Mainstream or Underground? Sex and Censorship

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[Lectures]

• Mainstream or Underground? Sex in Popular Culture
• Defining Obscenity and Applying Censorship
• Drawing Lines Between Fantasy & Reality

  Mainstream or Underground? Adult Movies

• Softcore "pink films" of the early postwar by various studios
• Nikkatsu Studios and 1970s "Roman Poruno"
  • Studio attempt to stay solvent
  • Relatively high production values
  • Political and aesthetic aspirations
  • Graphic sex and extremely violent
• Pornography today primarily produced for the video market

  Mainstream or Underground? Manga

  According to 1990 Tokyo city government report, over 50% of all manga had sex scenes

  Ero manga or poruno manga: numerous profitable but sometimes ephemeral titles specializing in sexual images and narratives

  Sales approx. ¥180 billion in 1990

  1990s surveys: approximately 22% male and 8% (or 50% and 20%) female middle school students read porn manga

  Ladies' comics: By 1993, 57 titles with combined circ. of 120 million

  Policing Morals

• What is obscene? Changing standards
  • Tokugawa codes (no criticism of government)
  • Impact of Western moral codes (porn v. art nudes)
  • Occupation codes (kisses yes, sexual explicitness)
  • Contemporary debates (freedom v. public morals)
• Why does the state take interest?
  • "Public Welfare"
  • International reputation
  • Protection of the status quo
  • Release valve theory
• Preference for informal or self-policing

  Anti-Manga Campaigns of the 90s

• Anti-manga campaigns from 1965-75 and in the 1990s in response to growth/change in industry
  • 1980s and 1990s amateur comic circuits
  • Relaxing standards on indecency from 1991 for "artistic" works
  • Terminology shifts from "indecent" to "harmful"
• Campaigns staged by quasi-governmental agencies, local governments, and citizens and volunteer organizations
  • Criticism of manga from both conservatives and progressives
  • Local rather than national laws applied, use of blacklists
  • Hitting bookstores, publishers, and artists in the pocketbook
• In response, artists organize Society for the Protection of Freedom of Expression in Manga and Manga Japan

  Article 175 of the Criminal Code Law No. 45 (1908)

• Obscenity: any practice or sexually erotic material whose preparation, sale, distribution or display can evoke "uncontrollable or disquiet reason."
• A person who distributes or sells and obscene writings, pictures, or other objects or who publicly displays the same, shall be punished with imprisonment and forced labor for not more than two years or a fine...
• NO: genitalia, frontal nudity, touching groins, [pubic hair]
• OK: "cartoony" genitalia, art nudes of children

  Censorship as Productive?

• Can there be social organization without rules and regulation?
• Can there be identity formation without negation?
• What is the impact of rules and constraints on creativity?
• Are social restrictions a necessary condition for the possibility of transgression and humor?

  Schodt on Fantasy and Reality

  Shigematsu on Fantasy and Reality

• Fantasy as the "non-real": Gap between what is ordinarily possible and what can be imagined
• Mass media fantasy as part of material reality
  • "Culture Industry" with economic and political clout
  • Gap between mass mediated fantasy and personal fantasy; act of reading as act of interpretation
• Fantasy (phantasy) as psychic reality
  • Window into subject's perception of external reality
  • Mapping out internal, structured, but not necessarily harmonious & often conflicting, desires in the mind