This page is a little odd in the sense that the entire actual article portion describes only artworks/artistic content being "censored" and goes on and on about Free Speech and the First Amendment vs censorship, so it's clearly about things being censored by Moral Guardians for reasons relating to artistic content or possibly origin, ranging from sex or drug use to violence or racism (or in ye old American South, not being racist enough), to being made in the wrong country/with the wrong politics...
...but the actual page examples include some things that are not artwork/artistic content at all and/or were not "censored" the way the rest of the article discusses in terms of purely their artistic content, but rather banned or recalled for things like safety reasons or breaches of regulations that had nothing to do with artistic matters. E.g. all of the toy examples so far aren't about their design from an artistic content standpoint but rather physical safety concerns (such as swallow-able magnets or choking hazards), the Automobile example is for something that was giving inaccurate emissions readings (i.e. it literally does not work as advertised and the company was lying about its physical functions), and the Advertising example outright states that the reason the "Olympus Has Fallen" trailer wasn't allowed to be shown on US television had nothing to do with anything other than the fact it uses the actual Emergency Broadcast System frequency recording which means it could physically mess with people's actual television equipment (in other words it's basically the Brown Note for American TV sets!)
Some of the cases of otherwise non-Obscenity laws being applied do overlap due to obviously censoring what is seen as Objectionable Content - such as the theaters claiming that the alcohol serving restrictions are being abused to censor R-rated films, or the examples of current laws on child porn being something that has prevented several works featuring underage actors being released in the US, or the North Korean content embargo supposedly being used to prevent the release of a Korean animation - sure those still seem to fit. But. Kinder Eggs? They aren't being "censored for their content being objectionable", they're banned for their alleged choking hazard! An over-cautious ban probably, but still. Those are two very different things!
I might also question whether "not allowed to be released because of a contract dispute" is the same as "banned" in some cases, but that's a little more fluid as it least it's still relating to the artistic content in some way, and not the physical makeup of a product being dangerous, not-as-advertised, etc.
Given that this is apparently a sub-page for a Trope and not just a "useful notes" section, I gather that it really was intended to be about artistic content and maybe some of these examples should be removed, is what I am saying. Specifically the ones relating purely to physical safety concerns, or which had specific physical technical issues that caused the ban such as the "Olympus Has Fallen" example?
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Right. Depending on how strictly we want to define 'banned", a lot of stuff on this page shouldn't really be here.
I did some digging on the example included on this page concerning McMinn County Tennessee banning Maus.. I found this transcript of the meeting minutes. https://www.wate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/2022/01/Called_Meeting_Minutes_1-10-22.pdf
. While they use the word "ban" in the transcript, and they do decide to remove the book from the 8th grade curriculum in 2026, the fact that it was left available in the school library and maintained as an available part of the curriculum for 9th grade classes of this county dulls the point a lot. While it is not mandatory to be taught, this county's 9th grade English classes uses the Pearson "My Perspectives" English Language Arts curriculum, which individual teachers can create customizable teaching plans from. I checked, and "My Perspectives" still does contain Maus I. https://assets.pearsonschool.com/asset_mgr/current/201548/myPerspectives%20Trade%20Book%20List.pdf
Given that Maus is scheduled to still be taught by one of the two high schools within this county, and it is not going to be removed the the school libraries available to 8th graders in this county, is it still considered enough of a ban for this page?
Edited by Emreld3000