Censorship of an album's artwork cover.

Red Sleeping Beauty

The Manic Street Preachers' new album came out this week and some supermarkets in the UK have decided to cover up the front sleeve .


http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/may/15/manic-street-preachers-album-supermarkets
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/05/15/manic-street-preachers-cd-sleeve-hidden-by-supermarkets/
http://www.nme.com/news/manic-street-preachers/44678
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8050110.stm

Manic Street Preachers album cover censored by supermarkets

Journal for Plague Lovers is to be stocked in plain slipcases because its artwork, which features a painting of a boy's face apparently splattered with blood, is deemed 'inappropriate'

British supermarkets are to hide the cover of the new Manic Street Preachers album, Journal for Plague Lovers, because of what a Sainsbury's representative described as "inappropriate" artwork. Instead, copies will be stocked in plain slipcases.

"It is bizarre that supermarkets actually think that [the cover is] going to impinge on anyone's psyche," the Manics' James Dean Bradfield said to BBC 6 Music. Journal for Plague Lovers, like 1994's The Holy Bible, uses for its cover an oil painting by Cambridge artist Jenny Saville, this time featuring a boy who appears to be splattered with blood.

"We just thought it was a beautiful painting," Bradfield said, rejecting the bloodier interpretation. "If you're familiar with [Seville's] work, there's a lot of ochres and browns and reds ... Perhaps people are looking for us to be more provocative than we are being. We just saw a much more modern version of Lucian Freud-esque brushstrokes."

For supermarkets like Sainsbury's, Tesco and Asda, however, it doesn't matter what the Manics intended. "We felt that some customers might consider this particular album cover to be inappropriate if it were prominently displayed on the shelf," Sainsbury's music buyer said. "As such, the album will be sold in a sleeve provided by the publisher."

Journal for Plague Lovers is Manic Street Preachers' ninth album, their sixth since the disappearance of founding member Richey Edwards in 1995. The album's lyrics are largely drawn from Edwards's notebooks.

"You can have lovely shiny buttocks and guns everywhere in the supermarket on covers of magazines and CDs, but you show a piece of art and people just freak out," Bradfield said. "We're not going to censor it or anything ... It is what it is."

http://nicoelisnotatypo.com/post/108725116/homeofthevain-jenny-saville-stare-against
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2005/oct/22/art.friezeartfair2005


What do you think of this ? If you saw this album cover in a supermarket of a Saturday morning while doing some shopping would you take offence and perhaps make a complaint ?

I've only been to one Tescos here and they don't have any kind of "censor" sleeve over the cover. I doubt Dunnes or Superquinns would stock but the Manics' last album was quite a hit , hence the furore. I find it interesting that a piece of 'art' that would usually be left hanging in a gallery somewhere away from the soccer moms and dads and .4 kids has found its way into the supermarket and it's led to this pre-emptive measure.

Sleipnir

I think that's quite insane. It is a great cover and I just don't see how it could be viewed as inappropriate.
It's no "Smell The Glove", that's for sure.

GhostInTheRuins

And it definitely is no Virgin Killer.

Tchaikovsky

As the Manics themselves sung in 1992, "Censorship will stop your excess thought"

It's beautiful thought-provoking art. But I suppose you can't have it among the covers displaying half-naked women.

Red Sleeping Beauty

Tchaikovsky wrote: »

As the Manics themselves sung in 1992, "Censorship will stop your excess thought"

It's beautiful thought-provoking art. But I suppose you can't have it among the covers displaying half-naked women.

I really had to put my cynicism asside and not dismiss people who said this (the band included) but that album cover surely isn't more offensive than Nuts and Zoo and Jade Goody's death bed pictures is it ? It really isn't. It's what I said about art staying in the art galleries, it's fine there but with something like this that challenges, when it's put into public domain (as in the real public and not the people who visit art galleries for a living) it becomes a problem. Or a potential problem.

Elliemental

I think Marmite is disgusting, but I don't get upset or offended every time i spot it on a supermarket shelf.

It's a beautiful piece of art, as another poster has already said. Normally, the Manics have such bland album and single cover art, which is suprising given the nature of the music. But with Journal For Plague Lovers, they've finally got it right. The art and music compliment each other.

Tchaikovsky

This is from a band that planned to have the cover of its debut to be sandpaper so that it would scratch all the other records on the shelf

JerryHandbag

Absolutely ridiculous.....a bloodied kids face? I saw a brilliant piece of art accompanying a great album by a great band. I can only echo what James Dean Bradfield said, that you can have half naked women and machine guns on the front of CDs for all the kids to see, and yet they get pulled up over this?! Utter nonsense. Just goes to show how people just dont 'get' art

KnifeWRENCH

I absolutely detest the Manic Street Preachers and would severely love to give Nicky Wire a massive kick in the face but even I think this is ridiculous. Censorship gone mad.