‘I’m offended’ is not an argument

by Grania Spingies

On my way to work this morning I saw this go by in my Twitter feed:

A college student staged a protest over the graphicness of the graphic novels in graphic novel class http://t.co/rq7ASX48No

— L.A. Times Books (@latimesbooks) June 17, 2015

My eyebrows raised a little, not the least because Paul Levitz (DC Comics president) once wrote:

“The Sandman became the first extraordinary success as a series of graphic novel collections, reaching out and converting new readers to the medium, particularly young women on college campuses…“

The Sandman series is a pastiche of genres such as horror and fantasy, full of religious and cultural references, and constitutes a multi-volume story of the eponymous Sandman “Dream” who is the anthropomorphised  lord of the realm of dreams. The stories are filled with supernatural entities, violence, betrayal, history, legends, angels, demons, lovers, justice, judgement, death and love, as well as Dream’s siblings Death, Delirium, Desire, Destiny etc. You see the general pattern here.

It’s certainly not to everyone’s taste, but the same can be said of any comic book, or indeed novel of any genre. The series also employs the talents of a host of artists whose styles vary greatly. Although I prefer Gaiman’s “written” novels to his graphic novels, The Sandman series is certainly a rich canvas to explore and I am not surprised that they have turned up in college English courses. However, I am not here to defend Gaiman’s work, as neither he nor his work needs my justification to exist or be read and discussed.

Redland Daily Facts reports that a student is protesting their inclusion in her English Literature course:

“It was shocking,” Shultz said. “I didn’t expect to open the book and see that graphic material within. I expected Batman and Robin, not pornography.”

I’m glad she hasn’t spotted the reckless child endangerment implicit in, say, Frank Miller’s rather good Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, let alone the (completely non-sexual) full body hug between a naked, wounded Bruce Wayne and the underage female Robin, ‘cos then we’re all going to be trouble (see below):

She doesn’t make a sound. Good soldier, good soldier.

An aging Batman and new sidekick Robin, aka Carrie, on discovering they are not dead after a brutal encounter with the baddies.

Ironically, Dark Knight was well aware of the self-appointed moral arbiters of society, and there are several sequences in the novel that poke fun at experts pontificating on the negative social impact of The Batman.

However, back to Dream of the Endless and the allegations of pornography. Well, the books certainly contain images of violence and death and sex—themes that are fairly typical in practically every novel or play ever produced since humans first started writing fiction. Or history, come to think of it. And of course, graphic novels are, by their very nature, graphic. Whether they are pornographic is up for interpretation. After all, one woman’s porn is another woman’s Sunday afternoon entertainment. They are certainly not intended as pornographic though; nudity and sex, where it occurs, is integral to the plot. It’s graphically depicted if only because I don’t think that any graphic artist/novelist has managed to envisage a way of drawing in a non-graphic way yet. I’ll put up a couple of examples beneath the fold. They are certainly NSFW, although I would maintain these are pretty far from being pornography.

Still, I don’t object to Shultz finding it offensive, or making her thoughts on the subject public. She is completely entitled to do that. This is the bit that bothers me:

“At least get a warning on the books,” Shultz said. “At most I would like the books eradicated from the system. I don’t want them taught anymore. I don’t want anyone else to have to read this garbage.”

Once again we have someone deciding that because they don’t like something, no-one else should be exposed to it. Of course, once again, I’m not arguing that she has no right to express this opinion. I have a problem with her proposed solution which is to suppress a book and deny it to all other students doing that course.

This isn’t a high school; it is a tertiary institution. While many of the students are undoubtedly still quite young (Shultz is 20), they are presumably all above the age of consent, old enough to marry, old enough to join the military and die for their country, old enough to drive a car, and (most of them) old enough to vote. It is curious that she thinks that books containing fairly commonplace adult themes are too adult for her peers.

The other three novels she objected to were “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel; “Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1” by Brian Vaughan; and “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi. I haven’t read them all, but I have read the autobiographical Persepolis – it’s a fascinating account of life in Iran during and after the Revolution, and the relegation of women to the status of second-class citizen as the national government moved away from “Westernisation” and promoted the Islamification of dress and behaviour instead.

This scene is of the author as a child, the adults are her parents discussing the aftermath of a rally to protest the imposition of the veil on women.

I can’t imagine why anyone would want this book removed from a college course. But again, whether one likes the novel or not, there is a huge leap between finding something offensive and deciding that nobody else should read it or discuss it.

Let me bring the subject closer to home. I’m done with discussing the subject of abortion. I live in a country where it is still functionally banned, and I’ve yet to hear a coherent argument from any anti-choice advocate on why it is morally sound to force a woman to bear a child against her will. I find listening to the medically inaccurate and morally dubious arguments of anti-choicers on why a woman can be reduced to a breathing incubator nauseating—to the point where I don’t want to hear the stuff ever again. But it has never occurred to me to suggest that those who wish to ban abortion should be silenced. There are multiple reasons why this would be wrong: for one, this debate can be won only if the nay-sayers are challenged and debunked. For another, it is an act of extreme egotism to insist that your version of what is right is the only version that deserves to be heard.

Perhaps the most compelling reason why books and ideas should not be censored is this: who do we trust in society to make those decisions for us? I would hope that we trust nobody but ourselves to judge what we wish to read and think about and debate.

And below the fold, a couple of NSFW images from The Sandman series. I promise you, you will not go blind.

Both of these are from The Sandman: Endless Nights. In this one the protagonist of the story visits the local village witch (and purveyor of dubious love potions) for advice on how to win the heart of the village Casanova. She bribes her with sausages. Suggestive, sure. Porn? Your mileage may vary. (No, the picture doesn’t extend any lower).

The next is from a tale of a count who cannot die because he has locked Death out of his island, and has locked himself into a daily cycle of excess and debauchery and then penitence (confession and then self-flagellation). One of the points of the story is that life eventually ceases to have meaning without death and the count has trapped himself in a nightmare existence until the story’s protagonist unwittingly opens a way for Death.

The hooded character is not Death, it’s a monk come to hear the confessions.

Of course these are single cells out of context, the images may be violent and explicit; but they are not gratuitous. But even this is somewhat misleading. The average page in a Sandman novel looks more like this:

or like this:

or like this: