Red Lines’ clumsy attempt to decry cartoon censorship ends up defending bigotry
Lack of historical context, unexplained exclusions, and blind belief in cartoonists result in Red Lines’ abject failure
Aux Features Censorship
Red Lines: Political Cartoons And The Struggle Against Censorship is a difficult book to describe, even in very broad strokes. It looks like a graphic novel but is more a textbook with lots of pictures. If you were to remove everything except the prose and individual cartoons used to demonstrate particular points, the book would likely be a third as long and a lot easier to read; the deconstructed text that meanders through photo collages and choppy layouts aren’t at all reliant on the visuals to make the points put forth by creators Cherian George and Sonny Liew.
It makes sense that George—and especially Liew, whose art has been featured in a wide variety of comics—would want to make a book about cartoons that uses some of the same visual language and structure as that art form. Unfortunately, the results can be difficult to parse: Dialogue and exposition are cut off at odd points, only to continue in boxes and balloons that don’t always follow sensible layout conventions. The fact that the book is dense and peppered with academic jargon doesn’t help. Even readers interested in, and well informed about, political cartoons might have a hard time parsing the message Red Lines seems to want to make.
That opacity and the fact that Red Lines is being released by an academic publisher make it easy to presume that the target audience is students. George is a professor who, according to the acknowledgements, taught classes at both of the universities that helped to fund the book. The introduction in particular has a great series of visuals explaining the different kinds of censorship that people face today and where each is most likely to be found. Chapters on the role of capitalism in journalism and examples of censorship in various countries act as good primers for people who want to better understand the variety of forces that impact journalists and political commentators.
But Red Lines has several weaknesses that make it a bad fit for many classrooms and almost all casual readers. The first is that the entire book treats political cartoonists as somehow removed from and above other people, never part of the system that they comment on. Their identity is “cartoonist,” and that identity comes before all else (with the exception of gender, which is only discussed in the chapter on gendered censorship). The book also presents personal anecdotes from cartoonists the same exact way that it presents scholarly information from social scientists and other academics, conflating individual beliefs with extensively researched data.
The Nib and the plethora of LGBTQ+ cartoonists they feature, it feels like an intentional and telling choice.
The chapter on gender censorship features at least one proudly public TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist, who excludes the rights of transgender women from their advocacy of women’s rights) and another transphobic writer arguing against the vague specter of “censorship,” a common tactic used by bigots to insist they are allowed to be bigots because anything less infringes on their rights to freedom of expression. The book simply identifies these women as writers and makes no attempt to disclose their biases, which calls into question every other expert and cartoonist quoted in the book. Red Lines closes with chapters about responsibility and offensive content, but George and Liew seem to leave readers with the conclusion that self-editing so as not to convey or incite bigotry is censorship the same way authoritarian control of journalism is. The intent may not have been to dismiss the very real threats and violence that cartoonists face along with other journalists and activists, but conflating that imminent danger with appropriate and contextualized editing has that effect. The deification of cartoonists as arbiters of truth and righteousness, and the flattening of complex issues of power and control into a broadly generalized “censorship” makes Red Lines all but useless, even in a classroom where students could have context and guidance.
74 Comments
“Readers could easily assume that there are no non-newspaper political cartoons on the internet, based on the authors’ dogged refusal to discuss them.”
Or, you know, it’s a book and political cartoons have been around forever and at some point you need to draw the line.
Syef can fuck off. Ditto Joe Bennett of Immortal Hulk, who pulled the same shit months back (and “graduated” to a political cartoon depicting Jair Bolsonaro decapitating Jews drawn to look like rats).
Speaking of which, kudos to Al Ewing for acknowledging his failings in speaking out against Joe Bennett, promises not to work with him again, and apologizing for his failings in being more public about his issues with Bennett.
Yep. Somewhat dampens my enthusiasm for #50, but fuck Bennett. I liked Ewing’s statement.Was going to snag an original sketch from Bennett at a future con, but screw it.
Fuck! I mostly revile mainstream superhero art but Bennett was a perfect fit for Ewing’s Hulk. It’s a goddamned shame, but yeah fuck him.
Uhhhhhhhh. Well then. I wanted to just assume the previous Immortal Hulk “problem” was an accident. Which maybe it still was? But….. well then.
Honestly, it’d save you time to just read this instead…
How can you make an entire book on cartoon censorship and not discuss Queer creators? Are you kidding me? Sounds like a tome for white male grievances. The fact that they’re platforming TERFs says enough.
Yeah. Also, fuck TERFs.
This doesn’t negate any of the specific criticisms in the review, like uncritically quoting TERFs (wtf?) but FYI neither of the creators is white.
Sonny Liew is a renowned Singaporean cartoonist and has a personal history with censorship: https://www.yp.sg/spoke-sonny-liew-censorship-whole-nac-saga/
Noted about the authors – however I was more responding to this quote:…race is only discussed in passing, and often gives a white person the last word on the matter;…
I don’t think the AV Club is capable of reviewing something like this objectively.
what the fuck is that supposed to mean? reviews are inherently subjective, jackass.
All reviews carry bias. And?
There’s a difference between (i) reviews that state their opponents’ positions and arguments fairly and accurately and then subject them to criticism, and (ii) reviews that present their opponents’ positions and arguments in a prejudicial way, calculated to make them look stupid or odious from the start. The former carry less bias and are more objective than the latter, and they leave the reader in a much better position to understand the disagreement in question. My guess is that noturtles had something like this in mind.
The perspective of this review is that only some potential sources have biases which would need to be noted.
Uh, yes. It sounds like there are real problems with the book, and not touching at all on queer or disabled cartoonists and how censorship might apply to them is not easily passed over. But I suspect that this thing earned a D-minus because of the issue described in the last paragraph. If that TERF’s claim of censorship was ridiculous, well, the reviewer can certainly tell us why. If it wasn’t, simply drawing an analogy to say, white supremacists who feel that they’ve been oppressed because they can’t say anything they want and get away with it is a bad argument. Actually, it’s not even an argument. It seems like somebody failed a litmus test here. That’s no way to talk about something as complicated as identity or gender or, heck, barbecue sauces.
I have to agree… there are a lot of problems with this book even correcting for any bias the writer may have.
Well, the book also apparently defends Ardian Syef, who is a Muslim supremacist.
An objective review doesn’t exist, or it would beIt has pictures, It has words
Fuck TERFs
Here’s why I am a free speech absolutist.I do think that some content is harmful and possibly dangerous. Let’s say I take that a step further and we elect a panel of “deciders” of what content we do and don’t allow. Right now, the “deciders” align with my views and I’m happy.Fast forward a few years. A new regime is in power. I don’t care for these new folks at all. Sure enough, the new regime installs new “deciders” and now I’m bummed. This whole thing has blown up in my face.So, when a new law is being proposed: for example, holding social media companies liable for user misinformation — imagine someone like Donald Trump and his lackeys having the power of such a law at their disposal, and getting to be the “deciders” of what is disinformation.For that reason I think that free speech should be practically untouchable.
Okay. How are you defining free speech here? Or censorship. Is a governing body saying you can’t say that the same as regular citizen saying it or a private enterprise? Also do you believe in exceptions for things like fraud, child pornography, threats or copyrighted material, which are all limits placed free speech in the US? I am not saying I am necessarily for the idea of a panel of deciders, as you mention, mostly because I am unsure what you are referring to.
We do allow Nazis and the KKK the freedom to spew their hatred as long as it doesn’t directly incite violence, which could be considered a compromise.
Saying you’re gonna kill someone isn’t speech. We all learned that in 8th grade. Great straw man though
There is validity to that argument, but it is rather problematic. What happens when we apply this logic to conduct in general? I may think that beating up gay people is bad, and we should have laws against it, but once we have mechanisms for passing laws against beating up gay people, what if those mechanisms get used to pass laws against abortion? Should we just not have any government at all because it might be run by people we disagree with?“So, when a new law is being proposed: for example, holding social media companies liable for user misinformation — imagine someone like Donald Trump and his lackeys having the power of such a law at their disposal, and getting to be the “deciders” of what is disinformation.”
We already have laws against defamation, and Trump wasn’t able to shut down critics. If Trump does manage to take over the legislature and the police and the courts and the juries, we’re fucked anyway, regardless of whether the previous government had laws against misinformation. It’s not like Trump is going to be like “Well, you all played fair, so I’m going to return the favor.”
“Conduct in general” is not speech. That’s the problem I have with the concept of hate crime laws. If you beat somebody up, you should be penalized. But I don’t know how it is somehow worse because of what you were thinking when you did so. It’s mostly political, legislative theater.
That’s just going to lead to a further marginalization of the voices of the marginalized. Free speech absolutionism just lets the loudest people shout over the rest
I think marginalized people have the ability to shout back.
Which is why harrassment campaigns and constant rape threats never work, right?
What free speech restrictions do you suggest?
Why would you think the genuinely marginalized would have political influence over who gets censored rather than the powerful?
Most “Free speech absolutists” certainly do
The implication is that the government should be evaluating which voices are “marginalized”, and allowing or denying speech accordingly, which is really disturbing.
Actually the implication is that language which can be used to silence the voices and deny the humanity of the marginalized should not be protected.
Nothing in this review seemed to really touch on or take any kind of stance on government censorship of free speech? It feels like you just saw the words “freedom of speech” and copy-pasted a canned response about how censorship is bad.
There are a few issues with this line of thinking, but in general it presents reality as a hypothetical, which is logically incoherent. Your basic tenet is that you oppose centralized authority over speech, which makes perfect sense. However by treating that authority as a hypothetical you’re ignoring the existence of an actual hegemony. Economic power and policymaking (in both the public and private sectors) are asymmetrically held in the United States by white, heterosexual, Christian men, and that group exercises control over the speech that reaches the public. That is, your “Regulators” exist at a large social scale. Of course there are other more concrete “Regulators” that exist, because speech isn’t a one-dimensional thing. A scientist doesn’t have “absolute” freedom to publish falsified data. The same goes for journalists who invent sources. Those professions take a vested interest in regulating speech because of the obvious risks of not doing so. None of these are “central” entities in the sense of a political regime, of course, and there isn’t really any effort to establish such a regime in the United States, which brings us back to the context of this article. The great irony is that these arguments about “absolute” free speech tend to arise in the face of decentralized, public debates over the merit of specific instances of speech. A pluralist response (for example, a review of a book in publication) is a fundamental part of the free exchange of ideas, yet that’s precisely the type of speech that raises people’s ire when they start throwing around the spectre of totalitarianism.
“Economic power and policymaking (in both the public and private sectors)
are asymmetrically held in the United States by white, heterosexual,
Christian”I believe Hindus are the most affluent religious group in the U.S, followed by Jews.
You have to scroll pretty far down the list of wealthiest people in the US to find an Indian person. https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/And it’s well established (by Fortune, no less) that upper management at Fortune 500 companies is overwhelmingly white:https://fortune.com/2017/06/09/white-men-senior-executives-fortune-500-companies-diversity-data/We aren’t talking about median household income, which has no bearing at all on a person’s speech. We’re talking about high level economic decision making, which is literally interchangeable with political policy and which is tightly held by white men. Now it’s true that the list of wealthiest Americans includes a fair number of Jewish people, and Fortune doesn’t break down the religious traditions of senior managers. But then again, you have things like the makeup of the Legislative Branch, which is 88% Christian (which is actually low compared to, say, the history of the Presidency). https://www.pewforum.org/2021/01/04/faith-on-the-hill-2021/The statement “heterosexual white Christian men wield asymmetric political and economic power” is uncontroversial, unless someone wanted to argue that their power is symmetric (that was a popular belief for a long time).
South Asians are a small percent of the U.S population, so you should expect to take a while looking for them even if they are disproportionately represented among CEOs:https://www.pnas.org/content/117/9/4590I don’t think it’s just at the very top level of CEOs that things matter, I think people with “Being-in-the-room privilege”* have more influence than those without and that on the other end there are people who would have more difficulty if they got fired due to something they said.* https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/essay-taiwoThe South Asian population in the US has grown a lot recently, so you might not find the same over-representation in the elderly halls of Congress. But that institution is 3 times as Jewish as the US as a whole:https://www.jta.org/2019/01/03/politics/congress-is-now-3-times-more-jewish-than-the-united-states-as-a-whole
So your point is that disproportionate political and economic power is not wielded by white Christian men but instead that disproportionate political and economic power is wielded by South Asians and Jews? And, more in line with the conversation at hand, your point is that policymaking in the United States does not represent the efforts of white Christian men to protect their longstanding economic interests but rather the efforts of South Asians and Jews to do the same? Huh. Weird.
My point is that the reality is a lot more complex, and sometimes at odds, with the canned narratives provided by people who haven’t actually looked at the data. Policies are the products of many people and I would not summarize them as representing the unified efforts of a specific demographic like that.
“We aren’t talking about median household income, which has no bearing at all on a person’s speech.”
The idea that median income has no bearing on influence is absurd.
“We’re talking about high level economic decision making, which is literally interchangeable with political policy and which is tightly held by white men.”No, it’s not. While the US is not a perfect democracy, voters certainly do have *some* influence on policy.
Wow. Just . . . wow.
You do realize that doesn’t contradict the claim, right?
Galaxy brain genius lets us all know he is a “free speech absolutist” because, “what if da bad guys get da control”?No one has ever brought this up or analyzed it before. True genius.
Which is why, in general, I oppose government restrictions on speech. But people claiming that their speech being boycotted, criticized or not hosted/published by private business is exactly the same as the government restricting or punishing them for speaking can all fuck right off.
Free speech is literally guaranteed by the first amendment. With a couple of notable exceptions, we pretty much have it in America. Other than death threats, virtually no one is in jail just for something they said. No one’s really arguing for that to change.
When you broaden it to include people being dropped by media companies for things the say or believe, that’s fine; there’s an argument to be had there, but there are two immediate problems, one logistical and one philosophical.
In practical terms, how would you actually prevent that? Let’s say I’m a spokesman for Coke, and I publish a YouTube manifesto about how Coke sucks. Is there a realistic way to keep me employed there that doesn’t lead to the end of society as we know it? If you’re never allowed to get rid of or even just not hire someone who is bad for your public image — if churches are legally required to hire satanists, if Taco Bell has to hire Morrissey — most organizations would make it a year or two, tops. Even if you think forcing institutions to employee people in highly visible roles, totally ignoring everything they’ve ever said or will say, is a good system, we’ve never had anything in place remotely close to that.
Which brings us to the philosophical issue. You can count on one hand every out trans creator hired by Marvel comics, and the community has no significant superhero presence — no trans character that I’m aware of has ever headlined a mainstream comic — but we’re apparently using a guy who was booted for slipping anti-Semitic art into the X-Men as their big example of censorship. That’s just goddam insulting. People who have sat quietly by while marginalized communities have been regularly, systematically denied access to major platforms for centuries are crying foul because making racist jokes in public can occasionally get you fired now. If someone’s first and highest free speech priority is to make sure bigots don’t get in trouble, it’s because they’re a fucking bigot.
“I just look at the BIG picture. What happens in the details ain’t my problem! O’ course until it bites me in the butt, personal-like.”These things are complex and need careful teasing out AND testing, not sweeping BS declarations that allow flaming crosses, so long as they’re stuck in some stranger’s front yard.A fascist government – or any Republican dominated one – doesn’t give a shit about your principles or anything else. They’re fascists and they’ll lie and do whatever they please.Haven’t you seen Texas or Florida or…. ?***Cheeses. I want maximized, up to a risky point, freedom of speech and belief as well, but row up.
“Freedom of speech absolutist” is an intetesting choice of words. Supporting freedom of speech to the point of discouraging people from criticising free speech defeats the purpose of free speech. Freedom of speech seems to be one of those ideas that discourages an absolutist approach. Kind of a “redoubling your effort while forgetting your aim” thing.
I think my biggest issue with the concept of free speech is that modern Americans have decided that means “I c’n say whut I WANT and no one can say nothin’!”And, like…no. Not how that has ever worked for the vast majority of us plebs.
I encountered someone years ago on one of those forums who said they were a “freedom advocate,” rather than a “special-interest advocate.” For context, it was a discussion about gay marriage, and this person considered gay marriage an infringement on “religious freedom.” The obvious fact that “freedom” in this context had diametrically opposing meanings (the freedom to get married versus the “freedom” to prevent other people from getting married) was completely lost, which was the entire point of this person’s rhetorical strategy. Logical coherence isn’t the point of these one-dimensional positions, they’re more about obfuscation via semantics. On the internet, of course, people tend to be comically bad at semantics – proudly declaring yourself an “absolutist” is basically a self-own if you’re simultaneously presenting yourself as a free thinker. And that’s on top of the fact that the moron who started this thread is talking about the threat of totalitarianism, while the United States is already an oligarchy.
I think this is a pretty good squaring of the circle:https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first-amendment/
AV Club, wholly owned by G/O media, rates a book about media censorship with a “D-”. The same holding company known for severely censoring its own staff. But please also see their glowing “Supergirl” reviews.
Please give examples. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Easily researchable.
Easily researchable.
Great. You’re an adult. You’re the one making the accusations. Do the research and provide the context that your comment is lacking.
No.
Says the guy who defends transphobes…COVID deniers…And shitheads like Joe Rogan…
I like how you accuse me of “defending transphobes” and then you illustrate in great detail how I’m not doing that. Thank you for reposting my well-composed rebuttals to pure idiocy. And believe it or not, I support your right to continue spouting away in near-coherence.
Yikes, guy
LoL
Did his research lol
I like how you accuse me of “defending transphobes” and then you illustrate in great detail how I’m not doing that. Thank you for reposting my well-composed rebuttals to pure idiocy. And believe it or not, I support your right to continue spouting away in near-coherence.
the people working here are the staff being censored by G/O, in this scenario, perhaps giving them a particular insight into the topic.Like you realize a person wrote this and not a brand, right?
“The chapter on gender censorship features at least one proudly public TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist, who excludes the rights of transgender women from their advocacy of women’s rights)“
Is this supposed to be journalism? No mention of who this alleged TERF is or what “rights” they exclude from their advocacy, let alone support for this claim? Given the wide disagreement of what the term “rights” means, your failure to be more specific makes this sentence rather uninformative. Also, just what are “women’s rights”? Are there special rights that only women have? I don’t think there’s much argument for claiming that you’re using it in the “Rights that everyone has, but are more frequently denied women” sense such as “The right to not be sexually harassed”; if that’s what you meant, it would be rather incoherent to say that transgender women are “excluded”. If someone says that transwomen should not be protected from sexual harassment because they’re “really” men, the issue we should be focusing is on their belief that it’s okay to sexually harass men, not the disagreement as to who the category of “men” includes. Nor can it mean “Things like abortion that don’t apply to (cis) men because they can’t get pregnant”, since it would be silly to accuse someone of excluding transwomen from the advocacy of abortion rights.
“and another transphobic writer arguing against the vague specter of “censorship,” a common tactic used by bigots to insist they are allowed to be bigots because anything less infringes on their rights to freedom of expression.”
You go to the trouble of explaining the easily-googable term “TERF” as if your readers would somehow not be familiar with it, yet you use the meaningless term “transphobic”, and deride concern about censorship as if only bigots express such concern, implying that they are a bigot without presenting any argument whatsoever for that claim.
Says the guy who believes people can be racist toward white people…Thinks that voter suppression doesn’t exist…Defends the Kenosha Shooter and thinks Bush didn’t torture people…Complains about “SJW’s going too far!”And who defends the TERF JK Rowling…
“Says the guy who believes people can be racist toward white people…”
Anyone who disagrees is playing word games.“Thinks that voter suppression doesn’t exist…”
You then post a screenshot that utterly fails to support this claim.
I’m not going to go through the rest of your Gish Gallop of statements that swerve between outright lies and quoting me on statements that should be completely uncontroversial (I claimed that *some* social justice advocates *sometimes* go too far! (Which you then rewrote from “social justice” to “SJWs” *and even put it in quote marks* as if it were a direct quote because you’re a dishonest liar) The horror!) and which, if you had any argument against, you could have presented those argument at the time, but instead you just stored up the screenshot so you could just post them later in lieu of an argument. Are you stalking me? You sure did go to a lot of effort to collate a collection of screenshots, only to not have them actually support any reasonable argument.
I read your review of Red Lines and the
expanded version on your blog. I have read Red Lines cover to cover, and I would not recognize that excellent
book from your description of it. The problem as I see it as that you did
not sympathize with the authors’ stated purpose of providing “a survey of 21st
century restrictions on freedom of expression, as experienced by political
cartoonists around the world.” You particularly oppose the inclusion of anti-censorship
statements by women who are “anti-trans.” I imagine that you refer to the debate over
deplatforming, which juxtaposed opposing opinions, on page 268. The authors
conclude that “Regardless of whether and how the debate is resolved, what’s
clear is that it is on a different plane from the problems faced by artists who
challenge heterosexual, cisgender-male domination in India, Iran, and
elsewhere.” (I have no idea what you meant by your complaint in your expanded
version that “Red Lines completely flattens the experience of censorship
globally, treating all experiences as identical regardless of the differences
in systemic power across the world.”)
I agree that seeking out the particular
experiences of transgender cartoonists and cartoonists with disabilities (rather
than generalizing about “other groups on the margins”) might have improved the
book.
The authors seem to
anticipate parochial reviews such as yours with their lengthy analysis of “strategic
offense taking” in web-based communication.
I don’t have the answer and will not be capable of formulating an attempt at one until I’ve finished the mug of coffee I’m holding. I should point out, though, that the mug has the logo from the novel “Catch-22″ printed on it, and that may well end up being my answer.
“The book also presents personal anecdotes from cartoonists the same
exact way that it presents scholarly information from social scientists
and other academics, conflating individual beliefs with extensively
researched data.”Modern culture has been conflating individual perceptions and experiences with facts for quite a while now. I can’t help but wonder if the writer has a problem with it in all situations or only because she didn’t like this book. I hope it’s not the latter.
never mind.
For years now the most interesting art gets C- or worse from Av Club. I’ll definitely be buying this