My Essay
... Anti-Christ. When you've become so harsh a judge that you start banning children's books, you know you've gone too far. Since the invention of the printing press, the media has always pushed itself to the limit, constantly outdoing itself for shock value. All degrees of controversy are the result. This sort of disturbance is necessary to earn even a raised eyebrow, as society becomes so jaded that Marilyn Manson is the norm and video games with genocide are cool. And to counteract said controversy, there has always been an opposing force in protest against the more liberal forms of media. There's the FCC, which monitors every single thing that appears on television and the radio. Now don't get me wrong. I am all for moderating these things. Because if the FCC didn't exist, things like rotten.com could show up on the Disney Channel. And who wants to turn on the TV, expecting to see Lizzie McGuire, and ending up seeing slit wrists and decapitated heads? Certainly not I. You see, I understand that censorship is necessary - to a point. For example, Icertainly would not hand to my sister the Satanic Bible, to read at her leisure. The author was completely amoral. But now, when every literary work has to undergo an elaborate check-system, get stretched, cut, twisted, and adorned with 12 stamps of approval to even be considered for publishing, we must sit back a moment and realize that perhaps we have been a little overzealous in our attempts to keep society from running amok. Literature has long been used as a form of self-expression, many believing it art. When you write, you can quite literally do anything you want. Nowhere else can you fabricate entire worlds and people and relationships with nothing but words and a pen. Here is where you can write about your life and experiences, where you can teach others by lending your voice. Maya Angelou spoke out about her life in her book I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Unsurprisingly, her ice was silenced just as Rowling's was, simply because the content contained 'inappropriate situations'. This is absurd. If you wanted to dispose of every inappropriate situation from every book in existence, you'd have to remove the entire Old Testament from the Bible. Refusing to publish something because it is too violent or depressing or different is a violation of human rights. As American citizens, we are all unconditionally entitled to write what we please. Quite obviously, this right has been breached. Amin Baraka was to be the poet loriet at a poetry convention - until the head honchos read the poem he planned to present. He was forced out of position on the basis that his poem was too cr...