Criticism
Critics accuse the BPjM of de facto censorship, paternalism, and restricting the freedom of speech and of the press on the following grounds:
- After a work has been indexed, in practice it also becomes more difficult for adults to get access to it, as indexed works must not be advertised and may be sold by mail order only under strict conditions. The sale of such works is therefore often not profitable, and the work thus disappears from the market.
- Journalists may carry out self-censorship and choose not to mention the work to avoid possible legal trouble.
- Germany is the only western democracy with an organization like the BPjM. The rationales for earlier decisions to add works to the index are, in retrospect, incomprehensible reactions to moral panics. An example of this is the controversy about the computer game River Raid.
The counter-argument states that the advertising ban on indexed works is not the aim of the decision to index, but its legal consequence. The BPjM sees it as its responsibility to use the decision to index works harmful to young people in order to raise awareness that there is content which is unsuitable and damaging for children and minors. This should consequently encourage public debate about the depiction of violence in the media or about other matters of concern.
However, in practice this debate seldom takes place. One reason for this is the legal uncertainty as to whether a critical discussion of an indexed work is legally permissible or whether it infringes the advertising ban. This can be traced back to the differing positions of various public prosecutor's offices, and a clarification of the legal position by law enforcement agencies would consequently be helpful.
The critique that the BPjM is an organisation unique to Germany ignores the fact that other western countries also have laws and mechanisms, albeit different in scope and practice, to prevent, for example, the sale of pornography to minors, holocaust denial, or racist literature and hate speech.
The nature of the BPjM's judgements has altered over the decades and been modified in accordance with changing public opinion. Decisions to index from the 1950s and 1960s, and indeed those from the early days of computer and video games, are unlikely to be made today. Regardless, many of these decisions are still in effect today.
Read more about this topic: Federal Department For Media Harmful To Young Persons
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)