A German author and her publisher were thrilled when a U.S. publisher inquired about putting out a North American edition of one of her bestselling children’s books… until the U.S. publisher asked the author to airbrush some of her illustrations.
The drawings, of a scene in an art museum, feature cartoonish depictions of a nude painting and statue. Hardly anything to freak out over, but the publisher, Boyds Mills Press, was so afraid of angry parents that they sheepishly asked the author to censor herself.
This didn’t go over so well in Germany. From Spiegel:
American kiddies, obviously, could never be expected to handle such a depiction of the human body. The US publisher, somewhat awkwardly, asked if they could be removed.
The author, not surprisingly, considers the request to be absurd. The statue’s mini-willy, the author points out, is hardly even a half-millimeter long. And the naked woman hanging on the wall? Hardly a realistic depiction of the female anatomy. The US publisher, says Berner, was embarrassed to ask for the changes, but they were even more afraid of how American mommies and daddies might react if junior were exposed to such pornography.
For the author, any kind of self-censorship was completely out of the question. She said she could maybe have lived with putting black bars in front of the problem spots, but “invisible censorship” was out. “If you’re going to censor something, then the reader should be aware of it,” she told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
The book in question is already a bestseller in 13 countries. Now, outcry from Germany has convinced Boyd Mills to go ahead with the book without any censorship.
It’s sad but not surprising that the publisher reacted the way they did. A tiny drawing of a wang in a kid’s book is just the sort of unsubstantial, yet mildly controversial issue that local TV news teams really enjoy. In a country where you can get your 15 minutes of fame from complaining about talking dolls that “swear” if you listen really, really hard, and the use of the word “scrotum” in a Newbery Medal winning children’s book causes apoplexy in librarians, the publisher was probably less concerned about offending your average parent than it was about having to “take tiny penis drawings seriously” on the nightly news. So it goes.
US Publisher Turns away from Cartoon Nudity [Spiegel]
US publisher relents on German children’s book [EarthTimes]
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@dugn: Don’t take your kid to a museum ever and expose her to something called “art”. There is often nudity. Keep her sheltered so that it’s unnatural to her later, and when she goes to a museum as an adult, she will only stare at the vaginas and penises and boobies of the subject matter… completely distracted and unable to enjoy the subject matter as a whole. Sounds great. I don’t know how I survived childhood having seen uncensored depictions of Michaelangelo’s “David” as a kid… and who knows how many little cherub angel penises in Christian art. I shouldn’t have seen that until I was 18 !
@IrisMR:
See, I was initially willing to just write you off as over-protective and mildly homophobic, but your subsequent comments proved me wrong.
To answer your implied question about how to talk with kids about same-sex couples kissing, it’s pretty easy, as other posters have suggested. Use the word LOVE. Just like you would with different-sex couples. Why on earth does baby-making get involved? Kids see kissing all the time, and associate it with one person LIKING the other.
Kid: Why is that man comforting the other over a lunchbox?*
Adult: Because they’re friends.
Kid: Why are they kissing?
Adult: Because they’re close friends.
How difficult was that?
____
*The lunchbox story that Iris told lost me, so I may have misunderstood. It’s possible the lunchbox was a metaphor for a sled.
@IrisMR: Although I think you are being overly hostile (I’m not really a eye for eye kind of person), I do think they overreacted to your post.
After all we don’t have the cliched movie scene of some characters kissing or what not and an adult covering any child bystander’s eyes for no reason.
PDA and kids being allowed to watch don’t classically go together.
Personally I don’t particularly care for nudity either because beneath the mask of openness I just think it’s mostly demeaning to women. In particular because I think it increases the superficial judgment of women.
Here’s the way that I see it. If you think that two guys shouldn’t be kissing but that a guy and a girl kissing is OK, that’s homophobic. If you don’t think that sort of affection should be displayed at all, you’re just a prude.
@HalOfBorg: that “little bit of touchup” is censorship, is why. Don’t we remember politicos within the current administration who wanted a nude male bronze in a government building covered up? When we cave into this shit, we enfantalize ourselves all the more.
The shear stupidity of this makes my head hurt worse than it already does. So there is Wee Willy’s winky. So what.
I’m planning on not letting my newborn child look down at her “stuff” till she’s 21. Also I plan to line up some good therapists exactly at the same time.
To American parents: Grow up! Your puritanic bleating is ridiculous and is NOT the general consensus of all Americans. As an artist, I find it unacceptable that art like Michaelangelo’s “David” is having it’s penis (yes I said PENIS!) covered by fig leaf’s or some other device just to appease some puritanic viewpoint.
I wish someone would sue when this is done as I see it as copyright infringement.
I submit that if you find yourself offended by imagery or reality in “art” that you first EDUCATE before you DISCRIMINATE.
I recently went to a restaurant here in Houston, TX called Bucco De Beppo’s (Italian cuisine) and all of the pictures and even the stone waterfall out front of Bucco’s (all depicting “david”) had “David’s” penis covered by something.
I then talked with the manager and apparently the predominant christian church in the area complained about “David’s” penis in all of the posted imagery and got Bucco De Beppo corporate to go along with it.
This is completely unacceptable and my family and I left Bucco’s that night and did not give them any money in protest.
I too am a father of a 4 year old and a 14 year old (both present at Bucco’s) and I educated them about art and the human form, and they understood completely and both thought that censoring art was a terrible idea. Especially if it is only for a small number of complaining “bible thumpers.”
@axiomatic: I don’t think calling people who have different preferences than you ‘bleating’ is really an indication of enlightenment.
I’m sure that the restaurant will balance concerns over losing business due to covering up the poster vs losing business due to not covering it up.
Personally, I wouldn’t really care either way.
It’s amazing that the original post, and the 108 comments since, didn’t even mention the *other* censorship requested by the US publisher. It was in the original article (the first link), but maybe nobody RTFA.
“First off, smokers had to be removed from the illustrations.”
That’s, er, one-half of the censorship of the book, but what does EVERYBODY latch on to? The nudity part. Interesting.
Although, I’d wager to say, censorship of smoking is probably a more popular form of political correctness in the U.S. nowadays (e.g., movies, T.V., magazines eliminating it).