Daily Archives: July 6, 2020

Its hard to imagine a world where Banned Book Club could be more relevant than it is right now. If its not clear from the title, the graphic novel revolves around a group of young people who meet to read and discuss books banned by their government. Its set in South Korea in the early 1980s, a time that most Americans are entirely ignorant of but may find upsettingly familiar. Not so far removed from the Korean war and under the weight of a military regime that used censorship and violence to maintain control, a group of students gather in secret to read titles like Pedagogy of the Oppressed and The Feminine Mystique.

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Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada

Iron Circus Comics

At the center of the story is Kim, a young woman caught between the needs of her parents (and their small restaurant) and her desire for more education and opportunity. As she meets and befriends the rest of the students in the titular club, she realizes that not only is there a whole world beyond what she knows, but also that her government has been lying to herand everyone elsewithout consequence. Several of Kims friends are targeted by the government and subjected to surveillance, arrest, and worse.

Even if it were just based on the history of the Fifth Republic and the abuses meted out on Korean people, Banned Book Club would be a powerful and illuminating read. What makes the book even more potent is its basis in the real life of writer Kim Hyun Sook and her friends. Kim worked with her husband Ryan Estrada on the story and script, relying not just on her memory but also extensive research and interviews. Estradas name may be familiar to fans of his Poorcraft series from Iron Circus, his self-published Broken Telephone comic, or his excellent guides on how to read Korean that have been floating around online for a while.

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Kims very real understanding of the dangers and threats from this time period, paired with Estradas expertise in pacing and comedic beats, have resulted in something special, and Ko Hyung-Jus art brings it to vibrant life. The book has a lot in common with manga and feels far closer to that than traditional American comics; its printed in grayscale and characters are drawn relatively simple, with some features slightly exaggerated. Hyun Sook and her friends are young and enthusiastic, and the expressions Hyung-Ju depicts show how, even in the face of all-too-prevalent danger, they maintain idealistic verve. Its hard not to feel energized and encouraged by the books insistence that the world must bend towards justice, and it ends on a realistic but hopeful note by providing context for current South Korean politics.

Banned Book Club joins a growing category of books that tackle not just history, but the insight it can offer to current events. It often seems like people are using the term unprecedented to refer to whats been happening in the U.S., politically speaking; but there is a lot of precedent to be had, if readers go looking. Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes was published this month as well, and both books offer powerful insight into the relationship between censorship and violence, as well as the threat that a lack of information poses to a people.

Originally posted here:
Banned Book Club gives deeply personal context to government censorship and violence - The A.V. Club

From Michael Corleone to Tony Soprano, on-screen mobsters are far more violent than virtuous.

Yet despite dealings in organised crime and their ability to justify murder as "business" these men, and their families, identify as Catholics.

Baptisms, confessions and other religious sacraments are strewn throughout The Godfather trilogy and the HBO series The Sopranos.

You might think that religion like pasta or Italian curse words is just another tool that screenwriters use to emphasise the mobsters' migrant backgrounds.

But there's more to it than that. As one film critic argues, Catholicism was inserted into this violence-laden genre to get movies past American censors in the early 20th century.

Critic and author Martha Nochimson says the story starts in the 1930s with the introduction of the Motion Picture Production Code, commonly known as the Hays Code.

These moral guidelines prohibited films from featuring nudity, drug trafficking, the ridicule of clergy, and other content deemed profane.

"The original Catholicism was really grafted onto the gangster movie by the censors," she points out.

"They said the gangster had to be punished at the end, and there should be some moral spokesperson, preferably a Catholic priest, in the meanwhile."

The 1938 picture Angels with Dirty Faces typified this morality-based model.

The film depicted the friendship of a hardened felon, played by James Cagney, and a Catholic priest, who sought to stop youths from following a path of crime.

But Dr Nochimson says the Code's attempts to sanitise mobster movies weren't successful.

"The audiences did not identify at all with the moral spokesperson, they identified and this is a problem with the gangsters," she says.

James Martin SJ, a Jesuit priest based in New York City, says audiences now expect these kinds of storylines to involve Catholicism.

"Most of the mob movies that people are familiar with The Godfather, Goodfellas, The Irishman, most recently are about the Italian mob in the United States, which is largely Catholic," he says.

"The Italian-American experience was centred around the Church for the immigrants in the 1900s, right all the way up to 1950, 1960.

"And by now it's kind of a trope ... I think people expect them to go to church."

Despite being a fan of The Godfather and The Sopranos, Fr Martin points out that fictional depictions of mobsters are often laden with racial stereotypes.

"I think the difficulty for a lot of Italian-Americans, like myself, is the portrayal of, 'If you're from Italy you're from the Mafia,'" he says.

James Fisher, an emeritus professor of theology and American Studies at Fordham University, says the role of religion in these films reveals something more about Italian-American life.

For example, in the 1940s the era at the beginning of The Godfather the traditionally Italian neighbourhoods of New York City enabled first and second-generation immigrants to "transplant the values of the old world to the new".

He contrasts this with the late 1990s, when The Sopranos began airing.

"There was a tremendous exodus of Italian-Americans from those neighbourhoods in lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and East Harlem to places like New Jersey," he says.

"Over time, the Italian-American customs that had been so tightly reinforced by the life of these close-knit neighbourhoods, they all kind of dissolve."

While Tony Soprano may be a less observant Catholic than Michael Corleone at least in terms of church attendance religious rituals, figures and structures are still omnipresent in The Sopranos.

The children are sent to Catholic schools, the Virgin Mother is regularly invoked with cries of "Madone!" (Madonna), and when men are "made" (or inducted into the mobster family), they say their oath before a card of St Paul.

"They haven't thrown away all the [Catholic] structure, but the structure is empty," explains Dr Nochimson.

She says Carmela Soprano, Tony's wife, has a particularly interesting relationship with religion.

Throughout the show, Carmela wrestles with the knowledge that she's an accessory to organised crime and her desire to renounce evil. When times are bad, she prays and goes to confession.

But despite being a married woman, she also has a "thing" for the local priest and, in a heated scene during the first season, shares a spiritual-meets-sexual encounter with Father Intintola.

"Allen Coulter directed this episode and he told me ... he directed it like a parody of a porn movie," says Dr Nochimson.

In the scene, Fr Intintola gives Carmela communion in front of a blazing fire. We see an extreme close-up of her tongue and lips as she takes the holy wafer and wine.

"What she does in this episode is what she does with Catholicism all the way through," says Dr Nochimson.

"She uses it as a bridge to satisfying wants and desires that, in the Christian faith and in all major faiths, have been classified as sin."

Carmela Soprano's storyline isn't the only one where sacred rites clash with selfish and sinful objectives.

One of the most iconic scenes from The Godfather splices Michael Corleone at the baptism of his nephew promising to be a good Catholic, renouncing Satan with the brutal murders of the five mobster family heads.

For Fr Martin, it's an image that's difficult to get out of his head even in deeply sacred moments.

"Every time I do a baptism, and I say, 'Do you reject Satan?' ... I'm focussed on the baptism, but I think about that scene, because I saw that scene long before I was a priest," he says, laughing.

"It's a marvellous bit of filmmaking ... it's life versus death, water and blood, so there's a lot of heavy symbolism there."

Fr Martin has another perspective on mobster films, having actually played a role in one appearing as a priest in Martin Scorsese's The Irishman.

The 2019 film chronicles the life of an Irish truck driver-turned-hitman (Frank Sheeran, played by Robert De Niro) who works for an Italian mobster.

And Fr Martin says it's a movie that deals with Catholicism in a more sophisticated way.

"I think there is a sense of repentance, remorse and regret that I didn't see in some of the other films," he says.

"I mean, Michael Corleone doesn't ever seem to be upset about what he's doing. It's just business.

"At the end of The Irishman, no one wants to be Robert De Niro's character he's alone, his family has rejected him, he's sick, everyone's dead. It's not glamorising these people at all."

Originally posted here:
Why on-screen mobsters, from The Godfather to The Sopranos, are so obviously Catholic - ABC News

The Japanese game ratings board censors an inappropriate scene in The Last of Us 2 involving controversial new character Abby.

The Last of Us 2 is quite easily one of the most brutal and graphic video games ever made, with realistic visuals lending extra weight to the terrible violence that's depicted in the game consistently from start to finish.The Last of Us 2 takes its violence a step further than most games, having enemies scream out in pain, call each other's names, and more. However,The Last of Us 2's extreme level of violence isn't the reason why the Japanese version of the game is censored.

WhileThe Last of Us 2 is significantly violent, the game also features some sexual content. In fact, there is an explicit scene in the game that shows two characters having sex, and it's this scene that's been censored in the Japanese version of the game.

RELATED: The Last of Us 2 Director Neil Druckmann Responds to Game's Internet Hate

Please note that this article will have some spoilers forThe Last of Us 2.

Click here to see the censored scene.

The censored scene in question happens fairly late in The Last of Us 2. Abby goes to talk to Owen at the aquarium, they argue, and then get into a bit of a fight. The two of them then start kissing and eventually have sex, with most versions ofThe Last of Us 2 showing nudity and even some of the act itself. However, the Japanese version ofThe Last of Us 2 cuts away shortly after the kissing starts, fading to black and picking up a bit later in the story.

The reason whyThe Last of Us 2 was censored in Japan is due to the country's game ratings board, CERO. CERO prohibits video games from depicting explicit sexual content, meaning the Abby and Owen scene was out of bounds.

In future, it's possible that CERO will become more lenient when it comes to this kind of content in video games. As the video game industry has matured, sex scenes in games have become more common, with the argument made that if movies and television can depict sex, then video games should be able to do so as well. There once was a time when stuff like this would result in a game being slapped with an Adults Only rating, but that is no longer the case.

The Last of Us 2 is available now, exclusively for PS4.

MORE: The Last of Us 2: The Ethics of Misleading Trailers

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Dalton Cooper is an editor for Game Rant who has been writing about video games professionally since 2011. Having written thousands of game reviews and articles over the course of his career, Dalton considers himself a video game historian and strives to play as many games as possible. Dalton covers the latest breaking news for Game Rant, as well as writes reviews, guide content, and more.

Read more here:
The Last of Us 2 Censors Abby Scene in Japan | Game Rant - GameRant

China has a very strict Internet censorship policy, better known as the Great Firewall of China, that prevents the countrys citizens from accessing global websites and applications.

While users can still access some of these websites and apps by using VPNs; it is not accessible by the general public. Some of these websites are popular social networking platforms we use daily and some include news and media websites.

The Great Firewall of China is a combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the Chinese government that tracks and censors all forms of domestic internet.

Briefing

The Great Firewall also control which keywords can be searched and blocked popular memes like the Winnie The Pooh when internet users compared the Chinese President, Xi Jinping to the popular cartoon bear.

Due to the Firewall, many Chinese alternatives such as Baidu, Weibo and others have become successful that filled the void for these popular social media websites.

Heres a list of every website that Chinas Great Firewall has blocked in the country:

From Google services to YouTube to the basic search engine website, everything has been blocked by China since 2010 and still remains inaccessible to date. One cant even access Google Maps in the country if you are visiting and has to rely on the local GPS services.

The country banned Google and its products in a move likely to control the content. The Chinese authorities blocked more websites as the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre approached and hasnt changed since then.

Unsplash/konkarampelas

Facebook was blocked in China in 2009 as Xinjiang independence activists used Facebook as a part of their communications network to stage protests in the country.

In order to get unbanned, Facebook is now working on a censorship project for China. The website will allow a third party to control and regulate content on Facebook that will help the social media website do business in China again. Other apps owned by Facebook like WhatsApp have also been banned to prevent the spread of information in the country.

Wikipedia was blocked by China in early 2004 ahead of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The website was later restored without political articles, however, all versions of the website were permanently banned in April 2019.

The website hosts content surrounding Taiwans independence that seemed objectionable by the Chinese Government.

Unsplash/lukevz

Instagram was blocked by Chinese authorities when images of the Umbrella Revolution going on in Hong Kong started to appear on the platform.

The Chinese Government feared the pro-democracy posts on the platform regarding the Hong Kong protests would influence sentiments in the mainland as well.

Unsplash/Yucel Moran

Twitter has been blocked in the country since 2009 and resulted in the launch of Weibo as an alternative. There have been cases in the past where Chinese citizens have been sentenced to one year in a labour camp for retweeting content deemed objectionable by the Chinese authorities.

Washington Post also reported in 2019 that state security officials would visit its users in China and order them to delete tweets or entire accounts.

Unsplash/Sushioutlaw

Media websites like The New York Times, Washington Post, HuffPost, The Guardian, Daily Mail, amongst many others, have also been banned in the country. The websites have been banned to prevent Chinese citizens from reading any news that is critical of China and its policies.

These are only some of the websites that have been blocked by Chinese authorities, however, there are plenty more that you can check out in its entirety here.

Photo: Unsplash/konkarampelas (Main Image)

View original post here:
6 Apps & Websites Blocked By China As Part Of The Countrys Internet Censorship Policy - MensXP.com

Its a family affair over in Turkey. That is that states top officials seem to be once again pitting themselves against a majority of the countrys population. Online.

And this is happening in a state where top echelons of power are what you might generously call a bunch of control enthusiasts.

Its an unnerving sight perhaps to those accustomed to at least a formal semblance of a separation of family and state.

(Think of your president or whoever might be the top authority shuttering access to online networks just because somebody insulted a member of their family. If you just cant see it congratulations, you might actually live in a democracy.)

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But back in Turkey President Erdogan is fighting political opponents trying to provoke him on the internet. And according to reports they seem to be very much so succeeding.

Namely, Turkeys president and his authorities are fending off devilish social media users by imposing internet censorship and likely real-world consequences, such as jail time, as a legitimate way to protect Erdogans family honor.

The triggering event is also where the plot thickens. Turkeys finance minister, Berat Albayrak who conveniently happens to be Erdogans son-in-law on Tuesday took to Twitter to announce that he and one of Erdogans daughters had just welcomed their fourth child.

But some internet users understood this as a cue to question the paternity of the child. Likely just for the lols.

Well instead of taking it that way the sequence of events sent Turkey a NATO member and EU-membership candidate into yet another digital censorship tailspin.

As per Turkeys president:

We will keep chasing these cowards who attack a family and the values they believe represented by them through a baby.

That said many of us born into totalitarian/cult-of-personality regimes are capable of sniffing them out as soon as we set our eyes on them and this further quote from Erdogan happens to be very unsettling:

These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control.

And Erdogan is warning that new legislation might be adopted that would force (Western) tech companies registered in the country to become legally accountable to Ankara as business entities.

But lets just wait as the likes of Facebook, YouTube, etc, are probably doing just now and see how all this verbal bravado actually translates into any real-world action.

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Turkeys Erdogan plans to censor the internet after family member insulted online - Reclaim The Net