What's Right?: Graphic Interpretations Against Censorship

Mima Vulovic is a sessional lecturer at York University who also works
at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.

What’s Right? and What’s Wrong? are sister editions of a single
comic-book project, coauthored by a hundred or so artists, in an
audacious response to Canada Customs’ continuing censorship and
economic persecution of Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium,
Vancouver’s premier lesbian and gay bookstore.

Over the past 20 years, the “protectors of public interest” have
seized, banned, and destroyed countless works of such artists as Art
Spiegelman or Robert Crumb, effectively throwing Fritz the Cat into the
same filthy bag with snuff films, child porn, and bestiality magazines.
In December 2000, the Supreme Court of Canada handed down a landmark
decision in the case of Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium vs.
Canada, stating that the onus of proof regarding the obscenity of
expressive material lies with Canada Customs. But what are Canada
Customs’ guidelines? Moreover, what are their exact qualifications
vis-а-vis evaluations of art and other intellectual products? Perhaps
the most poignant and certainly most caustic answer lies in this
series’ single-page comic that features an elderly couple in a gallery
viewing what seems like Henry Moore, while having the following
dialogue: “How can you tell the difference between art and
pornography?”—“It’s pornography if you giggle!”

The ultimate joke is that the authors must have been roaring with the
loudest of laughter depicting in detail, on over 300 pages, Canada
Customs’ perpetual giggle. Those who buy these books will,
undoubtedly, laugh too, unless, of course, they are choked by the
revelation that censorship in Canada is alive and well.

Robin Fisher, a longtime comic-book activist, makes her views known on
CiTR radio’s “The Onomatopoeia Show.” The contributors include
both renowned and upcoming artists, all of whom donated their time and
talent so that the proceeds from the sale of these books could be used
for the Little Sister’s Defence Fund and in the battle against the
censorship.