December 2008
artillery
Banned and Recovered
Artists Respond to Censorship
By Dewitt Cheng
Most of the almost 40 invited artists in Oakland selected one banned book to interpret,although a handful chose to explore the broader topic of censorship. A few examples/excerpts will have to synopsize the sprawling, novelistic whole. The artworks about censorship include Broom’s Words, which superimposes on empty (censored) picture frames a warning to “young girls and sometimes married women” to beware Madame Bovary’s “seduction of the senses and feelings”; the exasperation of a Brooklyn eighthgrader who capably distinguishes between a racist book and one that depicts racism (Huckleberry Finn); the indignation of a parent over the use of “goddam” in The Catcher in the Rye, asking “How the hell the teacher got” the novel; and Pope Benedict’s comments on the “subtle seductions” of the Harry Potter books that “deeply distort Christianity.”
