Why Censorship Ruins Art

As this term at GCE is coming to a close, the third and final Action Project for the Fall 2015 term is all about an artist's statement. We use art to convey a message that we stand for and back it up with Rhetorical elements, devices, and appeals. But this art isn't just visual art, it can go to poems or even fashion, anything goes as art is such a wide medium that includes auditory and/or visual aspects. It was challenging to find the right topic on what to speak about, as I knew I wanted to use visuals to convey the message, but thinking of something I could passionately speak about what tough. Then when the idea of art censorship struck, I thought it was something I could use to my advantage in the best way. Overall, I was proud of the ironic art piece I made, which you can view just down below, along with my artist's statement.

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Art censorship is only acceptable under few circumstances, such as when broadcasting or displaying some medium from the past towards an audience of children. Other than that, it’s practically criminal to unreasonably censor art that was never intended to be child-friendly. Art, whether it be painting or animation, song or movie, has an intended effect upon its audience. I myself am a high student that’s greatly engaged in the arts, mainly visual, so I know what it feels like to have your work defiled by others, without consent, just to meet their own personal wants or needs. Art is a form of speech, as you’re sending out a message or tone that you heavily believe in, which is why censorship can be disrespectful to the artist. There’s even plenty of censorship or bans that blatantly destroys a positively intended message. In the Utah State University, some student made over 900 chalk drawing of hearts with anti-abortion messages inside of them. The police ordered them to clear it all up as it was considered vandalism, thus it followed under an act of censorship.

Now when someone’s hard work to exercise their freedom of speech and spread a good message is censored like that, can you really stay behind that idea? There’s allot of art out there that’s not intended for young ages, whether it’s visual or not. Just think of censored lyrics or poems that lose meaning when you’re forced to take out important aspects of the song or writing. Same goes with art. When it’s censored or banned, it’s automatically losing meaning or the artist is being stripped of their first amendment. There are some pluses to art censorship like making something safe for all audiences, but what if there’s a specific tone that’s wanted to be set by the creator? Is it really justified to censor something by destroying its message just to make it alright for children to see?

That’s why I’ve made this art piece, ironically, you have a bloody, gorey figure pointing down at the word “censorship” with his middle figure, meanwhile, a female graffiti artist is making word art with an obvious curse word, thus, tying together the message of disapproving censorship. This is meant to have an aggressive feel to it, as it should make you feel angry! Just think about you, you’re passionately speaking about an issue that needs more exposure, and as you’re emphasizing the seriousness of it, someone deems it unworthy for the public eye. Wouldn’t it infuriate you if your music, art, book, speech, poem, or simple comment was smacked out of existence by someone because they think others will take it offensively? So using a 0.9mm #2 lead pencil (Bic), and of course standard printing paper (8.25in x 11.75in), along with a simple eraser that’s on the mechanical pencil, I’ve made a visual art piece that demonstrates what exactly censorship takes away.

Anti-Censorship, VG, 2015

And this isn’t just a modern topic about our current generation of art, think about every single image that represent the bible, or even just lines of text. Hell is a realm in which corrupt souls are damned to after death. That’s a completely serious tone as it infers that Hell is a place of suffering for sinners, giving incentive for people to treat thy neighbor as they would treat thyself. Now imagine if “Hell” was simply known as the very bad place where bad people go and have bad things happen. Censorship dumbs things down to an unacceptable level of simplicity. It really doesn’t represent the true meaning of the message because it’s not allowed to have any suggestive text that relates to any topics that people over the age of 8 would know about. Death, suffering, pain. We all know what these things are and that humanity encounters it all. Sex, drugs, violence. Issues that practically revolve the globe as we need to be education about these things so that we don’t end up hurting ourselves in the future. Now if people simply hide these topics and concepts to younger minds forever, how will they react and/or what options will they have when they do encounter these problems?

It’s a given that certain things in media should be censored for the sake of trying not to influence children to use things that they’re not allowed to do yet (since they’re still developing minds), but when you harm an artist’s life by banning their work because you deem it inappropriate, well that’s just wrong, damn wrong, if I may. Visual arts are meant to connect to others by images, and powerful imagery comes at the price of sensitive topics that only mature people can handle. Music is meant to connect to the listener through a usage of relatable topics, and when there’s a lot of messed up crap on this Earth like abuse, war, and discrimination, one can only try to avoid using mature language. Did you notice? It’s that word again. Mature. The word that describes those who know how to act in certain situations based on knowledge and/or experience. Sometimes, things in writing need to utilize hyperboles or similes, metaphors, and analogies to adult topics. I myself exaggerated upon what exactly should and shouldn’t be censored through my art. The most extreme vulgarity, “fuck” and the most extreme suggestive theme/sexual content (nudity), which are both ironically censored.

If I had to choose a specific place for my art to be displayed, I would hope it would be out on the streets as that’s the style that I aimed for and street art is often accused of being pure vandalism that features everything that most people would want censored as it’s out in public. With that, I hope that you have a new perspective on what’s censored nowadays, since there are indeed adult topic in the bible, so why should artists have to restrain themselves?

Cited Works:

Utah State University students claim censorship over anti-abortion chalk art on campus, by Tamara Vaifanua, Fox News [Salt Lake City], October 1st, 2015

6 Artists Who Were Banned, Censored or Arrested by Conservatives, by  Julianne Escobedo Shepherd/AlterNet, January 3, 2011

Do the Impossible, See the Rhetorical

The second Action Project for the class Rhetoric, and it's our assignment to analyze some form of text in a rhetoric way, looking for Pathos, Ethos, and Logos. It was also necessary to search for rhetoric and sound devices, which worked well for me since I chose a song, which was a rap-opera hybrid. It was, however, challenging to fit together the pieces as well as annotate the text fully, since Google Drive doesn't allow free text movement, meaning that I had to manually move the annotations. Aside from that, I can proudly say that once again, an anime has assisted me in my school life and this was one of my favorite songs I've ever listened to, so it all worked out in the end. You can view a Prezi of my take on the project just down below.

The Epidemic of Academics

Kicking off junior year here at GCE, and I'm in the class Rhetoric,  a class that revolves around several writing techniques, with unit 1 being about Rhetoric Appeals/Devices, like pathos, ethos, logos, and figurative forms of speech, such as metaphors. For this Action Project, our assignment was to create a short speech that effectively utilizes these appeals. One big challenge for me was how I'd approach the video recording, as I wasn't quite sure what kind of tone I wanted to evoke. Overall, it was a decent challenge to where I ended up being proud of what I came up with. That being said, you can find the transcript to the video just below it, including citations, and I hope you enjoy.

The Epidemic of Academics:

Tests. No one likes ‘em. No one enjoys having to study, taking up their free time, spending hours on end reading and re-reading notes and excerpts just to be sure you can memorize everything you may or may not even need to know for a test. Are tests really even the best way to evaluate a student?

Think of the successful icons of the United States who actually weren’t exemplary students. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln. Yes, you heard me, one of the heads on Mount Rushmore, who helped abolish slavery back in 1863, didn’t get a college degree. He was self-taught in trigonometry and read the book Blackstone to become a lawyer. (Top 100 Entrepreneurs Who Succeeded Without A College Degree, Paul Hudson, Elite Daily, March 13, 2013) Another well known entrepreneur is James Cameron, who dropped out of college, before becoming one of the most famous movie directors ever. And incidentally, even Walt Disney himself dropped out of high school at the age of 16, yet he went on to become, well–Walt Disney. Even in more contemporary times, people in America have successful lives without degrees, or even without graduating from high school. The founder of Tumblr, David Karp, has become as successful as he is after dropping out of highschool at the age 15, having never earned a college degree.

With these individuals in mind, how can we be sure that testing, and debatably the entire American school system, is an effective way to evaluate students for future success? I myself am a student, and my highschool is actually quite the unique one. Straying away from conventional teaching methods, GCE (Global Citizenship Experience) uses many alternate techniques for work submission and grading. Now speaking from personal experience, an example of this is when we reach the end of a unit and create a project to reflect upon what we’ve learned.

Testing provides stressful situations and anxiety, and Concordia Online points out plenty of other flaws with frequent testing, too. Frequent testing only multiplies the stress and anxiety I mentioned earlier, and many of those tests are multiple choice, which are critiqued for being too simplistic  [“the U.S. average mathematics score (481) was lower than the average for all OECD countries (494)”] (How does the achievement of American students compared to that of students in other countries? U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, 2015)]. And if every student is out there learning exactly they need to know for another lengthy test, then less time being spent on learning innovative techniques and answering open ended questions. But even when preparing for those thousands of equations and word problems, the U.S. average math scores are still lower than all the other OECD countries like Canada and Mexico (which are our neighbors, you know).

So, I repeat, as a student, and based on the facts; Are tests really the best way to determine academic skill? Are test actually effective? Are tests even worth doing? It’s like eating candy that you don’t even enjoy.

Sources
http://elitedaily.com/news/business/100-top-entrepreneurs-succeeded-college-degree/

http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/news/do-standardized-test-show-an-accurate-view-of-students-abilities/

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1