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I grew up in a small city and one thing they had was some rich dude who donated a library, and filled the reading room with beautiful statues and paintings whic

I grew up in a small city and one thing they had was some rich dude who donated a library, and filled the reading room with beautiful statues and paintings which were in the classical style, commissioned completely by himself. This was early 1800s. Then in the later 1800s the townsfolk decided the paintings and statues were scandalous because they had nudes, so they painted over the breasts and genitals, and covered over the statues with togas / cloths. Luckily in modern times it was easy to remove the cloths, but unfortunately the paintings are ruined. The cover-job was done poorly and the paintings have an off-color paint on it that looks wrong. There have been talks to fix it but I don’t think anything has been done. My point is that, the desire to censor prior art that disagrees with fad-interpretations of what is taboo and scandalous, will certainly be looked at in a few decades as a very weird and Victorian era. Definitely should not re-cut movies to be “safe” or whatever.

madaxe_again 4y ago
I would wager that a decent conservator would be able to “undress” the paintings - they probably went over the top of the old varnish. Even if they didn’t, most touch up work is removable, chemically or mechanically. That said, at this point, the painted on underwear is part of the history, and at least one example of overwrought censorship should be preserved as an artefact of its era.
- worrycue 4y ago
  Digitalise the censored version so we have a copy. Then remove the censorship so we can see the original as intended.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
hashstring 4y ago
Agree, it’s also naïve to think that we can censor art retrospectively to make it fit a certain standard, because our standard is changing so fast. Best to capture art as a moment through books, sculptures and film and to interpret that moment later on. You could choose however to not display certain things in your library if it doesn’t match your (current) standards, that’s perfectly fine. I think it’s important how you deal with the things that don’t match your standards.
- Technotroll 4y ago
  Recently there was a controversy about the storage of Christian Krogh's historical painting of Leiv Eiriksson discovering America, which was previously on premanent display at the National Museum in Oslo, Norway. Apparently the argument used to take the painting down was that it is “too colonial.” The irony of the director of the museum being Danish, and the directing curator being Swedish, wasn't lost on most people, as Norway was once ruled by both their respective countries.
onion2k 4y ago
fad-interpretations of what is taboo and scandalous I hope there isn't a time in the future when people see the current wave of anti-racism, anti-slavery, and anti-misogyny as just a silly fad we had in the early 21st century. Although, I guess the people would have said the same about nudity in the mid-1800s...
- Xelbair 4y ago
  Unless those things go so far that they turn full circle, because it's easy to stop fighting for equality and go for revenge.
  - watwut 4y ago
    Good half of people who complain about modern sensitivity are in it for inequality and for revenge. You see that in a way they are perfectly fine with old sensitivity. As long as censorship and exclusion are done the way they have been done in past, they support it.
- monero-xmr 4y ago
  It’s not that those feelings are wrong, it’s when you decide to alter artistic work based on the current vogue. It’s when you cross the line into censorship.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  You will not get an interesting conversation on these topics on an American discussion board. These topics are a minefield. Plenty of the things which are pushed unconditionally in the US right now should be debatable and debated. Some concepts like cultural appropriation look clearly dubious to my French self. The issue is that having a debate has become impossible. In some circles, you will be quartered for daring to express that there exists differences between men and women which might not be socially constructed.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    > You will not get an interesting conversation on these topics on an American discussion board. These topics are a minefield. That's a problem. Why have people become so afraid to speak their minds? We live in a democracy or not?
Octabrain 4y ago
> so they painted over the breasts and genitals Utterly appalling. Seriously. So sad and pathetic that there are human beings out there with dirtiness on their minds and power to impose their interpretation of reality in something universal as art. Seriously, my blood boiled after reading that.
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  It only betrays their own insecurities and lack of restraint, doesn't it? If your morals are so strong then you needn't be worried about something you've presumably already experienced in private.
- Technotroll 4y ago
  The prevailing attitude is that this kind of social control is also widely accepted within certain religions, and nobody has the balls to address it even in the West. Nay, especially in the West.
  - mandmandam 4y ago
    Not sure if the "also" is necessary there, considering the above example was already religion based. Also, the West interferes with the rest of the world quite enough - I'd suggest we try to stop exploiting the rest of the world before we 'save them from their backwards religions' or whatever.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Any urge to smash things or ideas you disagree with is deeply human. After ISIS took over parts of Iraq, they did what many have done before them through the millennia of destroying art and beauty because they disagreed. A modern take is the climate activists destroying art because they fear the end of the world. Fear manifests in interesting ways.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    These differ in intent. The climate activists don't hate the underlying art, they just want to do some kind of stunt that gets people in the news. That's why these protests targeted art that was stored behind plexiglass; they wanted a protest medium that was highly disruptive and shocking but caused minimal harm. ISIS on the other had specifically wants the art destroyed because their particular brand of brainworms is opposed to anything that isn't worm-shaped. The goal wasn't to shock people, it was to cause deliberate damage to human culture.
3v1n0 4y ago
Don't worry, it happened the same also to someone else: https://www.thegeographicalcure.com/post/underpants-in-the-sistine-chapel https://www.thegeographicalcure.com/post/underpants-in-the-s...
safety1st 4y ago
The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored is the most convincing reason I've seen to own your own data. For movies it's as easy as obtaining DRM-free copies of the movies you care about, saving them to an SSD, and installing a copy of Plex. Do that with the movies, music and books you love. They are a part of our cultural history. It's almost a guarantee that any copy you don't own and control will at some point in the future be revised. I want the real history not what the powers that be tell me it was. It's virtually guaranteed that Amazon, Netflix et. al. will not store this stuff for you with integrity, it is built into the nature of the system.
- ksec 4y ago
  >The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored So I guess HN, or most Americans ( East or West End ) can now finally agree this is a serious problem? I still remember in 2019 and even in 2021, HN's majority position was that people were too focused on culture war and this is only the minority of people who cares about it.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored is the most convincing reason I've seen to own your own data. No need to even go to censorship, you have people like George Lucas who go out of their way to destroy their previous productions.
  - zx8080 4y ago
    What did Lucas do?
    - yreg 4y ago
      He remastered Star Wars several times and some people are apparently convinced that he 'destroyed' the work by doing that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases#Significant_changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releas...
simonh 4y ago
In general yes, particularly vandalising the paintings is criminal. The thing with movies though is you can have multiple versions just fine. So while I have no interest in ‘updated’ versions it’s not necessarily as visceral an issue. The problem is more with the social pressure and lack of availability of original cuts.
quickthrower2 4y ago
The Overton guillotine?
shafyy 4y ago
I agree. I'm still annoyed that they started censoring It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. For example, they (Hulu) removed one episode where one of the characters does a black face. But the whole point of the show is to surface these social and political issues in a comedic way. They're not endorsing black facing, they're saying it's wrong. That's why it's funny. This also reminds of something the comedian Ricky Gervais often says (I'm paraphrasing): You can joke about everything. The problem is people mistaking the target of the joke with the subject.
- inconceivable 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - felixg3 4y ago
    > if you're going to enjoy racism at least have the balls to be honest about it. otherwise you're just embarrassing yourself. Statements like this make me afraid of the future of culture.
  - srslack 4y ago
    The people in Always Sunny are awful people to be around: comically stupid, ignorant, selfish, sociopathic, repressed, narcissistic, scheming and oblivious. That is the joke. Take a group of morons with the above qualities, and worse, who own a bar in Philly. Hilarity ensues with how awful they are. Like a train wreck. That's the premise. And a further meta joke is on anyone who would "identify" with them.
  - lynx23 4y ago
    Please don't speak for people whoes motivation you probably dont fully understand. "Everyone" is always and per definition wrong, absolute statements like this only show that you are going to far and shouldn't be taken seriously. I am a member of a minority, and I do enjoy jokes about my minority if they're well done and/or hit a nail on the head. Your statement effectively says you dont believe I am a member of "everyone", which is quite condescending.
  - w23j 4y ago
cgio 4y ago
One could argue that removing the clothes and the overpaint is just as wrong. It bears as a good reminder of the puritan era, of its destructive tendencies, and we are in some way still part of that era. It can also be a good whataboutist example when people are shocked that Taliban destroy the faces of ancient statues. Let's not try to obscure the barbarity of our ways. People who are scared of an uncertain future, trying to conceal the past.
- tdehnel 4y ago
  This is a bad argument because it could be used to rationalize preventing any progress whatsoever.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    That statement applies exactly to both censorship and decensorship.
  - cgio 4y ago
    I am not sure what resetting history has to do with progress. I would not be against a new nude statue.
    - tdehnel 4y ago
      In this case, the progress is “we learned that censoring nude statues is wrong, so we stopped doing it.” Would keeping slaves as a reminder of the evils of slavery make sense?
nebulous1 4y ago
This has some similarities but differs in that wrt movies and books, the original is still intact. Also, for the most part none of this is being done due to law, but rather because the owner of the content wants to sell more of it and thinks this is the way to do it. Looked at like that, it's hard to see how you can stop it occurring.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  I don’t think these moves are generally profit motivated vs motivated by true believers or people who see a way to enhance their own power within the decision making process. The main reason I don’t think it’s profit motivated is that you see the exact same sort of culturally imperialist neo-Victorianism in entities without a profit motive like the ACLU or state govt.
aestetix 4y ago
This also happened in 2002 when John Ashcroft became the Attorney General and demanded that "nude" statues in the Department of Justice be covered up. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cover-up-at-justice-department/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cover-up-at-justice-department/ Thankfully his successor fixed this. This latest fad is just the next generation of the same puritanism.
- philwelch 4y ago
  There’s a bit of missing context here where the media went out of their way to deliberately photograph Ashcroft and other DOJ speakers with the nude sculpture in the background. From BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1788845.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1788845.stm > Photographers have gone to great lengths in the past to capture the scantily-clad female statue in the background as the Justice Department's top brass addressed the world's press. … > Hired drapes have previously hung in front of both statues for formal events, such as President George W Bush's visit to name the building after assassinated former attorney-general, Robert Kennedy. … > The drapes are reported to have been hanging since Monday, drawing to a close the sport of photographers who infamously sprawled on the floor to snap the former Attorney General Edwin Meese holding aloft his report on pornography in front of the female statue. The awkward composition of the lead photo in the linked article is a decent example in itself.
ChatGTP 4y ago
One day we will wish the bots told us to fuck off ?
maverick74 4y ago
Totally agree!!! Disney, for example, decided to forbid the reprint of Eisner Award winning "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck"'s last chapter... because it "do not align with their values" (source: https://www.cbr.com/disney-bans-don-rosa-uncle-scrooge-mcduck-stories/ https://www.cbr.com/disney-bans-don-rosa-uncle-scrooge-mcduc... ) how stupid is that?!
samirillian 4y ago
There is a little complexity to the debate, and it really does get down to particulars. 1. Clothes badly painted onto nudes could be seen as itself an interesting/funny cultural artifact, and since it's at a library, you could have signs explaining the history. 2. I have no problem with Confederate statues being torn down or destroyed, since any perceived cultural/historical value is outweighed by other considerations. They are giant public symbols; little signs explaining "these statues were actually erected during Jim Crow and these guys were bad" are too...abstract. 3. Silently revising works of fiction seems especially wrong because we don't even know where the titties are getting painted over. The Roald Dahl edits weren't just removing "ugly" and "fat", they were also removing all reference to Conrad and at one point removing a reference to the color black applied to an inanimate object, a tractor I think.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  The false choice is that you either keep the statues up or you tear them down. The obvious middle ground is to move the art somewhere else.
  - samirillian 4y ago
    I disagree. This happened in my city. A confederate statue was quietly moved to a more welcoming town. To me, this is no solution. I simply don't accept moral equivocation about chattel slavery. All things in moderation, including moderation.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  In the specific case of Confederate statues, a lot of those were cheaply made garbage put up by neo-Confederates to try and glorify their extremely racist history. Sort of like the converse of the moral censorship being complained about here. Instead of censoring a historically notable artistic work that also offends modern sensibilities, they are adding a veneer of artistry and historicality to pretend like not celebrating a bunch of traitors to America would be censorship.
  - 4y ago
everybodyknows 4y ago
There's a specific term for this dysfunction: bowd·ler·ize tr.v. bowd·ler·ized, bowd·ler·iz·ing, bowd·ler·iz·es To remove material that is considered offensive or objectionable from (a book, for example); expurgate. [After Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), who published an expurgated edition of Shakespeare in 1818.] https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=bowdlerize https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=bowdlerize
yboris 4y ago
The example you provide doesn't match a more-reasonable scenario where people would want to alter a work. How about "Breakfast at Tiffany's" which may (or may not) be a good film -- would it be bad if there existed an altered copy of the movie you could watch that tastefully removed / altered (with AI perhaps) the extremely racist parts? The idea I'm arguing for isn't to endorse irreversible erasure of the past, but addition of versions that are updated / edited.
- bluescrn 4y ago
  The problem is that before long, the edited version becomes the only available version. And once we start with these edits, say for blatant racism, do we also have to appease groups who are deeply offended by sexism/misogyny, profanity, blasphemy, nudity, drugs, gambling, alcohol, meat-eating, fossil fuels, and probably more? Better off to leave the work intact, and when necessary just add a content warning up front, to remind people that a creative work was the product of a specific time period and in no way an endorsement of language/behavior that is seen as completely unacceptable today.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    So you're saying it's a slippery slope?
    - bluescrn 4y ago
      Many slopes do turn out to be fairly slippery, despite frequent claims that low-friction inclined surfaces are merely logical fallacies. People complained about the very mild language policing of 'political correctness' way back in the 90s, and look where we are now, rewriting Roald Dahl to purge words like 'fat', and discussing whether we should actively edit the unpleasantness out of more of our cultural history, wondering whether a favourite book will even still tell the same story if I re-read it on Kindle in a few years time.
      - oh_sigh 4y ago
Pxtl 4y ago
That's different because reissuing a modernized version of a classic does not obliterate the classic. If somebody wants to experience it as it was originally created, it can still be made available. As you've rightly observed, censoring the paintings was destructive. Now, this is apart from the moral argument about whether we want to allow rightsholders to offer "modernized" versions of classic works. But it's still notable that the classic work does not cease to exist in this case, which makes it fundamentally different from the one you describe.
- Jiro 4y ago
  > If somebody wants to experience it as it was originally created, it can still be made available. Not unless it's out of copyright.
  - Pxtl 4y ago
    I mean the old media still exists. I still have a copy of Dr Suess' "if I ran the zoo" with the racist bits in it. Laserdisks of prespecialized Star Wars are rare collector's items but they exist. Ideally the rightsholders would still offer the original editions for sale for those interested, but regardless: The original work is just as available as it would be if it had gone out of print, which is a thing that happens to many genre classics.
    - mandmandam 4y ago
      So, if the originals are technically still available, then it's fine for the version that goes into the vast majority of people's minds to be altered as any rights-holder sees fit? Er, what about our cultural heritage? Historical accuracy? Creative intent? The possibility for abuse? Was 1984 just about a guy with a nice job "keeping things in print?" I mean, sure the guy made a lot of edits, with the express intent of manipulating people - but the originals were all around somewhere, so it's fine?
Fatnino 4y ago
Tons of statues and busts from antiquity are missing just their noses for a similar reason.
- morkalork 4y ago
  Noses were obscene and scandalous?
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    No, but knocking the nose off was a sign of disrespect. "you think this guy/God was so great you made a stature of him? Here's what I think <chop>"
- jstarfish 4y ago
  I'd always heard noses and penises (being extrusions) were prone to incidental breakage, so I had to look this one up. Deliberate breakage of the nose seems to be an Egyptian thing.
mbostleman 4y ago
I think what we have going on today is more than simply "weird" or scandalous on the level of nudity, but instead is remembered as the cultural cleansing mechanism that killed tens of millions of people in the 20th century.

madaxe_again 4y ago

I would wager that a decent conservator would be able to “undress” the paintings - they probably went over the top of the old varnish. Even if they didn’t, most touch up work is removable, chemically or mechanically. That said, at this point, the painted on underwear is part of the history, and at least one example of overwrought censorship should be preserved as an artefact of its era.

worrycue 4y ago
Digitalise the censored version so we have a copy. Then remove the censorship so we can see the original as intended.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

hashstring 4y ago

Agree, it’s also naïve to think that we can censor art retrospectively to make it fit a certain standard, because our standard is changing so fast. Best to capture art as a moment through books, sculptures and film and to interpret that moment later on. You could choose however to not display certain things in your library if it doesn’t match your (current) standards, that’s perfectly fine. I think it’s important how you deal with the things that don’t match your standards.

Technotroll 4y ago
Recently there was a controversy about the storage of Christian Krogh's historical painting of Leiv Eiriksson discovering America, which was previously on premanent display at the National Museum in Oslo, Norway. Apparently the argument used to take the painting down was that it is “too colonial.” The irony of the director of the museum being Danish, and the directing curator being Swedish, wasn't lost on most people, as Norway was once ruled by both their respective countries.

onion2k 4y ago

fad-interpretations of what is taboo and scandalous I hope there isn't a time in the future when people see the current wave of anti-racism, anti-slavery, and anti-misogyny as just a silly fad we had in the early 21st century. Although, I guess the people would have said the same about nudity in the mid-1800s...

Xelbair 4y ago
Unless those things go so far that they turn full circle, because it's easy to stop fighting for equality and go for revenge.
- watwut 4y ago
  Good half of people who complain about modern sensitivity are in it for inequality and for revenge. You see that in a way they are perfectly fine with old sensitivity. As long as censorship and exclusion are done the way they have been done in past, they support it.
monero-xmr 4y ago
It’s not that those feelings are wrong, it’s when you decide to alter artistic work based on the current vogue. It’s when you cross the line into censorship.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
You will not get an interesting conversation on these topics on an American discussion board. These topics are a minefield. Plenty of the things which are pushed unconditionally in the US right now should be debatable and debated. Some concepts like cultural appropriation look clearly dubious to my French self. The issue is that having a debate has become impossible. In some circles, you will be quartered for daring to express that there exists differences between men and women which might not be socially constructed.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  > You will not get an interesting conversation on these topics on an American discussion board. These topics are a minefield. That's a problem. Why have people become so afraid to speak their minds? We live in a democracy or not?

Octabrain 4y ago

> so they painted over the breasts and genitals Utterly appalling. Seriously. So sad and pathetic that there are human beings out there with dirtiness on their minds and power to impose their interpretation of reality in something universal as art. Seriously, my blood boiled after reading that.

HeckFeck 4y ago
It only betrays their own insecurities and lack of restraint, doesn't it? If your morals are so strong then you needn't be worried about something you've presumably already experienced in private.
Technotroll 4y ago
The prevailing attitude is that this kind of social control is also widely accepted within certain religions, and nobody has the balls to address it even in the West. Nay, especially in the West.
- mandmandam 4y ago
  Not sure if the "also" is necessary there, considering the above example was already religion based. Also, the West interferes with the rest of the world quite enough - I'd suggest we try to stop exploiting the rest of the world before we 'save them from their backwards religions' or whatever.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Any urge to smash things or ideas you disagree with is deeply human. After ISIS took over parts of Iraq, they did what many have done before them through the millennia of destroying art and beauty because they disagreed. A modern take is the climate activists destroying art because they fear the end of the world. Fear manifests in interesting ways.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  These differ in intent. The climate activists don't hate the underlying art, they just want to do some kind of stunt that gets people in the news. That's why these protests targeted art that was stored behind plexiglass; they wanted a protest medium that was highly disruptive and shocking but caused minimal harm. ISIS on the other had specifically wants the art destroyed because their particular brand of brainworms is opposed to anything that isn't worm-shaped. The goal wasn't to shock people, it was to cause deliberate damage to human culture.

3v1n0 4y ago

Don't worry, it happened the same also to someone else: https://www.thegeographicalcure.com/post/underpants-in-the-sistine-chapel https://www.thegeographicalcure.com/post/underpants-in-the-s...

safety1st 4y ago

The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored is the most convincing reason I've seen to own your own data. For movies it's as easy as obtaining DRM-free copies of the movies you care about, saving them to an SSD, and installing a copy of Plex. Do that with the movies, music and books you love. They are a part of our cultural history. It's almost a guarantee that any copy you don't own and control will at some point in the future be revised. I want the real history not what the powers that be tell me it was. It's virtually guaranteed that Amazon, Netflix et. al. will not store this stuff for you with integrity, it is built into the nature of the system.

ksec 4y ago
>The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored So I guess HN, or most Americans ( East or West End ) can now finally agree this is a serious problem? I still remember in 2019 and even in 2021, HN's majority position was that people were too focused on culture war and this is only the minority of people who cares about it.
ekianjo 4y ago
> The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored is the most convincing reason I've seen to own your own data. No need to even go to censorship, you have people like George Lucas who go out of their way to destroy their previous productions.
- zx8080 4y ago
  What did Lucas do?
  - yreg 4y ago
    He remastered Star Wars several times and some people are apparently convinced that he 'destroyed' the work by doing that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases#Significant_changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releas...

simonh 4y ago

In general yes, particularly vandalising the paintings is criminal. The thing with movies though is you can have multiple versions just fine. So while I have no interest in ‘updated’ versions it’s not necessarily as visceral an issue. The problem is more with the social pressure and lack of availability of original cuts.

quickthrower2 4y ago

The Overton guillotine?

shafyy 4y ago

I agree. I'm still annoyed that they started censoring It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. For example, they (Hulu) removed one episode where one of the characters does a black face. But the whole point of the show is to surface these social and political issues in a comedic way. They're not endorsing black facing, they're saying it's wrong. That's why it's funny. This also reminds of something the comedian Ricky Gervais often says (I'm paraphrasing): You can joke about everything. The problem is people mistaking the target of the joke with the subject.

inconceivable 4y ago
[flagged]
- felixg3 4y ago
  > if you're going to enjoy racism at least have the balls to be honest about it. otherwise you're just embarrassing yourself. Statements like this make me afraid of the future of culture.
- srslack 4y ago
  The people in Always Sunny are awful people to be around: comically stupid, ignorant, selfish, sociopathic, repressed, narcissistic, scheming and oblivious. That is the joke. Take a group of morons with the above qualities, and worse, who own a bar in Philly. Hilarity ensues with how awful they are. Like a train wreck. That's the premise. And a further meta joke is on anyone who would "identify" with them.
- lynx23 4y ago
  Please don't speak for people whoes motivation you probably dont fully understand. "Everyone" is always and per definition wrong, absolute statements like this only show that you are going to far and shouldn't be taken seriously. I am a member of a minority, and I do enjoy jokes about my minority if they're well done and/or hit a nail on the head. Your statement effectively says you dont believe I am a member of "everyone", which is quite condescending.
- w23j 4y ago

cgio 4y ago

One could argue that removing the clothes and the overpaint is just as wrong. It bears as a good reminder of the puritan era, of its destructive tendencies, and we are in some way still part of that era. It can also be a good whataboutist example when people are shocked that Taliban destroy the faces of ancient statues. Let's not try to obscure the barbarity of our ways. People who are scared of an uncertain future, trying to conceal the past.

tdehnel 4y ago
This is a bad argument because it could be used to rationalize preventing any progress whatsoever.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  That statement applies exactly to both censorship and decensorship.
- cgio 4y ago
  I am not sure what resetting history has to do with progress. I would not be against a new nude statue.
  - tdehnel 4y ago
    In this case, the progress is “we learned that censoring nude statues is wrong, so we stopped doing it.” Would keeping slaves as a reminder of the evils of slavery make sense?

nebulous1 4y ago

This has some similarities but differs in that wrt movies and books, the original is still intact. Also, for the most part none of this is being done due to law, but rather because the owner of the content wants to sell more of it and thinks this is the way to do it. Looked at like that, it's hard to see how you can stop it occurring.

AbrahamParangi 4y ago
I don’t think these moves are generally profit motivated vs motivated by true believers or people who see a way to enhance their own power within the decision making process. The main reason I don’t think it’s profit motivated is that you see the exact same sort of culturally imperialist neo-Victorianism in entities without a profit motive like the ACLU or state govt.

aestetix 4y ago

This also happened in 2002 when John Ashcroft became the Attorney General and demanded that "nude" statues in the Department of Justice be covered up. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cover-up-at-justice-department/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cover-up-at-justice-department/ Thankfully his successor fixed this. This latest fad is just the next generation of the same puritanism.

philwelch 4y ago
There’s a bit of missing context here where the media went out of their way to deliberately photograph Ashcroft and other DOJ speakers with the nude sculpture in the background. From BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1788845.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1788845.stm > Photographers have gone to great lengths in the past to capture the scantily-clad female statue in the background as the Justice Department's top brass addressed the world's press. … > Hired drapes have previously hung in front of both statues for formal events, such as President George W Bush's visit to name the building after assassinated former attorney-general, Robert Kennedy. … > The drapes are reported to have been hanging since Monday, drawing to a close the sport of photographers who infamously sprawled on the floor to snap the former Attorney General Edwin Meese holding aloft his report on pornography in front of the female statue. The awkward composition of the lead photo in the linked article is a decent example in itself.

ChatGTP 4y ago

One day we will wish the bots told us to fuck off ?

maverick74 4y ago

Totally agree!!! Disney, for example, decided to forbid the reprint of Eisner Award winning "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck"'s last chapter... because it "do not align with their values" (source: https://www.cbr.com/disney-bans-don-rosa-uncle-scrooge-mcduck-stories/ https://www.cbr.com/disney-bans-don-rosa-uncle-scrooge-mcduc... ) how stupid is that?!

samirillian 4y ago

There is a little complexity to the debate, and it really does get down to particulars. 1. Clothes badly painted onto nudes could be seen as itself an interesting/funny cultural artifact, and since it's at a library, you could have signs explaining the history. 2. I have no problem with Confederate statues being torn down or destroyed, since any perceived cultural/historical value is outweighed by other considerations. They are giant public symbols; little signs explaining "these statues were actually erected during Jim Crow and these guys were bad" are too...abstract. 3. Silently revising works of fiction seems especially wrong because we don't even know where the titties are getting painted over. The Roald Dahl edits weren't just removing "ugly" and "fat", they were also removing all reference to Conrad and at one point removing a reference to the color black applied to an inanimate object, a tractor I think.

mensetmanusman 4y ago
The false choice is that you either keep the statues up or you tear them down. The obvious middle ground is to move the art somewhere else.
- samirillian 4y ago
  I disagree. This happened in my city. A confederate statue was quietly moved to a more welcoming town. To me, this is no solution. I simply don't accept moral equivocation about chattel slavery. All things in moderation, including moderation.
kmeisthax 4y ago
In the specific case of Confederate statues, a lot of those were cheaply made garbage put up by neo-Confederates to try and glorify their extremely racist history. Sort of like the converse of the moral censorship being complained about here. Instead of censoring a historically notable artistic work that also offends modern sensibilities, they are adding a veneer of artistry and historicality to pretend like not celebrating a bunch of traitors to America would be censorship.
- 4y ago

everybodyknows 4y ago

There's a specific term for this dysfunction: bowd·ler·ize tr.v. bowd·ler·ized, bowd·ler·iz·ing, bowd·ler·iz·es To remove material that is considered offensive or objectionable from (a book, for example); expurgate. [After Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), who published an expurgated edition of Shakespeare in 1818.] https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=bowdlerize https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=bowdlerize

yboris 4y ago

The example you provide doesn't match a more-reasonable scenario where people would want to alter a work. How about "Breakfast at Tiffany's" which may (or may not) be a good film -- would it be bad if there existed an altered copy of the movie you could watch that tastefully removed / altered (with AI perhaps) the extremely racist parts? The idea I'm arguing for isn't to endorse irreversible erasure of the past, but addition of versions that are updated / edited.

bluescrn 4y ago
The problem is that before long, the edited version becomes the only available version. And once we start with these edits, say for blatant racism, do we also have to appease groups who are deeply offended by sexism/misogyny, profanity, blasphemy, nudity, drugs, gambling, alcohol, meat-eating, fossil fuels, and probably more? Better off to leave the work intact, and when necessary just add a content warning up front, to remind people that a creative work was the product of a specific time period and in no way an endorsement of language/behavior that is seen as completely unacceptable today.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  So you're saying it's a slippery slope?
  - bluescrn 4y ago
    Many slopes do turn out to be fairly slippery, despite frequent claims that low-friction inclined surfaces are merely logical fallacies. People complained about the very mild language policing of 'political correctness' way back in the 90s, and look where we are now, rewriting Roald Dahl to purge words like 'fat', and discussing whether we should actively edit the unpleasantness out of more of our cultural history, wondering whether a favourite book will even still tell the same story if I re-read it on Kindle in a few years time.
    - oh_sigh 4y ago

Pxtl 4y ago

That's different because reissuing a modernized version of a classic does not obliterate the classic. If somebody wants to experience it as it was originally created, it can still be made available. As you've rightly observed, censoring the paintings was destructive. Now, this is apart from the moral argument about whether we want to allow rightsholders to offer "modernized" versions of classic works. But it's still notable that the classic work does not cease to exist in this case, which makes it fundamentally different from the one you describe.

Jiro 4y ago
> If somebody wants to experience it as it was originally created, it can still be made available. Not unless it's out of copyright.
- Pxtl 4y ago
  I mean the old media still exists. I still have a copy of Dr Suess' "if I ran the zoo" with the racist bits in it. Laserdisks of prespecialized Star Wars are rare collector's items but they exist. Ideally the rightsholders would still offer the original editions for sale for those interested, but regardless: The original work is just as available as it would be if it had gone out of print, which is a thing that happens to many genre classics.
  - mandmandam 4y ago
    So, if the originals are technically still available, then it's fine for the version that goes into the vast majority of people's minds to be altered as any rights-holder sees fit? Er, what about our cultural heritage? Historical accuracy? Creative intent? The possibility for abuse? Was 1984 just about a guy with a nice job "keeping things in print?" I mean, sure the guy made a lot of edits, with the express intent of manipulating people - but the originals were all around somewhere, so it's fine?

Fatnino 4y ago

Tons of statues and busts from antiquity are missing just their noses for a similar reason.

morkalork 4y ago
Noses were obscene and scandalous?
- Fatnino 4y ago
  No, but knocking the nose off was a sign of disrespect. "you think this guy/God was so great you made a stature of him? Here's what I think <chop>"
jstarfish 4y ago
I'd always heard noses and penises (being extrusions) were prone to incidental breakage, so I had to look this one up. Deliberate breakage of the nose seems to be an Egyptian thing.

mbostleman 4y ago

I think what we have going on today is more than simply "weird" or scandalous on the level of nudity, but instead is remembered as the cultural cleansing mechanism that killed tens of millions of people in the 20th century.