Do not label it

“When is the second reading of the bill to remove age marks?”

I hear this question regularly, but the answer does not become clearer.

The initiative to rid literature and art of excess qualifications (0+, 6+, 12+, 16+) was adopted by the lower house of parliament in first reading on December 5 last year. Unanimously. To the applause of representatives of all the Duma factions.

Common sense seemed to triumph. The year-long struggle was crowned with victory. And universal: it is rarely possible to get rid of chaos and absurdity, to remove the point of tension, without spending a single budget ruble.

However, on the way to the second reading, we experienced the effect of deja vu. Again, reviews filled with official skepticism and proclamations of home-grown publicists rained down.

Now, our opponents scare, the children will be available ... Next comes the copy-paste according to text 436-FZ: “images or descriptions of cruelty, violence, crime, suicide, accident, accident ... sexual relations between a man and a woman; information containing swear words and expressions not related to foul language ... "

How to explain to alarmists from morality that there is no abstract "information" in fiction? Content and form in art are merged to indissolubility. There is pain cleansing the soul, there is a respectable molasses, vulgar before the turbidity.

Accessibility if our bill is passed - yes, it will increase. In particular, Pushkin and Gogol will become available for children. Bunin and Shukshin. Bible and Quran. Goethe and the Brothers Grimm. “Romeo and Juliet” (teenage sex, illegal behavior, suicide) and “Anna Karenina” (accident, suicide and sexual relations there too). Go to any of the bookstores, to any library, look through and make sure that at the moment percent of ninety Russian and world classics are closed with us for at least 16 years. In a country that was once proud of the title of most reading.

The very approach of the federal law “On the Protection of Children from Information ...” denies the features of artistic creativity and puts a book, an exhibition, a performance on a par with a bottle of beer. Don’t read - it’s dangerous! Do not look - kill! Why did this happen?

Apparently, those who somehow carry out the paternalistic function of the state in relation to dysfunctional families experience an aberration of vision. The whole world seems to them in need of dense and constant care. Another view is close to me: we live mainly among independent, quite responsible individuals. Able to make decisions for themselves and their children. Including - about which books to read, which films to watch. Attempts by the leadership in such purely personal, I would even say intimate, issues are perceived by people with understandable irritation.

Helping the helpless members of society is a holy thing. You do not just have to take their status as a reference point. The regimen established for the patient is harmful to healthy.

Surprisingly, two opposing bills stuck together in the public mind. One - not yet submitted to the State Duma - on the prevention of domestic violence, the second is ours. The authors of the first are reproached with an unceremonious intrusion into the affairs of the family: "Hands off!" On the contrary, we are trying to lead the state away from the field where its presence is obviously redundant. “I don’t see your hands!” So ​​let's already decide: do you need more interference with privacy or less?

Even more surprisingly, in the media field, the struggle for the preservation of a detailed age marking of literature and art is led by the publication of two ideological poles - the extreme right and extreme left. If the position of the ultra-conservatives - "if evil is to stop, take all the books and burn" - is historically understandable, then the neo-communists are confusing me. In our Soviet childhood, to know more than your peers, to read and see more than them, was considered an element of healthy prestige. It was almost the only kind of adult childish vanity encouraged.

Today, the opportunity to develop at the speed that your parents, nature, the Lord God placed in you is the main social elevator for a child who was born without a golden spoon in his mouth (and without a family library assembled by generations). Who gave you the right, gentlemen and comrades, to slow down this development? Who authorized to take a chance from a child?

“Yeah, here we are!” - say the opponents. - Is it that in Soviet childhood so many informational dangers, provocations, and temptations lay in wait for us? Then the strict screenings went at the level of state censorship. And now 436-FZ is the only barrier to debauchery and destructive. ”

Yes, far from the only one! That is the misconception. You are just bad lawyers, friends. Or not lawyers at all. The body of restrictive norms relating to the dissemination of a particular information in domestic law is quite extensive. In particular, the current Russian legislation prohibits:

• calls for terrorist activities, justification of terrorism, extremist materials;
• materials promoting pornography, a cult of violence and cruelty, containing obscene language;
• propaganda of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances;
• actions aimed at inciting hatred or enmity, as well as humiliating the dignity of a person or group of people on the grounds of sex, race, nationality, language, origin, religion, as well as belonging to any social group, committed publicly, including using the media;
• propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors;
• demonstration of tobacco products and the process of tobacco consumption in newly created and intended for children audiovisual works, including television and video films, in theatrical and entertainment performances, in radio, television, video and newsreels ...

Well, and besides this, the organizers of spectacular events under the law have the right to set the cut-off age for their viewers themselves. Let's say at the evening performances.

Even through the 436-ФЗ filters you can not miss even Kolobok if you wish: here you will also violate family values, and craving for vagrancy, and violence.

And the advantage of most of these restrictions is in their specificity. They are not subject to free interpretation. Although controversial issues, in my opinion, are here.

Personally, I find it offensive to Russian culture when the Quiet Flows the Don stands on the shelves rolled up in cellophane, labeled "18+" and the stamp "Contains foul language." Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Iskander, Astafiev were sealed with the same prudish stigma. I'm not talking about Brodsky and Dovlatov ...

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov “contains” so much more than “abuse” that prohibiting him until he comes of age is like starving a person to a plate. A couple of sharp words in the full edition of “Sandro from Chegem” (I came across one, but maybe didn’t notice something) is a microscopic burr compared to the gigantic work that the great Iskander novel launches in his young soul. It is much more harmful not to read Sholokhov than to read with all available letters and words. Not reading at all is much worse than reading.

Russian children do not learn evil from Yesenin, Bunin, Nabokov or Maupassant. It’s just easier to fight with Bunin and Maupassant. With virtual reality - impossible. With television - it's dangerous. And who will stand up for art and literature?

It is surprising that so far not a single guard has proposed banning free access to the street until the age of 18. After all, there are drunken people. Bad words can be heard at every step (and in such intricate combinations that the Cord can never grow into life). Smoke near any office entrance - do not rest. Here are a couple cheeky crimped on the escalator, without first hanging on the neck of the plate "18 +" ...

Do you think I’m bringing to the point of absurdity? You are mistaken. The absurdity has long come. Every week I read in my address a complaint like: “Instead of compiling a specific list of works of significant cultural value ...”

Using a famous meme: a list, Carl. Specific. Exhaustive. And preferably with an expiration date. "Reference. Dana Ludmila Good evening that she has talent. Valid until the first of October. ”

We, the authors of the bill, are regularly accused of lobbying someone's commercial interests. Although everyone knows that the 436-FZ generated synecures for various “experts” who seriously go, for example, to children's theaters and give a recommendation to the director for a fee, put “6+” or “12+” on the poster. It is this category of persons who is waging the most fierce war with our bill.

I am glad that our initiative has become the occasion for a principled discussion about the attitude to culture in modern Russian society. In the package of changes relating to the age marking of works of literature and art, my fellow deputies also voted for the extremely important, in my opinion, addition to the “Fundamentals of the Legislation of the Russian Federation on Culture”: “It is not allowed to prohibit or restrict cultural activities, access to works of literature and art, other cultural values ​​and cultural goods, with the exception of cases provided for by the legislation of the Russian Federation. ” List of cases - see above.

This norm gives national culture as a whole a guarantee of protection against any voluntarism - be it bureaucratic arbitrariness or lynching of activists. In fact, it reveals the 44th article of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and anticipates the so-called “Piotrovsky-Kalyagin-Matsuev Amendment” filed as part of the work of the Constitutional Commission.

No restrictions other than those expressly provided for in law. I think this decision is clear, transparent, beautiful. Culture in general should be a space of beautiful decisions. I do not see any risks for the state. Once again: our law has enough regulations to neutralize dangerous or inappropriate content. And this list can be expanded if necessary.

But only from now on I would like to - wisely.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.