As some people may know, not long ago, I helped design a zine for children based on the compilation of artwork, stories and jokes from kids. I did this willingly and gladly when asked.
Anyway, a few hundred copies have been printed (with funds from a grant) and circulated. Somehow, a copy had fallen into the hands of a family with NO sense of humour.
A joke zine + lack of humour = disaster.
They complained about some content and requested that it be removed. The message was passed along through several parties and I was asked to make corrections immediately or pull down the content from my portfolio (as they didn't want any copies with 'inappropriate' content circulating on the internet.)
I am a university student, and I have assignments and my own things to do. I was upset and irritated by the request, but I was also busy and tired at that moment, so I just chose to temporarily remove the offending pages from my website and deal with it later.
Today, I received another email with even MORE things to be modified/removed completely form the magazine. Can I do it in two weeks?
Hell fucking NO.
Firstly, my obligation to handle the design of your magazine was over the moment it was published.
Secondly, these are not 'mistakes,' these are things that children have created, drawn and written. They've had the joy of seeing their work published; to take this small bit of pride away from them...what kind of monsters are you?
Thirdly, from the wording of the emails that I've received, the complaint came from A family. ONE family. Why are we giving in to the paranoia of ONE uptight family and neglecting the joy of the other parents who have seen their own children's works in print?
Fourth, the hard copies have already been printed and circulated. No more copies are going to be printed. What are you hoping to achieve by removing children's work from online sources? What if one of them goes on the internet and sees a revised copy of the zine and notices that their work has been rewritten for them, or worse, removed?
Fifth, humour is almost always offensive. If you don't like it, don't read it. Violence, suicide and stereotyping? Why don't you ban your children from cartoons? God knows how many of us as children have experience Tom getting bashed over the head by Jerry. How about roadrunner leading Wile E Coyote over a cliff?
Here are some examples of content that were advised to be removed/edited:
1. A boy wrote a space adventure. In his story, he mentioned being chased by a sun master who hit him over the head by a baseball bat and knocked him out cold.
Reason: Being hit in the head by a baseball bat is 'too violent' for kids.
Fuck that shit. Let's have some guns!
Can you believe that because of one harmless sentence, the poor boy is going to have either have half his story cut off and replaced with a shitty but inoffensive 'to be continued...' or have his story be COMPLETELY REMOVED? Are you fucking shitting me?
When I received the pdf file containing this boy's story, it was neatly typed out, formatted and even had bloody WORD ART for its title. The boy even spent enough time and effort to look up relavant pictures and clip art to adorn his work. It was one of the few files that I didn't redesign. I just realigned the pictures and gave the story a whole page of its own because I saw the amount of love and effort that went into it.
And now, because of ONE complaint from ONE family, people are willing to take it down? Fuck you and fuck crushing children's spirits for your own sick, perverted sense of justice.
2. ALL blonde jokes, with one specifically mentioned:
There was a blonde who tried to commit suicide. She tied a rope around her waist really tightly.
Then a redhead said: "Aren't you supposed to tie it around your neck?"
The blonde said: "I did, but I couldn't breathe."
Reason: Stereotyping and reference to suicide.
WOW! Double whammy! Making fun of blondes AND talking about killing yourself! Wow I can't let my kid read that cause he'll grow up to be an asshole who kills himself...but wait, that would be doing us a favour, right? One less stereotyping asshole to piss the world off.
Anyway, I was obviously being sarcastic (in case you don't have a sense of humour WHICH YOU'VE ALREADY PROVED.) What I'm trying to say is that children are not stupid like you smug-ass adults like to assume. Children may be curious, but they are generally smart enough to separate fiction from reality. And if they can't, it's YOUR job as the parents to ensure that he/she DOES know how. Don't blame other parties and let others suffer watered-down versions of jokes for your failure to bring up a child who can actually tell right from wrong.
P.s. That joke made me laugh. Hey, it WAS funny!
3. Another kid wrote a story. In the first sentence, he described himself walking to EB Games (a video game store.) He then wrote: "Nobody was there but a nerd checking wii games."
Reason: 'Nerd' is offensive. Please replace with a more appropriate word, eg. 'boy'
What the fuck.
'Nerd is a term that refers to an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit.' - Wikipedia
Stereotyping, my arse. He even complimented the boy saying he was intelligent. Bah. But seriously, nerds are a socially acceptable stereotype these days; some people even take pride in being called a nerd or a geek. I refer to my bf as 'my geek' and he doesn't give a shit. If you don't use the term in a derogatory way, I don't see a problem with it.
Furthermore, they said to replace the word with a more 'appropriate' term, for example, 'boy.' If that isn't sexist, I don't know what is. If you can be outraged by a child using the word 'nerd' in a contextually appropriate way in a story, well, I can be 10 fucking times more outraged by your implication that only boys play games. Fuck you and your close-mindedness.
***
Those were only 3 examples from the emails; there are more requests to edit/remove content, mostly anal stuff like:
'violence'
(a paragraph written a kid being surrounded by bullies and getting bashed)
and 'references to homicide'
(a comic of someone asking Homer Simpson to strangle him, and the latter obliging; a caption of a clay sculpture of a man in a sombrero pushing a woman - 'Why did the man push his wife off a cliff?' 'Tequila!')
Are you fucking kidding me? Did you not even chuckle?
Is the girl who made the clay sculpture + joke going to push her boyfriend off a cliff when she grows up? And then realize her childhood joke isn't valid cause her boyfriend is a 'him' whereas her joke said 'tequila' (to kill her) ?
Lighten up.
GROW up.
Your children need a childhood with some humour, or else god knows they'll grow up to be uptight old farts like you. Uptight old farts who want to take away an ill child's little ray of pride and happiness in having their work appreciated by the masses, by asking it to be taken down or rewritten for them. I'm not even sure which is the worse insult.
Fuck you. Fuck all of you.
I'm glad you weren't my parents and didn't get the chance to completely ruin my childhood and alienate me from the world of humour.
You can get someone else to do your dirty work. If you are going to make kids miserable and wash their hands every half hour with antibacterial gel, get someone else to do it.
I'm having no part in it.
My job is done.
I refused payment for the initial job because I did it for the kids, no one else.
When I was a kid, I'd be delighted to see my work in print and available for other people to enjoy. I remember reading Mickey Mouse magazine and K-Zone and feeling excited seeing drawings and stories by other kids, hoping one day I could be part of it too.
Now, you're expecting me to go against my principles and expecting me to do it for FREE. Don't fucking take me for granted. I am an art student, but I don't need your 'opportunities' and I don't need you.
If you want a pixelmonkey or photoshop slave, ask any other willing person out there; I'm sure they can aid in you in destroying children's dreams. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of Photoshop can remove pages and block out text. I'm certainly not going to.
To hell with your politically correctness.
P.s. I am raging at the family who made the demands to have the content moderated or taken down. Although I am also angry at the party who chose to give into their demands, this post is not aimed at them. And no, I will not do the editing even if you paid me.
P.p.s I'd like to make it clear that if the editing involved mistakes that I made, I would do it immediately without complaint. It is my responsibility to do so. I even edited the content with only minor grumbling a few times during the work period, due to your mistakes that were found during content moderation and multiple spell/grammar checks (some usage of punctuation and vocabulary were still wrong in the end, by the way.) However, I am definitely NOT responsible for the aftercare of your product, especially over something so trivial that does not in any way concern my failure in performing the job.
P.p.p.s I use the term 'job' loosely as this was purely voluntary and I was not paid for any part of it.
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