Spinning on a theme
MySpace seems to surfing the zeitgeist at the moment. The blogging and electronic community site is credited with having been crucial in the emergence of the Arctic Monkeys. Its burdgeoning success has even attracted the dubious attentions of Rupert Murdoch who's FOX purchased Intermix Media - purveyors of the aforementioned site - last July. As helpful as it may have been to the monkey boys from Sheffield it hasn't been quite so kind to everybody. Enter stage left M.M.
M.M. can often be found amongst the dishevelled mob lurking in the darkest recesses of this site's comments box. In the world beyond this blog, however, she maintains a bilingual blog (in English and Portugese, mistaking the latter for Spanish would be a particularly stupid thing to do... *ahem*) surveying the art world and has a particular interest in the works of the pre-Raphaelites. It was this interest which brought her into conflict with Murdoch's minions of MySpace.
Having set up an account on the site, M.M. selected this picture as her profile image:
Despite being a 100-year old classic (at least that's what she says; I think it's nice, but I don't know shit about art) somebody took offense to this clearly shocking depiction of the female form and the picture was taken down. M.M. wonders if this censorship might be motivated by her political opinions (the fact she seems to like what I say should give an idea of the kind of deviant she must be), but not being familiar with her MySpace site I'll reserve comment on that point.
Anyway, M.M.'s come up with a more modest alternative:
As impressive a use of Photoshopping as this is, you have to wonder at a site which would render this sort of thing neccesary. It almost reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Marge leads a crusade against the evils of Itchy and Scratchy only to see the mob she has created turn its ire against Michelangelo's David. Except of course, here the decision was probably made by somebody in an office somewhere who knows less about art than I do working towards a quota, following an inflexible guideline issued from on-high. To be sure, this isn't exactly the most serious threat to free speech the world has ever faced, but I do think it is indicative of just how indiscriminate and petty censorship can become.
Tags: Art, Censorship, Free Speech, Internet, MySpace
M.M. can often be found amongst the dishevelled mob lurking in the darkest recesses of this site's comments box. In the world beyond this blog, however, she maintains a bilingual blog (in English and Portugese, mistaking the latter for Spanish would be a particularly stupid thing to do... *ahem*) surveying the art world and has a particular interest in the works of the pre-Raphaelites. It was this interest which brought her into conflict with Murdoch's minions of MySpace.
Having set up an account on the site, M.M. selected this picture as her profile image:
Despite being a 100-year old classic (at least that's what she says; I think it's nice, but I don't know shit about art) somebody took offense to this clearly shocking depiction of the female form and the picture was taken down. M.M. wonders if this censorship might be motivated by her political opinions (the fact she seems to like what I say should give an idea of the kind of deviant she must be), but not being familiar with her MySpace site I'll reserve comment on that point.
Anyway, M.M.'s come up with a more modest alternative:
As impressive a use of Photoshopping as this is, you have to wonder at a site which would render this sort of thing neccesary. It almost reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Marge leads a crusade against the evils of Itchy and Scratchy only to see the mob she has created turn its ire against Michelangelo's David. Except of course, here the decision was probably made by somebody in an office somewhere who knows less about art than I do working towards a quota, following an inflexible guideline issued from on-high. To be sure, this isn't exactly the most serious threat to free speech the world has ever faced, but I do think it is indicative of just how indiscriminate and petty censorship can become.
Tags: Art, Censorship, Free Speech, Internet, MySpace
Posted by Disillusioned kid at Friday, February 03, 2006
<< Home