I don’t hear that many complaints about censorship. But it’s a complicated issue.

In the German constitution it says

There shall be no censorship.

This is in article 5 of the constitution. Essentially right after all basic human rights, freedom of religion etc. And obviously, like most of the first articles of the German constitution, it is basically a reaction to the actions of the German state under the nazis, who banned a lot of press and art.

Where the issue of censorship usually arises are two topics. One is the ’use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations’, which is why things like the swastika and other nazi symbols are banned. There are however exceptions to this, if the use of the symbols is deemed ‘socially adequate’, i.e. in academia, in political education, or in art, as long as it does not follow a purpose of propaganda and it is generally obvious that the purpose is not promotion of the underlying ideology of the symbol.

The other is youth protection. Essentially if something is deemed completely unsuitable and dangerous for the youth then it can get put on the 'Index’, which means that distribution to non-adults is illegal and that you are also not allowed to advertise it. This is what happened to Die Ärzte in the 80s and recently AO3, which was however overturned. What’s legally important is that the texts on the Index are not banned, strictly speaking, however in practice this does not make much of a difference.

Generally the Bundesprüfstelle für Jugendgefährende Medien is most likely to put something on the Index because it contains either fascist/nazi ideology (duh) or is very violent and gruesome, especially when the use of violence seems more exploitative and possibly traumatizing. Also this is obviously me painting with very broad strokes, in reality things are more nuanced and detailed.

In the last two decades the attitude of the Bundesprüfstelle (and the state in general) has also changed regarding some things e.g. tt used to be very strict on video games, which used to be altered for the German market to be less violent, and some texts have been taken off the index.

Maus is an incredible graphic novel and I implore everyone to read it. It is obviously not a light read and one should be in the right headspace for it.

It is one of the books that were banned in some US schools for wokeness or something. It was hard to get for a while but I think they might have done a reprint so I was able to get the hardcover of the complete edition.

dimdiamond:

ladjarica:

allthingsgerman:

This has nothing to do with Americans, this has to do with a certain cultural hegemony within the music industry and the way the contest is set up.

From what I remember the juries were originally introduced to moderate the block voting of certain regions (the balkans always exchanging maximum points, greece and cyprus etc.), but not only does that still happen, it now also seems to be a tool for the music industry (the jury is comprised of so-called ‘experts’ and professionals) to preserve what they apparently perceive as the 'dignity’ of eurovision, by selecting boring mainstream songs and neglecting, let’s say, interesting songs because it might be embarrassing.

This year the German jury was comprised of:

• Katja Ebstein, a 78 year old singer who represented Germany in Eurovision three times between 1970 and 1980.
• Alina Süggeler, whose band Frida Gold is mainly known for making forgettable EDM inspired pop stuff and commercials that are thinly disguised as music videos.
• Anica Russo, a pop artist who I actually don’t know much about but she finished 6th (out of 8) in the national selection for this year’s German entry so make of that what you will.
• Arne Gosh, a music manager.
• Kai Tölke, Head of Music of a German radio station.

I’m assuming it will be similar in other countries. Managers and nonthreatening mainstream pop artists who are the darlings (and clients) of said managers and the labels, but who don’t even match the most successful artists in the country.

And the vote of the German jury was:

12 points: Sweden, 10 points: Estonia, 8 points: Australia, 7 points: Spain, 6 points: Norway, 5 points: Czechia, 4 points: Italy, 3 points: Serbia, 2 points: Austria, 1 point: Lithuania.

The vote of the German public was:

12 points: Finland, 10 points: Italy, 8 points: Albania, 7 points: Ukraine, 6 points: Croatia, 5 points: Norway, 4 points: Poland, 3 points: Switzerland, 2 points: Belgium, 1 point: Sweden.

As you might notice, only two countries appear in both lists, and Sweden is last in the German public vote.

Bold to mention Balkan countries in block voting and not mention Scandinavian countries, UK and Ireland, Netherlands and Belgium… basically everyone who had neighbors. You can make a point about block voting being a problem without laying something everyone did solely at our feet.

Also bold to compare block voting like Balkans and Scandinavian countries with what Greece and Cyprus have. In what world could these two countries make a winner by themselves? And the only time Greece won was thanks to every country’s votes, it wasn’t thanks to the 12 points from Cyprus and I don’t remember Cyprus winning because it took 12 points from Greece. The connection these two countries have is much more than just neighbors, just saying.

Anyway abolish juries. There’s no reason for them anyway, especially if they keep the worldwide voting system.

Ah yes, a post of almost 400 words and you two make it about two examples in one pair of brackets, which were not even related to the main point and only meant to show the situation before the current system. I love tumblr reading comprehension.

These were the examples that came to my mind, probably because they were the examples usually given at the time by the media, who also did not care about UK and Ireland and Belgium and the Netherlands. We could obviously unroll all the discourse on portrayal of different European regions in the media, but this is a) not really the place for that and b) has been done by people who know far more on the matter than all of us. Basically I just wanted to make the point that should be obvious to all of us that I did not nefariously plotted to include the Balkans and Greece and Cyprus in those examples, it was just the example that I produced, probably with some unconscious biases etc. And I am aware that you did not say that outright, but the whole passive aggressive “bold of you” does kinda imply that.

But I also just want to point out that I find it hilarious that one of you made this important point about unfair portrayal of different regions, before immediately turning around and shitting on Greece and Cyprus.