Watch: Banned Books Week and the History of Comic Book Censorship

“Banned Books Week: Comic Books and Literary Censorship”
was originally released on Sept. 24, 2014. The original text is
below. 

“Comic books are being challenged with greater frequency than
they ever have been,” says Charles Brownstein, executive director
of the Comic Book Legal
Defense Fund. “We are still fighting age-old stigmas that
comics are low value speech.”

Reason TV’s Tracy Oppenheimer sat down with Brownstein at San
Diego Comic-Con to discuss challenges to comic books today, and the
history of censorship over the medium.

“Sixty years ago, this year, the United States government
actually placed comics on trial in Senate subcommittee hearings
around a moral panic that said that comics were a leading cause of
juvenile delinquency,” says Brownstein. “When you look back at that
history, you see that it mirrors what has happened with video
games, heavy metal, and other aspects of popular culture in recent
years.”

Comic books are the focus of this year’s Banned Books Week, which runs
from Sept. 21-27. The website describes the event as the
following:

Banned Books Week is the national book community’s annual
celebration of the freedom to read. Hundreds of libraries and
bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of
censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a
variety of events. The 2014 celebration will be held September
21-27.

Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden
surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores
and libraries. More than 11,300 books have been challenged since
1982 according to the American Library Association. There were 307
challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2013,
and many more go unreported. The 10 most challenged titles of 2013
were:

1. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav
   Pilkey
   Reasons: Offensive language, unsuited for age group,
   violence

2. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
   Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age
   group, violence

3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time
   Indian, by Sherman Alexie
   Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, offensive language, racism,
   sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

4. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James
   Reasons: Nudity, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually
   explicit, unsuited to age group

5. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
   Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group

6. A Bad Boy Can Be Good for A Girl, by Tanya Lee
   Stone
   Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, nudity, offensive language,
   sexually explicit

7. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
   Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, unsuited to age
   group

8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen
   Chbosky
   Reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, homosexuality, sexually explicit,
   unsuited to age group

9. Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
   Reasons: Occult/Satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint,
   sexually explicit

10. Bone (series), by Jeff Smith
    Reasons: Political viewpoint, racism, violence

About 7 minutes. Produced by Tracy Oppenheimer. Camera by Zach
Weissmueller and Alexis Garcia. Music byEric Skiff, “All of
Us.”