Elizabeth McClung writes on her blog about a scary experience she had over the weekend with Canadian Customs:
Saturday, I was surrounded by six officers, two watching me as the four others went page by page through my books looking for pornographic images and other evidence I was a sexual predator. How did this happen? I said a word which Canada Customs considers dirty: Manga. As soon as I declared that I had some of the japanese inspired comic books called manga, a Custom’s officer said, “That’s the stuff from Japan; there is some really obscene and filthy stuff.”
This is the second time McClung has had her manga searched by Canadian Customs out of concern that she was smuggling in something dirty. Dead@17 creator Josh Howard had a similar experience when he entered the country earlier this year, as they didn’t like what was in his sketchbook. I guess Canada isn’t the liberal paradise I always envisioned …
(link via Postmodern Barney)
June 20th, 2006 at 9:33 am
Ah, hell.
As I said to Josh, I hope this isn’t taken as standard for the Canadian Government, and most CERTAINLY not representative for Canadians in general.
It’s so sad. It shouldn’t be this way, and every artist knows it.
June 20th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
Canada’s reasonably good for health care, education, gun control and gay marriage (for the moment, anyway), but the country really isn’t built on the concept of free speech the way the US is. I’ve had more than one package flagged at the border for containing comic material, and it goes back farther than manga (which is the current hot-button issue–a guy who got a lot of press after being arrested for having kiddie-porn manga lives just a couple blocks from me) (never met him, don’t know him, but recognized the address from the newscast, for the record).
A friend of mine has several issues of HEAVY METAL from the 70’s/early 80’s his Dad ordered, with images blacked out and pages cut right out of the magazine by customs.
A
January 6th, 2009 at 9:28 am
What countries again are loose with free speech?