The title of this blog is "Breaks From Reality." Some days I have breaks from reality and some days I need breaks from reality. Some days, however, reality breaks in.
If I had not been taking so many breaks from reality, I might have noticed this sooner:
So, there's this guy in southern Iowa who likes manga. A lot. He collects it. A lot. He orders it from Japan so that, presumably, he can, well, read it.
In 2006, some customs officials open his mail and find--OH NOES--porn! And not just any porn, but "Seven books of manga" with "cartoon drawings of minors engaged in sexually explicit acts" and some "bestiality" to boot (quoted text from David Kravets's May 28 Wired article on the subject, found here).
In May 2009, Christopher Handley pleaded guilty to:
1) the mailing of obscene matter and
2) possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children
He was being charged under the 2003 Protect Act, which, while by-and-large designed to actually protect children, also prohibits the mailing and owning of "obscene" materials (including drawings and statues) that depict minors doing sexual things. And how is "obscene" defined, exactly?
That's just the thing.
It isn't.
There is no national standard that defines obscenity; whether or not something is "obscenity" is officially defined by the community rather than the country. The closest thing we have to a national standard is the SLAPS test, which asks the "community" in question to judge whether a work has any Scientific, Literary, Artistic, Political or Scientific value.
Which community, you ask?
Weeeeell, that's just the thing. That's not really defined either. Based on this particular trial, one can only assume that the community designated to judge whether or not a work is obscene is the same community in which you are caught and charged with the possession of obscene material.
Let's all let that sink in for a bit.
So, there's this guy, and he's the first person to be charged under the Protect Act for the possession of cartoon art of any kind. When officials searched his home, they found no evidence of any child pornography, either in hard copy form or on his computer. The "obscene" material that he owned was part of a larger collection, most of which was not "obscene."
So, who, exactly, did Christopher Handley hurt in ordering naughty manga from overseas?
Children? In other "child pornography" cases, the prosecution argues for the defense of the abused children being used as models. Which does, after all, make sense.
You don't need actual child models to draw lolicon. (Lolion and yaoi were the two genres most frequently referenced in descriptions of the case.)
The community? Perhaps manga of this sort is seen as inherently corrupting.
As far as I know, he was not trying to expose his "community" to the "obscenity," just himself. Hmm, is self-corruption a crime, now?
Of course it is! Hasn't it been scientifically proven that looking at dirty pictures makes us do the things in them because as human beings we have no free will? Which is, of course, why every last person who has ever had an immoral, perverse or harmful impulse has immediately acted upon it?
No, wait, that doesn't sound quite right . . .
And even if our control of our actions were truly so terrible, we still have no proof that the erotic manga in this case was being read erotically. After all, the guy had both lolicon and yaoi in his collection, and that's a pretty unique overlap.
I don't know Christopher Handley. I don't know if he is a good person or a bad person. I don't know anything about him other than what was covered in the reports on his trial. I do know that he is a man who is being charged, at heart, for--of all things--the unacceptable taste that his community has judged him to have.
This is an attack on all otaku.
This is an attack on Americans' freedom, not only to speak, but to read.
A good chunk of manga is, let's face it, pretty gross. Even the stuff that gets categorized as "okay" to sit on bookshelves sans plastic wrap can be quite vile. Some of it has even made me feel physically ill.
When I first saw a description of this case, that's exactly how I felt: physically ill.
And this obscenity is going to take me a lot longer to get over.
Related Links:
Neil Gaiman's comments early in the case.
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund on the case
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5 comments:
Grrrr... Undefined vagueries in law make me so aaaaangry.
Scary! Some manga really disturbs me--including the boobs-and-crotch comic they always have in Shounen Jump. But I think there's a big difference between actual photographs or video and drawings. Not that drawn media doesn't influence people, but (in addition to not requiring actors) it's another step away from reality (it is virtually always obvious that it is just a drawing), and having fiction at all kind of depends on people being able to understand the difference between fiction and reality. Plus, age can get really distorted in drawings and fiction. Characters look younger than they are because of drawing style or because they are magical beings that live for centuries, and besides, many younger characters don't really act the age they are supposed to be, because it's better for the plot and for not annoying the reader if they behave with a certain level of logic, consistency, and self-awareness, but they want the character to be young because people idolize youth or they want to appeal to a young audience (not with the porn but with the original property that the porn doujinshi is based on). There's a world of difference between thinking a cartoon character who is supposed to be 15 or 18 is sexy and being attracted to an actual 15 or 18 year old human being.
This is a lot more than I usually talk about porn, but even really disturbing comics that I don't approve of at all aren't going to make someone go out and commit horrible sex crimes any more than violent video games make people go on murder sprees.
Also, “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" is pretty vague too.
Not to mention that just because you read a book that contains something doesn't mean you actually have any interest in that particular something. I read some comics that contain OMG LOOK AT THE BOOBIES!!! because I find other aspects of them interesting enough that I tolerate the over-emphasized boobies. And for this guy, it sounds like all it takes to interest him is to be manga at all.
What seems to be a fairly well-researched piece on this case--and some others like it--was posted to Comi Press in mid-May:
Lawrence A. Stanley's Comi Press arcticle
Apparently, the situation is (in some ways) even worse than I made it sound here . . . as if the whole thing weren't bone-chilling enough.
Beware the savage jaw of 1984, indeed.
Wow, it is pretty horrifying that they tried to throw him in jail for looking at anime websites.
I don't get the legal definition of obscenity either. It sounds like vanilla porn is "not obscene", and maybe innocuous fetishes like shoes, but fetishes that actually turn off the people in charge probably are.
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