I recently read an article by Karl Sharro, a man who does satyrical middle-eastern comics himself, about this whole Charlie Hebdo attack. He describes this attack as a fine example of the "steady erosion of freedom of expression." He could not be anymore correct! This masacre shows how dangerous a job like Karl's can be. Karl continues to put himself in danger in order to continue the "freedom of expression" that our founding fathers fought so hard to protect. That is extremely important to him.
This cartoon, printed in the Charlie Hebdo is no doubt offensive. There is one cartoon with a man filming what appears to be the prophet Mohammed's butt. It looks to be as if Mohammed is taking part in a porno. Is it offensive? Yes. Is it harmful? No. That is a huge difference. The only harm done was the murders of the people who created the newspaper and the pain the terrorists have placed on their family members.
This idea of pornography leads me to my next topic. Should it be allowed? Susan Brownmiller, author of "Let's Put Pornography Back in the Closet," thinks it should be. She is a huge fan of freedom of expression and believes that in order to preserve this freedom means that pornography must be kept. It too can be highly offensive. Several people on the otherhand view porn as a form of art. This line between porn and art is kind of a gray area to me and one in which I sometimes can not tell the difference between.
One issue I see with "freedom of expression" is not placed on by the government at all. In fact, it is the issue with schools that I feel takes this priveledge away from most adolescents. I have had countless friends get detentions at school because they posted something or tweeted something offensive towards a student or faculty memeber. Last year, our school received iPads for the first time in school history. The first few months were just nonstop flappy bird and clash of clans for most students. I personally enjoyed those games before I realized I needed to stop due to decreasing grades (which I was able to recover from). Anyway, sometime during the spring semester a new app called Yik Yak was released to the students. After that, all hell broke loose. Yik Yak is an anonymous comment feed, similar to twitter, that allows people within a mile's radius to read you comments. Being anonymous, students were willing to write everything and anything that was offensive towards students and teachers. I have to admit, some of the things that were written were hillarious. Unfortunately for others, they were not...Dean Healey later put an embargo on the Yik Yak era. The comments were all deleted and I heard that some comments were even traced back to the select students that posted them. Ok, I know that it was wrong, and I know that several feelings were hurt, but I feel as though this takes away from our rights as americans to have a freedom of expression! The part that really frustrates me is the fact that some students were traced and tracked down!
This tracking is very similar to Harlan Coben's the "Undercover Parent." Parents should not be able to track and trace every key note their child puts on the computer. For me, I would feel extremely violated!
It sort of seems like this "freedom of expression" in America and other select countries is not so free after all. You may not be thinking about it at the time, but you might have to pay the consequences later.
Sources:
Current Issues and Enduring Questions
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-and-the-right-to-be-offended/384404/
