When speech offends, who decides where boundaries should be drawn?
The question of whether ideas expressed in popular culture can be harmful to children has a long history. “People have been complaining about popular culture since ancient Greece,” Karen Sternheimer, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California, told Retro Report. “There are quotes from Plato about the violence in Greek tragedies and their effect on kids. Aristotle disagreed. It really raises the question of, how do we know? How do we define harm?”
In the 1950s, concern about crime, sex and horror in comic books, fueled in part by some flawed research, led to strict limits on words and images. In 1954, publishers formed the Comics Code Authority. Stories and artwork had to be submitted to the organization for approval.
“There were smaller publishers that chose to go out of business rather than try to comply with the code,” historian Carol Tilley told us. “It was an industry regulating itself, taking away its provocative edges and dulling them for a very long time.”
Then in the 1980s, a well-connected group of parents, led by Tipper Gore and Susan Baker, raised alarms over sex, drugs and violence in rock lyrics, and the music industry responded with warning labels.Today on college campuses, some students are seeking to cancel speakers with controversial opinions, and are calling for warnings on potentially sensitive course materials. Bailey Loverin sponsored a student resolution at the University of California, Santa Barbara, calling for trigger warnings on course syllabi to alert students who have had a traumatic experience like sexual abuse.
“A trigger warning or a content warning kind of warns the person that, hey, this is coming up. You’re going to deal with some tricky stuff. Make sure you’re ready for it,” she said.
In this video, we explore efforts to set boundaries on free speech when some people find it offensive.
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