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Image: Copyright 2011, Newtown Grafitti
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Manchester Central : Exchange 4
Threats to Free Speech
This event will explore the panoply of challenges to freedom of speech in the UK.
Katy Balls, deputy political editor at The Spectator, will chair this event.
Participants include: Index head of advocacy Joy Hyvarinen, Martha Spurrier, director of Liberty; John Whittingdale MP[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”With contributions from Kerry Hudson, Chen Xiwo, Elif Shafak, Meera Selva, Steven Borowiec, Brian Patten and Dean Atta”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Border forces – how barriers to free thought got tough
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Special Report: Border forces: how barriers to free thought got tough”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Big brother at the border by Rachael Jolley
Switch off, we’re landing! by Kaya Genç Be prepared that if you visit Turkey online access is restricted
Culture can “challenge” disinformation by Irene Caselli Migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe are often seen as statistics, but artists are trying to tell stories to change that
Lines of duty by Laura Silvia Battaglia It’s tough for journalists to visit Yemen, our reporter talks about how she does it
Locking the gates by Jan Fox Writers, artists, academics and musicians are self-censoring as they worry about getting visas to go to the USA
Reaching for the off switch by Meera Selva Internet shutdowns are growing as nations seek to control public access to information
Hiding your true self by Mark Frary LGBT people face particular discrimination at some international borders
They shall not pass by Stephen Woodman Journalists and activists crossing between Mexico and the USA are being systematically targeted, sometimes sent back by officials using people trafficking laws
“UK border policy damages credibility” by Charlotte Bailey Festival directors say the UK border policy is forcing artists to stop visiting
Ten tips for a safe crossing by Ela Stapley Our digital security expert gives advice on how to keep your information secure at borders
Export laws by Ryan Gallagher China is selling on surveillance technology to the rest of the world
At the world’s toughest border by Steven Borowiec South Koreans face prison for keeping in touch with their North Korean family
Stripsearch by Martin Rowson Bees and herbaceous borders
Inside the silent zone by Silvia Nortes Journalists are being stopped from reporting the disputed north African Western Sahara region
The great news wall of China by Karoline Kan China is spinning its version of the Hong Kong protests to control the news
Kenya: who is watching you? by Wana Udobang Kenyan journalist Catherine Gicheru is worried her country knows everything about her
Top ten states closing their doors to ideas by Mark Frary We look at countries which seek to stop ideas circulating[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row disable_element=”yes”][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Global View”][vc_column_text]Small victories do count by Jodie Ginsberg The kind of individual support Index gives people living under oppressive regimes is a vital step towards wider change[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”In Focus”][vc_column_text]Germany’s surveillance fears by Cathrin Schaer Thirty years on from the fall of the Berlin wall and the disbanding of the Stasi, Germans worry about who is watching them
Freestyle portraits by Rachael Jolley Cartoonists Kanika Mishra from India, Pedro X Molina from Nicaragua and China’s Badiucao put threats to free expression into pictures
Tackling news stories that journalists aren’t writing by Alison Flood Crime writers Scott Turow, Val McDermid, Massimo Carlotto and Ahmet Altan talk about how the inspiration for their fiction comes from real life stories
Mosul’s new chapter by Omar Mohammed What do students think about the new books arriving at Mosul library, after Isis destroyed the previous building and collection?
The [REDACTED] crossword by Herbashe The first ever Index crossword based on a theme central to the magazine
Cries from the last century and lessons for today by Sally Gimson Nadine Gordimer, Václav Havel, Samuel Beckett and Arthur Miller all wrote for Index. We asked modern day writers Elif Shafak, Kerry Hudson and Emilie Pine plus theatre director Nicholas Hytner why the writing is still relevant
In memory of Andrew Graham-Yooll by Rachael Jolley Remembering the former Index editor who risked his life to report from Argentina during the worst years of the dictatorship[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Culture”][vc_column_text]Backed into a corner by love by Chen Xiwo A newly translated story by censored Chinese writer about the abusive relationship between a mother and daughter plus an interview with the author
On the road by Marguerite Duras The first English translation of an extract from the screenplay of the 1977 film Le Camion by one of the greatest French writers of the 20th century
Muting young voices by Brian Patten Two poems, one written exclusively for Index, about how the exam culture in schools can destroy creativity by the Liverpool Poet
Finding poetry in trauma by Dean Atta Male rape is still a taboo subject, but very little is off-limits for this award-winning writer from London who has written an exclusive poem for Index[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Column”][vc_column_text]Index around the world: Tales of the unexpected by Sally Gimson and Lewis Jennings Index has started a new media monitoring project and has been telling folk stories at this summer’s festivals[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Endnote”][vc_column_text]Endnote: Macho politics drive academic closures by Sally Gimson Academics who teach gender studies are losing their jobs and their funding as populist leaders attack “gender ideology”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe”][vc_column_text]In print, online, in your mailbox, on your iPad.
Subscription options from £18 or just £1.49 in the App Store for a digital issue.
Every subscriber helps support Index on Censorship’s projects around the world.
SUBSCRIBE NOW[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Read”][vc_column_text]The playwright Arthur Miller wrote an essay for Index in 1978 entitled The Sin of Power. We reproduce it for the first time on our website and theatre director Nicholas Hytner responds to it in the magazine
READ HERE[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Listen”][vc_column_text]In the Index on Censorship autumn 2019 podcast, we focus on how travel restrictions at borders are limiting the flow of free thought and ideas. Lewis Jennings and Sally Gimson talk to trans woman and activist Peppermint; San Diego photojournalist Ariana Drehsler and Index’s South Korean correspondent Steven Borowiec
LISTEN HERE[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
In the Index on Censorship autumn 2019 podcast, we focus on how travel restrictions at borders are limiting the flow of free thought and ideas. Lewis Jennings and Sally Gimson discuss the latest issue of the magazine and reveal what to expect. Guests include trans woman and activist Peppermint, runner-up of RuPaul’s Drag Race season nine, who opens up about a transphobic experience in a Russian airport; San Diego photojournalist Ariana Drehsler talks about her detainment at a Mexican border and how this compares to a similar situation that happened in Egypt; and Steven Borowiec, a regular contributor to the magazine based in South Korea, discusses the laws surrounding the toughest border in the world.
Print copies of the magazine are available on Amazon, or you can take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions. Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpetine Gallery and MagCulture (all London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool). Red Lion Books (Colchester) and Home (Manchester). Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
The autumn 2019 podcast can also be found on iTunes.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”108364″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Nothing defined 20th-century American culture quite like the comic book. Comics in their popular, serialised form emerged in 1930s New York City, mass-produced by recent immigrants and their children who had grown up reading one-strip funny cartoons. The early success of Superman (the concoction of two young Jewish immigrants, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) spurred the rapid growth of the comics industry. By the mid-1940s, many small-time comic publishers were churning out hundreds of series and characters of all genres.
Soon after comics’ meteoric rise in popularity, the industry drew criticism. Comics were never regarded as “high art” despite the aspirations of many who worked in the industry. They were unapologetically for children and adolescents, produced as entertainment for the lower classes. Many of the comics genres that rose to extreme popularity in the 1930s, 40s and 50s revolved around crime, ghosts and ghouls, aliens, and pulpy romance. Notably, EC Comics started by Bill Gaines was famous for Crime Does Not Pay, a comic that published macabre tales that blurred the line between good and evil. Gaines inherited the publishing business from his father, who had died suddenly in a boating accident, and EC comics became synonymous with the seediest corners of the comics industry.
Because of the gore and sexual content of early comics, the parents of devoted teenage comics readers began to worry about the effect of the comic book on children. The Catholic Church at the time allowed local dioceses to impose bans on certain books, which they quickly levied against most comic books, placing them on lists of books thought to be unsuitable for good Catholic youth. Concerned parents around the country wrote op-eds in local newspapers about the dangers of comics. Parent-teacher associations organised comic book burnings, though Nazi book burnings were still fresh in national memory. Students themselves occasionally spearheaded book burnings and comic purges from school libraries, encouraging friends to bring their collections to fuel the bonfire.
The final straw in the early 1950s was in the form of a book called Seduction of the Innocent, by psychologist Frederic Wertham. Wertham’s book contained no scientific research and was based solely on anecdotal interactions between the psychologist and patients at his clinic. It was unapologetically political and linked the rise of the comic book industry to rises in youth crime (which did not, statistically, exist). The central argument of his book was that the cartoon violence on the pages of comics spurred youth to commit more crimes and that banning comics would drastically decrease rates of youth criminality. Seduction of the Innocent spurred a series of Senate hearings on whether the government should take action against comics. Led by famous Senator Estes Kefauver, the hearings were televised for the comics-hating public to see. This was not the first time government action against comics had been considered: at that point, several bills had been introduced in different state legislatures to enact government censorship on the distribution of comics, though most had been shot down on First Amendment grounds.
The Senate hearings terrified the entire comics industry. Bill Gaines, high on stimulants, testified at the hearings. In a riveting cross-examination by Senator Kefauver, Gaines was backed into a corner, forced to defend a recent Crime Does Not Pay cover (which depicted a hand holding a severed woman’s head) as “good taste.” The Senate hearings led only to a harsh denouncement of comic books and endorsement of Wertham’s pseudoscientific theories about their link to youth crime. The government took no official action to censor comics, though it did encourage the industry to censor itself, which the industry gladly did.
Gaines had, years earlier, formed the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers (ACMP). In an effort to resist government censorship, Gaines rallied ACMP again, though fellow publishers thought it safer to develop intra-industry codes rather than to allow the government to officially censor comics. Fearful that government censorship was worse, the latent ACMP morphed into the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA). The CMAA then created the Comics Code Authority (CCA), which developed extremely strict guidelines for comics publishing–no weapons, good must always triumph over evil, women must be conservatively dressed. Since the CMAA controlled the means of production of comic books, without CCA approval no comics could go to the presses.
Full-time CCA censors would comb through every comic issue, circling any potential violations. The publishers who had previously specialised in crime comics, romances, science fiction and fantasy couldn’t get anything published — essentially, only superheroes remained. Comics became sanitised, and many smaller publishers closed down, with comics creators leaving the industry in droves. Bill Gaines’s EC Comics was finally shuttered when CCA censors objected to Gaines sympathetically portraying a black man in a comic.
The CCA’s regulations slowly loosened over time, yet the CCA remained essential in the industry for decades. Without the now-notorious CCA seal of approval on the cover, no comic would be sold. As independently publishing became easier and comics publishers consolidated, there became an independent financial motive for publishing and selling comics from many publishers regardless of their adherence to CCA standards. CCA standards also became looser, as artists infused already-popular series with themes that would have been previously unacceptable–for example, comic giant Jack Kirby famously included a storyline about drug addiction in a popular superhero series. In the 2000s, large publishers stopped seeking CCA approval, starting with Marvel Comics in 2001. By 2011, DC and Archie comics stopped seeking CCA approval for their comics, rendering the agency finally defunct.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Banned Books Week / 22-28 Sept 2019″ use_theme_fonts=”yes” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bannedbooksweek.org.uk%2F|||”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”103109″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.bannedbooksweek.org.uk/”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
Banned Books Week UK is a nationwide campaign for radical readers and rebellious readers of all ages celebrate the freedom to read. Between 22 – 28 September 2019, bookshops, libraries, schools, literary festivals and publishers will be hosting events and making noise about some of the most sordid, subversive, sensational and taboo-busting books around.
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