Death Note, one thing that crosses my mind about the manga (other than the premise of a teenager using a book that could kill almost anyone he wants while he tries to outsmart police that are trying catch him while using the pseudonym “Kira” in a supernatural killing spree where criminals are his victims) is that while the police force may tell itself it’s trying to lock up Kira to save potential victims, in the end, if they catch him, both the would-be victims of Kira that end up getting convicted for a serious-enough crime and Kira himself would end up being killed anyway, just on the law’s own terms. Sure, maybe Kira killed people who committed lesser crimes, but the more serious criminals aren’t as lucky (not to mention that falsely accused would-be victims of Kira aren’t always gonna be spared by the higher standards of evidence in a court of law), in the end, it’s a good analogy for my observations made in this article.

Media contains a lot of things that are unfavorable to happen, even things caused by humans. Many people believe that many, if not everyone should be sheltered by at least some this. Sometimes it’s shelter people from inappropriate content because it’s bad when it comes to the controversial side of politics, sex, racism, death, violence and/or the fact that humanity just isn’t perfect, which is very counterproductive seeing as that’ll just leave the people shielded uninformed of these subjects if the censorship is achieved. Though sometimes it’s targeting specific examples of these subjects found in media in order to prevent unwanted behavior, however sometimes what the human race wants censored, is exactly what the human race does again and again.

Many a piece of media has glorified violence in some way. Mortal Kombat rewards the player with the ability to do a “fatality” of which in itself is a reward to pull off, regardless of the victim's alignment. The end of many of the Halloween movies try to kill off the killer, Michael Myers, in the most spectacular way possible only for the money to start talking and boom, a sequel is made, with the only real exception being the third movie (which was about a completely different set of characters, with many opposers of the film objecting to the lack of Michael rather than the actual movie itself). The media just wants to show the antagonist get killed, and sometimes gruesomely to represent the fact that it was supposed to be a grand triumph, and so does humanity. The death penalty is still done in the united states and Hitler, Stalin and Bin Laden have went down in history as real life supervillains in the eyes of the vast majority and we even represent them as villians in our pop culture (sometimes as satire because they’re such infamous figures), even though Stalin fought Hitler (the man did kill more russians than the germans, a EXTREMELY hard to justify, if not downright impossible, feat, however, no one seems to think “on the other hand, he did contribute to the allies” which is understandable seeing as bad things stick out to people more than good things). Some may argue that killing people who are major disruptions to society is a appropriate means to a appropriate end, even if other people think that also justifies some of the very crimes that may seem like a straightforward wrongdoing to others. Sure we may have improved since the past in our ways (just look at what ancient Rome did to christians before it became the country’s official religion), but that does not excuse our current problems nor does it mean we don’t have any. But the real question I’m getting at is: why is there such a disconnect? It’s possible that the people asking for censorship aren't the same people asking for more violent answers to problems, or maybe what people want censored is certain depictions of violence, self-righteous or not, or maybe it’s something less rational, or a perfectly rational concern about who’s being exposed and how, who knows. I’m not gonna pretend to know the answer so I’ll let you think about it.