speech" about this sexual act out of our homes.

Now, if someone were dropping garbage on our front lawn, we could stop it. Why can't we stop more of the same when it offends us? Certainly, we don't have to watch . . . but the material seeks us out more aggressively than that.

Basically, the problem today is that speech no longer attempts to be considerate. There's money in sexually explicit material and violence, and we will continue to see more and more of it.

The book's other weakness is that it doesn't make much of an effort to differentiate between what "children" of various ages should or should not be exposed to. While I favor sex education, there is certainly an age below which it may not be a good idea for all children. Not to have provided the education to older teenagers just causes other problems.

Also, children are individuals. You could on average show that there was no effect from this kind of material, but theoretically made half the children more prone and half less prone to change behavior for the worse. So the lack of evidence in studies doesn't convince me one way or the other.

Like most parents, I can remember times when our boys got overly worked up watching violence on television. If we cut back on those shows, the in-home violence between them was reduced. It was hard to control. If television had been less violent, I think my job as a parent would have been easier with our two sons. But, that's a question of parental influence . . . and not an appropriate subject for censorship. Parents are going to have to be tougher in the future on keeping violence out of the house where their children are overly stimulated or made fearful by it. Both of my daughters have an exaggerated fear for their personal safety based on the ways they see women and girls abused on television and in the movies. I believe that there are studies that bear out this change in perception of personal risk among Americans.

I left this book yearning for more information about how to handle these issues inside a family today.

Where in your life are you getting more information than is good for you? Where are you getting less than you need? How can you create a better balance?

Be open to new learning, while creating a positive mental image of the potential of all!