Nail Gaiman comments on the Iowa yaoi/lolicon manga obscenity trial

[Bill]

Kind of interesting - a manga collecter arrested for receiving some of the yaoi (boy love) and lolicon (******) manga that is popular in japan.

Neil Gaiman comments...

http://splashpage.mtv.com/2008/11/24...andleys-trial/

Look through your comic book collection. Do you have Alan Moore’s “Lost Girls”? Any of S. Clay Wilson’s Underground Comix? Even Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” series? If the prosecution of manga collector Christopher Handley sticks, all of that and more could be considered obscene, Gaiman told MTV.

“I wrote a story about a serial killer who kidnaps and rapes children, and then murders them,” Gaiman said, referring to a storyline in “The Doll’s House.” “We did that as a comic, not for the purposes of titillation or anything like that, but if you bought that comic, you could be arrested for it? That’s just deeply wrong. Nobody was hurt. The only thing that was hurt were ideas.”

Gaiman’s currently supporting the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s fight to defend Handley, who was arrested in Iowa for possession of obscene material based on his private collection, which included lolicon and yaoi manga. Lolicon focuses on the ****** complex, where yaoi features male homosexual romance for a primarily female audience.

“They found his manga, and found some objectionable panels,” Gaiman said. “He’s been arrested for having some drawings of rude things in manga. I’m sorry, but if you went through my comic collection, you could arrest me if you’re going to start doing that. It’s just wrong.”

“There is explicit sex in yaoi comics,” Handley’s lawyer Eric Chase told MTV. “And the men are drawn in a very androgynous style, which has the effect of making them look really young. There’s a real taboo in Japan about showing pubic hair, so they’re all drawn without it, which also makes them look young. So what concerned the authorities were the depictions of children in explicit sexual situations that they believed to be obscene. But there are no actual children. It was all very crude images from a comic book.”

“Do you remember there was a law passed prohibiting making things that simulated child pornography, even if the things actually weren’t?” Gaiman asked, referring to part of the PROTECT Act (18 U.S.C. Section 1466A). (As in situations where an of-age female is in a pornographic situation, but “where she’s being presented as if she were 13.”) “They said, ‘For heaven’s sake, we’re not talking about art. We’re only talking about stuff where you’re leading people to believe they’re looking at real child porn,’” said Gaiman.

But manga apparently doesn;t count as art - so you can make a movie if you're politically powerful hollywood, but if you are a manag collector, you are shit outta luck.

http://www.metafilter.com/76862/Man-...explicit-manga

A man -- Christopher Handler -- has been arrested in Iowa for possession of explicit yaoi and lolicon manga.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is acting as a special consultant on the case.
Mr. Handley's case began in May 2006 when he received an express mail package from Japan that contained seven Japanese comic books. That package was intercepted by the Postal Inspector, who applied for a search warrant after determining that the package contained cartoon images of objectionable content. Unaware that his materials were searched, Handley drove away from the post office and was followed by various law enforcement officers, who pulled him over and followed him to his home. Once there, agents from the Postal Inspector's office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Special Agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, and officers from the Glenwood Police Department seized Handley's collection of over 1,200 manga books or publications; and hundreds of DVDs, VHS tapes, laser disks; seven computers, and other documents. Though Handley's collection was comprised of hundreds of comics covering a wide spectrum of manga, the government is prosecuting images appearing in a small handful.

Neil Gaiman comments on the case. (via a post on his journal)

[tickler]

We had a case in Canada a few years ago along the same lines.

At the time I was thinking that they would probably end up thinking tentacle hentai might be maybe considered beasty porn.

I'm starting to wonder how Alien made it past the beasty rules?|tomato|