Several cult comics in the United States, such as see men Y Batman: White Knightwere censored in Missouri schools, according to a new law, Senate Bill 775, which went into effect on August 28, Actualitté reports.
The Rockwood school district, located on the outskirts of St. Louis, the capital of Missouri, recently offered a list of 22 books that it considers prohibited due to the presence of “explicit sexual elements.”
see men by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and Batman: White Knight by Sean Murphy and Matt Hollingsworth are two main comics, featuring superheroic figures that are darker and more nuanced than traditional comics.
Graphic violence and sex
Both books, notable for their graphic violence, also discuss sex. White knightwhich includes a panel showing that Harley Quinn’s nipple had been censored by DC Comics, features the character in bed with the Joker.
see men, which denounces American imperialism and features a gang of morally dubious superheroes, also tackles the issue of sexual violence head-on. For these reasons, these two comics have been censored.
Other comics censored in Missouri include funny house by Alison Bechdel, a classic of North American literature about the coming out of the lesbian closet of its author, which simultaneously evokes the discovery of her father’s homosexuality.
Another notable comic on this list, genderqueer, about Maia Kobabe’s non-binary coming out. The book, available in France for a few months, has been banned in several American states for being considered pornographic.
Maus banned in January
These events are becoming more and more recurrent in the United States. The board of directors of a school in Tennessee had thus prohibited last January Maus of Art Spiegelman for “inappropriate images and words”.
Considered one of the greatest works in comic book history, this 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel tells the story of Art Spiegelman’s father, a death camp survivor.
Depicting the Holocaust with anthropomorphic characters (mice for Jews, cats for Nazis), this black-and-white graphic novel was banned for inappropriate words like “damn” and images of nude women.
Persepolis Marjane Satrapi’s account of the 1979 Iranian revolution was also expelled from several American schools ten years ago for its “anti-family” speech and sexually explicit references.
Source: BFM TV
