Not in Front of the Children
'Indecency,' Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
From Huckleberry Finn to Harry Potter, from Internet filters to the v-chip, censorship exercised on behalf of children and adolescents is often based on the assumption that they must be protected from “indecent” information that might harm their development—whether in art, in literature, or on a Web site. But where does this assumption come from, and is it true? In Not in Front of the Children, Marjorie Heins explores the fascinating history of “indecency” laws and other restrictions aimed at protecting youth. From Plato’s argument for rigid censorship, through Victorian laws aimed at repressing libidinous thoughts, to contemporary battles over sex education in public schools and violence in the media, Heins guides us through what became, and remains, an ideological minefield. With fascinating examples drawn from around the globe, she suggests that the “harm to minors” argument rests on shaky foundations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wouldn't Edward Lear have been startled to learn that in 1998 his poem "The Owl and the Pussycat" wasn't available on many school library computers because obscenity-sensitive Web searches had targeted the word "pussy"? Heins (Sex, Sin and Blasphemy: A Guide to America's Censorship Wars) argues potently that the age-old idea of protecting children from "corrupting" influences which can be traced at least as far back as Plato's Republic has reached dangerous proportions in the U.S. Constructing a history of child protection movements and legal precedents (from the Supreme Court Butler and Roth decisions in the 1950s to lawsuits brought by the ACLU and the American Library Association to remove state mandated Internet filters from public libraries in the 1990s), Heins charts evolving concepts of childhood, based on such diverse sources as Philippe Ari s's Centuries of Childhood and SIECUS reports. She points to a new wave of social and sexual puritanism engendered by the political and Christian right, which takes a variety of forms, including Wendy Shalit's 1999 A Return to Modesty and groups such as MOMS (Mothers Organized for Moral Stability). In tackling the issue of the possibly deleterious effect of sexual or violent materials on children, she refers to everyone from Piaget, Rousseau and Freud to Todd Gitlin and Carol Gilligan, and touches on events like New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's offensive against the Sensation art show. Heins's historical argument makes an important contribution to the literature of civil liberties and child psychology.
