I am especially confused on how arbitrarily the censorship is applied. I could maybe understand (but not be in favor of, of course) a law that made depicting any crime illegal. But this will obviously never happen; fantasizing about murder and terrorism and depicting it in great detail is a recipe for a blockbuster film. As soon as it's having sex with someone below a certain age, though... then you can't even read a book about it!
I'd like to write some sarcastic reason for this, but I can't even think of one. I have a feeling that "one nation under God" has something to do with it, though.
According to the article, both textual and visual depictions are still legal if they serve "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". What seems problematic is deciding that a Hollywood blockbuster is art, while anime is not.
Exactly, it seems very likely that he could be acquitted in higher court on the basis that the comics serve 'serious artistic value,' but again, it is easy to see that a 40 year old man will not risk 15 years in prison when he can be out in one, guaranteed.
There's been a lot of discussion about this over time. Take Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, for example. It's frankly some of the best prose I have ever read, ever.
The book is written from the perspective of a pedofile lusting after a young girl. Stanley Kubrik's film of the movie in 1962 won an academy award. There was an immense ammount of controversy surround the movie and the book, and they still are. Art or obscenity? We'll be having this discussion for years to come.
One of the few movies where I consider the (1997) remake to be superior to the original. With the absolutely creepy scene where a conversation is punctuated by insects getting bug-zapped.
Neither movie contains anything explicit beyond kissing, as I recall. But there's no doubt what's going on.
I'm not sure how solid it is either, but for text there are at least some more constraints on what Congress could ban. Fanny Hill (1748) is a very explicit novel about the sexual exploits of a 15-year-old girl, and despite being frequently banned, it was ruled protected by the First Amendment in the U.S. in 1966: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_v._Massachusetts
I'd like to write some sarcastic reason for this, but I can't even think of one. I have a feeling that "one nation under God" has something to do with it, though.