Books

Censorship

27 Comments

If you’ve ever visited a school library, opened a copy of Time magazine and found this:

editedelvis

Chances are you have been a fundamentalist.

(Unclad bodies are only permitted to be viewed in very expensive religious art galleries.)

27 thoughts on “Censorship”

  1. OH MY GOSH! When I worked in the library at MBBC, THIS WAS ONE OF MY JOBS! I had to color in the bodies on mermaids! I’m so serious! hahahahaha.

    LOVE IT!

  2. Back at HAC, I remember picking up a newspaper during the olympics and the girls diving team all had their bodies covered in black ink! Even when I was a fightin’ weirdo fundy, I thought this practice was going a little too far.

  3. Let’s be clear now…it is a gallery of sacred art! Religious art is something you would find at the Vatican. Calling it sacred art, well, makes it sacred I guess.

  4. The best was the SI swimsuit addition, after they tore all the pages out it was about 15 pages thick…way too much skin to color.

    1. The hilarious thing about that is, SI gives you the option of not getting the swimsuit edition. SI says less than 1% take the option.

      Sounds like someone had too much fun editing that magazine.

      1. At PCC I had a suitemate who subscribed to SI. They of course won’t let the swimsuit isssue through. You have to go to Dean’s office the week it releases so they can try to guilt you into renouncing and letting them throw it away. He told them just hold onto it till the end of the semester for him. Not sure how many others are bold enough to take that option, I was delighted at his refusal to be intimidated.

        1. Reminds me of high school. Friend of ours got caught with an open container. Well, the cops just took him home. Well, our principal wanted to know the details. This guy wouldn’t tell them. Principal called his parents, they told him it was none of his business, that it was a family matter. He never found out the details.

          Oddly enough, this same friend is a BIG missionary fundie now, but we love him anyway.

          Hey, BTW, where’ve you been all day?

        3. Had lots of errands to run, also had to get the newly released a-team watched, and getting some scheduling done for new job next week. I tried to drop a few comments in. Christmas posts don’t speak that much to me either. We had pretty normal Christmases, weren’t told Santa was real, but were told not to let that cat out of the bag, and that was fine for others to believe in Santa.

  5. I could never look at the sports section of the newspaper until my mom ‘edited’ first…

  6. Too funny! I worked in the library at PCC, and not only did all the magazines and newspapers look like this, but so did all of the books in the art section. For example, the Venus de Milo was wearing a black “modest one-piece.”

    1. Oh for Pete’s sake.
      Haha, that actually made me cringe! I always feel like it’s almost sacrilegious to alter great works of art in that manner. This is something glorious God has allowed to be made, a work of wonder, and people have scribbled over it. Boooooooo.

  7. And in spite of all this effort, two junior high boys could still find “that page” on New Guinea in an old National Geographic magazine.

  10. ROTFL! Oh yes- this brings back memories. Until I left Pensacola Christian-I thought Michelangelo’s “David” had a wide black midsection! :p

  11. Uh… is anyone else bothered by the fact that Elvis’ knees are still showing?

    BTW, I only know the identity of personage depicted through illustrations and commemorative plates.

  12. Whoa. I wasn’t sure if this was a joke or not until I read the comments.

    You’d have to be a pretty Fun Fundie to do something like that 😛

  13. I was an art major at BJU, and the art building had a small library. Almost every book in there had at least one page that had black tape on it (black tape because sometimes you could see through the permanent marker). And, sometimes, if you got one of your art textbooks (especially for an art history class) from the campus store, the books would be pre-censored. Also, I used to work at the Press, and one girl in my department would go through all the magazines that came in (usually art/technology magazines) and censor those before the guys looked at them. Though she would censor by either tearing out the page or covering the offending image with small sticky-notes.

    1. Why would BJU even have an art department? Art isn’t exactly something that promotes “good Christian values.”

  14. My grandmother had gotten us a life-long subscription to National Geographic, but we kids knew we couldn’t look at them unless there was a small OK written on the upper right corner of the cover. That OK meant that my mom had checked the magazine and cut out or colored over any pictures of unclothed people. (And that was just for my two sisters and me; we had no brothers.) Years later when I went on the BJU Reformation Study Tour, my parents were shocked and offended that I had taken pictures of Michelangelo’s David.

    I’ll admit though that they never colored pictures of Elvis, etc., although we weren’t allowed to watch “Dukes of Hazzard” – one reason stated was Daisy’s shorts! (Again, even though we were girls.)

    1. Neither were we. For the shorts, the bared midriff, and the blatant disrespect of authority and the lawbreaking.

  15. There must have been some serious fundie action going on at my (normally liberal) public library, because I remember finding it so weird that all the art books in the childrens section were covered in sticky notes! I, being a sinful heathen child who disliked Sunday School, tore them out. I’m guessing a parent did it, because I know all the librarians and none seem like fundies.

  16. I was in the art program at PCC: they had magazines that art students were to use as part of their resources and build a personal resource library( a graded assignment). Well I got 25 Demerits for having a muscle magazine that had stuff cut out of it – mind you – no nudity or bikini stuff – because that was already cut out. This was a magazine I got from the school art department. When I explained this to the idiot appointed arbiters at the “Discipline committee” I still got 25 Demerits. True story.

  17. I must be out of the loop. I was at BJU from 1989-94 and then 2003 to 2008 and know nothing about any of this censorship business. I can’t remember any of the images in the magizines being taped or colored over.

    I must have been deaf, dumb and blind. Plus, my folks didn’t care one way or the other. Except when my father asked what the scriptural basis was for the University’s policy on the interracial dating ban.

    I’m confused.

    ah.

    Someone put me out of my misery.

    B.R.O. 😕

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