In honor of tonight's series finale of "30 Rock," a great show that had the balls to poke fun at NBC censors, everyone should play their "Censor It" game. The game shows lines from scripts and asks you, playing the Censor, whether such offensive and prurient material should make it on the air. After that, why not sit down and watch/re-watch the [...]
Often the books we find the most affecting, the most informative are the ones others want to ban or keep us from reading. Alexis Opper's statement of youth power is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
Sarah Grabman and Evan Horowitz submitted their whimsical reflection on how the censoring impulse can even seep into your own head and self-perfection. This film is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
Kids these days! Daniel Boyle and Grace vanKan tell a story of enlightenment for our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
This weekend, the New York Times featured comments on the debate over violent media in its Sunday Dialogue segment. The letters were written in response to one penned by Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. A couple of the responses were thoughtful and incisive; others, not so much. Here are the highs and lows... HIGHS From Chris [...]
Rebecca Onstott is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
A world with no great books is a black and white dreary bore, says Eden Taylor Ames in her film. Eden encourages us to shed our blinders in one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest Semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
A person or group of people shouldn't limit what others can read and see, Naomi Clements expresses in her film. Naomi is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
Sometimes those with authority are the ones telling you a book isn't appropriate, other times the voice of the censor is internalized. David Raygoza explores a battle over a good book in one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest Semifinalists. Click here and watch this year's semifinalist films and to learn more about our film contest. To [...]
Watch Nathan Water's video on textbook censorship, a book banning for the modern era. Nathan is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest Semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner! To learn more about textbook censorship, check out NCAC.org
Watch this awesome video by Gio Garcia, a student in Tucson, and find out! Gio is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest Semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner! New reports out about the dissolution of MAS in Texas indicate that the program [...]
If you want to express your thoughts, your feelings, your grief, your pain, or your opinions through poetry or art, you best wait until you're old enough to vote. Click here to watch interview In December, a 16-year-old high school student in New Jersey was arrested and thrown in juvenile detention just days before Christmas because of a [...]
It's that time of year -- yesterday we announced the semifinalists for the 2012 Youth Free Expression Film Contest and we couldn't be more excited. Reasons why we're excited: 1. Theme: Banned Books. This year's films asked students to respond to the prompt "You're Reading WHAT?!?" and talk about attempts to censor teens' reading choices - something dear to our [...]
Speaking of stories straight out of the 1950s playbook, here's one from right after New Years: A group in Southington, CT decided to collect and destroy violent video games, bribing incentivizing resident participation with a $25 gift certificate for other forms of happy-sunny family fun, like a trip to a water park. In a somewhat contradictory statement, the group stated that "there is ample [...]
In a censorship story that feels dredged from a mid-century time capsule, a High School in Utah will allow the musical All Shook Up to be performed, but has removed a "questionable song." It's unclear what song has been removed from the play, which is in fact a rewriting of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. About that: evidently in addition to the [...]
The First Amendment Center commented this week on an Ohio Appeals Court ruling that an adolescent girl was guilty of disorderly conduct. The girl was arrested for the words she spoke to police offers, following a fight among middle school students. With the ruling, the court denied the girl's claims that her arrest violated her First Amendment rights to free [...]
Trying to explain what happened in Connecticut by pointing to video games is easy; unfortunately, it won’t do much to stem violence or treat mental illness.
You remember Santa Claus, the jolly white-haired gent? If you've read or heard Clement C. Moore's classic holiday poem, A Visit From Saint Nicholas, you probably have a mental picture from the following lines: "His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn [...]
...Years of fighting Censorship. Ok, maybe it doesn't sound epic, but that's because winning these battles of encroaching censorship is something that is so easy to take for granted. So, instead, imagine NCAC as a plucky hobbit-creature and Censorship as a fire-breathing dragon, a heartless, harbinger of death and destruction (culturally relevant blog humor!). Anyhow, this is your friendly holiday [...]
The Twelve Days of Censorship Years of Censorship Battles 120 Days of Sodom Egyptian Breasts Milking Nude Ladies Dancing Lords Banned for Witchcraft Bush Monkeys Swimming Nude Adults laying A golden chastity key Aristophanes‘ The Birds Catholic French outrage, a Clear Channel Dove and no art in Newark library We selected this censored film for Day 11 of the Twelve Days, as the Museum of Modern Art [...]
The Twelve Days of Censorship Years of Censorship Battles 120 Days of Sodom Egyptian Breasts Milking Nude Ladies Dancing Lords Banned for Witchcraft Bush Monkeys Swimming Nude Adults laying A golden chastity key Aristophanes‘ The Birds Catholic French outrage, a Clear Channel Dove and no art in Newark library Five nude paintings were pulled from a show in Nevada County, California after Nevada County's general services analyst [...]
The Twelve Days of Censorship Years of Censorship Battles 120 Days of Sodom Egyptian Breasts Milking Nude Ladies Dancing Lords Banned for Witchcraft Bush Monkeys Swimming Nude Adults laying A golden chastity key Aristophanes‘ The Birds Catholic French outrage, a Clear Channel Dove and no art in Newark library Karen Finley was set to perform A Certain Level of Denial at Chicago's Metro Club in 1994, but the [...]
The Twelve Days of Censorship Years of Censorship Battles 120 Days of Sodom Egyptian Breasts Milking Nude Ladies Dancing Lords Banned for Witchcraft Bush Monkeys Swimming Nude Adults laying A golden chastity key Aristophanes‘ The Birds Catholic French outrage, a Clear Channel Dove and no art in Newark library At least eight "Lords" have been banned or challenged at one time or another. Between J.R.R. Tolkein's [...]
The Twelve Days of Censorship Years of Censorship Battles 120 Days of Sodom Egyptian Breasts Milking Nude Ladies Dancing Lords Banned for Witchcraft Bush Monkeys Swimming Nude Adults laying A golden chastity key Aristophanes‘ The Birds Catholic French outrage, a Clear Channel Dove and no art in Newark library The manager of an art show being held at Chelsea Market didn't much appreciate Chris Savido's portrait of [...]
The Twelve Days of Censorship Years of Censorship Battles 120 Days of Sodom Egyptian Breasts Milking Nude Ladies Dancing Lords Banned for Witchcraft Bush Monkeys Swimming Nude Adults laying A golden chastity key Aristophanes‘ The Birds Catholic French outrage, a Clear Channel Dove and no art in Newark library A school administration in South Dakota pulled an entire set of encyclopedias off library shelves after discovering [...]
The Twelve Days of Censorship Years of Censorship Battles 120 Days of Sodom Egyptian Breasts Milking Nude Ladies Dancing Lords Banned for Witchcraft Bush Monkeys Swimming Nude Adults laying A golden chastity key Aristophanes‘ The Birds Catholic French outrage, a Clear Channel Dove and no art in Newark library Joy Crane's chastity belt sculpture was too risque for the "family-friendly" Brookings Art Council Annual Juried Art Exhibit in [...]
The Twelve Days of Censorship Years of Censorship Battles 120 Days of Sodom Egyptian Breasts Milking Nude Ladies Dancing Lords Banned for Witchcraft Bush Monkeys Swimming Nude Adults laying A golden chastity key Aristophanes‘ The Birds Catholic French outrage, a Clear Channel Dove and no art in Newark library Aristophanes? You mean the Greek playwright? If he was censored, it was, like, forever ago. Right? The Censorship [...]
The Twelve Days of Censorship Years of Censorship Battles 120 Days of Sodom Egyptian Breasts Milking Nude Ladies Dancing Lords Banned for Witchcraft Bush Monkeys Swimming Nude Adults laying A golden chastity key Aristophanes‘ The Birds Catholic French outrage, a Clear Channel Dove and no art in Newark library An ad for Girbaud jeans in France sparked controversy in 2005 among French and Italian Catholics for being [...]
The Twelve Days of Censorship Years of Censorship Battles 120 Days of Sodom Egyptian Breasts Milking Nude Ladies Dancing Lords Banned for Witchcraft Bush Monkeys Swimming Nude Adults laying A golden chastity key Aristophanes‘ The Birds Catholic French outrage, a Clear Channel Dove and no art in Newark library In 2004 a billboard rented by Project Billboard was slated to be posted in Times Square during the [...]
The Twelve Days of Censorship No art in Newark library This post is part of our Twelve Days of Censorship series, reporting the gifts of the Ghosts of Censors Past and Present in honor of the holiday season. On the First Day of Censorship, the Censors Gave to Me... no art in Newark Public Library. The Newark Public Library is [...]
Lansdowne public librarian Abbe Klebanoff came to us last week, dismayed over Sony's censorship of a video she and her students had made to encourage teens to read. The video takes Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and transformed the song into "Read It", with a dance to boot. When the kids tried to upload the video to YouTube, Sony sent them [...]
Don’t mess with Abbe Klebanoff, the head of public services for Pennsylvania’s Lansdowne Public Library. She encouraged teens to create a music video called "Read It" to the music of Michael Jackson's song, "Beat It," and posted it on YouTube. What followed was predictable—Sony objected and took it down, claiming copyright infringement. The passionate Klebanoff, who spent weeks helping the teens [...]
...with some minor scrapes. This photo of NCAC's block in the South Street Seaport in Manhattan was taken during superstorm Sandy. Our building was flooded with 5 feet of mucky saltwater, there was electrical damage and we're still grappling with being displaced. As we're winding down the calendar year, and especially now after operating with no phones, limited e-mail and [...]
Today the Brentwood Public Library board handed down its unanimous decision to keep Uncle Bobby's Wedding, a picture book by Sarah S. Brannen that had recently drawn objections from a patron. Library Director Vicky Wood initially offered a written response to the complaint, affirming the library's duty to provide access to a variety of materials: "Today, even in Brentwood, there [...]
Great news! Bastard out of Carolina and Angels in America will be taught in Fremont to all those who wish to learn, notwithstanding the Fremont Unified School District's decision to ban the books from its English curriculum. Thanks to the efforts of Rev. Jeremy Nickel of the Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation, the class will begin tonight and continue throughout the school year. [...]
The American Library Association teamed up with us this week on a letter to the Rocklin Unified School District, where they are currently considering pulling Different Seasons by Stephen King out of school libraries. After her ninth grade son brought the book home from the library, a parent complained about sexual content in the book, specifically in the story "Apt Pupil." [...]
In King County, WA, the public library system responded to a complaint over a manga novel, Hero Heel 2, in the best possible way: by reaffirming the freedom of access of its patrons and responsibility of parents. Yay, librarians! Like graphic novels and comics, manga is sometimes misunderstood by readers and parents who (wrongly) presume that because the books contain a large [...]
In evaluating and reviewing a recent challenge to Stephen King's Different Seasons (Signet, 1982) in a high school library in Rocklin, California, we were amused to read the following passage in King's the story "Apt Pupil". In the passage, the main character, 13-year-old Todd, is discussing his interest in and research into the Nazi death camps during World War II: "At first the [...]
Score one for the robots freedom to read supporters! A seven-person committee in the Hardin Valley Academy, in Knox County, TN has decided that Daniel H. Wilson's "Robopocalypse" should stay in the school's curriculum. The best-selling science fiction book about a hostile robot takeover was selected as the STEM Academy's summer read to keep students engaged in a light but [...]
Teen Free Speech Fighters! There's still time to enter the Youth Free Expression Project's annual film contest and potentially win $1,000 cash prize and a $5,000 scholarship to the New York Film Academy. We've extended the deadline to November 25, so get out your cameras and tell us a creative story about a time where an adult or other individual [...]
