In my paper, I think I want to explore the way that books are censured compared with the way that other media our youth are exposed to are censured. Specifically, youth are often allowed to play violent video games, watch television shows and movies featuring sex, violence and drugs, and listen to music with profanity and topics of gangs, sex, drugs and drinking and yet, books are often banned at schools because of these very topics! I would like to research the way ratings are determined for video games, music and movies and also the enforcement of these ratings and then compare that with the way that books are evaluated by schools. I think this is going to be challenging, especially because each family, store, school district and move movie theatre may have different rules and methods of enforcement. I think that will also be an interesting aspect to explore, perhaps by state or by city in our area - I will need more research to decide how to narrow that down. Further I think some historical statistics about book, movie and music censure will be interesting to throw into the mix.
I am particularly interested in the effects that religion has on these censures - for all media. I'm not exactly sure how to work that in yet - perhaps I can work in religion statistics for certain areas when comparing their censure rules. I'm not even sure if there is a correlation, but I am interested to find out more about that. Anyone have any other ideas about how to work that in?
Thanks!
Becca
Learning in the Age of the Trigger Warning
11 years ago
This is an interesting area to explore because you are delving into an area comparing family values to societal values which might be a good approach to take. You can compare what parents feel are acceptable forms of entertainment in the home- video games, inappropriate movies, etc- to what they expect from the school district. Parents have a big role in what a school district will allow on a reading list, especially in affluent areas where parents give money or on boards that make these decisions. I would look further into who is involved in deciding the canon for a specific district and how these vary based on the socioeconomic situations of different school districts that accept/reject popular teen literature.
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