The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: censorship

  • Care Enough Not to Care

    For the first couple years I was in college, I spent the summers working at my hometown newspaper. It was a small weekly publication, and it introduced me to deadlines, editing, and how much I didn’t know about writing.

    It was a great experience, and I seriously considered not going back to college after that first summer. I was addicted to being in the know, even if my sphere of knowledge was largely limited to the county around me. I also loved feeling like the words I wrote mattered to someone, and I held the belief that I was part of some larger fraternity of journalists, with whom I shared a code of ethics and a responsibility to the community I represented.

    I was nothing if not an idealist.

    During that first summer, I remember my mom asking me what I’d do if I had to report on something that involved a member of our family. Her question went something like this: If it was bad, you wouldn’t write about it would you? I think she was hoping for a different answer than the one I gave.

    (more…)

  • Because shut up, that’s why!

    Every time I try discussing the issue of censorship with people they always bring up the same argument: “Some things aren’t appropriate for kids!” So let’s get that out of the way right now.

    1) Yes, children should be exposed primarily to age-appropriate material.

    2) #1 is no excuse for watering down material intended for adults to that which will not confuse a five-year-old [0].

    3) Relax. The kids are going to be fine [1]. Kids are more resilient than you think.

    The correct remedy for poor, offensive, or dangerous speech is more and better speech. Particularly speech that mocks the offender mercilessly [2].

    Politician/pundit lying through where the sun don’t shine [3]? Call them out on it. Protesters showed up at your cousin’s funeral? Take pictures, Photoshop the signs to read, “I’m with stupid,” and post them to your Tumblr feed. Read one too many romance novels where the heroine falls in love with the pirate who raped her? Write your own where she grabs his cutlass [4], forces him to walk the plank, and then seduces the handsome Royal Navy lieutenant she found chained up in the orlop [5]. Because everybody has the right to make a fool of themselves in public, and the rest of us have the right to respond.

    On a more serious note, literature allows us to explore themes, situations, and perspectives we are not likely to encounter in our daily lives. It’s an antidote to provincialism. The Dexter novels by Jeff Lindsay put us into the mind of a serial killer. The novel Push, by Sapphire, puts us in the shoes of a barely literate, impoverished, student living in horrific circumstances, a life that will ultimately kill her. But by reading her, seeing the world through her eyes, she becomes humanized to us. As a result, it is much more difficult to “other” real people living similar lives.

    Every year or so there’s a collective freakout about 9th graders reading Huckleberry Finn because it contains the dreaded N-word [6]. You would think this would be an excellent time to talk about language, how using language shapes thoughts and behaviors, how it can unite or divide people, how language changes over time, and the appropriateness of using other offensive words of the four-letter variety to describe people. However, for too many, it seems simpler to just not read the damn book [7].

    The problem with censorship is that it halts communication in its tracks. In its worst incarnations, it’s a form of bullying. At best it’s a form of social control. And it sells the reader short— for every troubled teen who wants to be a Dexter, there are thousands who realize they’re a Huckleberry, and that’s OK. They have their own humanity and something to contribute.

    [0] More likely, from what I’ve seen of five-year-olds, amaze and enthrall them.
    [1] As a kid in the 70s and 80s I got most of my practical sexual education the old fashioned way— by dumpster diving for porn. I also played unsupervised in the street, went swimming less than an hour after eating, and got spanked when I deserved it. I turned out just fine.
    [2] A heck of a lot more fun and productive than getting your knickers in a knot.
    [3] *cough* Rush Limbaugh */cough*
    [4] No, not that cutlass. The actual, you know, cutlass. Get your mind out of the scuppers.
    [5] Note to self: next Nanowrimo plot?
    [6] Seriously? We can’t even say the word “nigger” when we’re talking about the word “nigger?”
    [7] It amazes me that the book is viewed as racist. Well, it is, but the controversy at the time it was published was that the main characters, Huck and Jim, outsiders within their own society, were portrayed as actual, dignified people, their lack of surface respectability notwithstanding. That is still a lesson worth teaching.

  • Free expression, not oppression

    Freedom of the press is one of the seven wonders of America*.  As far as my understanding goes, our national belief in freedom of speech and of the press is one of the few beliefs that still unites our imagined national community, one of the few things that Americans of all political persuasions hold sacred.

    Now, often we go to the marginal cases to consider how far this freedom goes, and Amazon’s virtual publishing site has prompted many discussions of censorship and taboo literature since any idiot can now publish a book.   (more…)

  • It’s None of Your Business!!!

    Censorship is a double-edged sword. There are several books on the banned books list that I’ve read simply because they were banned whereas I’ve never decided not to read a book because somebody else banned it. I never really paid attention to what book was and was not banned. For most of my life, the bookstore, and occasionally a public library, was where I found most of my new reading material, not a school library.

    The only people who censored what I read was my parents. And that’s precisely how it should be.

    I don’t think it is right that any single person, or group of people, should be able to decide that a book is inappropriate for the masses. That decision should be between a parent/guardian and his or her children. It should be a boundary that fluctuates as the children grow older and can decide for themselves. Something that isn’t appropriate for a seven year old shouldn’t necessarily be banned from a seventeen year old.

    There were several books my parents told me I couldn’t read until I was older, then they pointed me in the direction of other books to read that would have more appropriate content for someone my age but a high enough reading level to challenge me. The problem arose when I’d read through my parents’ collection and still wanted to read more. I was too advanced a reader to read Animorphs or Goosebumps with my classmates and the YA sections at libraries and bookstores didn’t offer the same variety of books they do today. I wanted more than two hundred pages in my books, so I turned to the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section. Picking a book off the shelves, it was impossible to tell from the cover if it was going to be rife with gratuitous sex and violence. The chick in the chainmail bikini on the cover was going to be there regardless of the content on the inside.

    Books should be rated and labeled, not banned. Movies do it. Video games do it. Why don’t books? Don’t just slap an arbitrary letter or age on it. Is the rating high because the characters all swear like sailors? Or is it because ten pages in there is a graphic torture scene? Is there more sex than in a romance novel? Give a clear rating of what a reader can expect to find in the book. Put it on the back flap by the bar code.

    Then let the parents decide what their kid is ready to be exposed to. Because really, it’s nobody else’s business.

  • Who Moved My Book?

    It bothers me that the year is now 2012 and book-banning is still a topic of conversation. Shouldn’t we, as a society, have moved past this by now? We have not. And as long as we have individual thinkers, censorship will exist. There will never be a time when everyone agrees on everything.

    For most people the term “book banning” causes a knee-jerk reaction of outrage. And it should. But maybe the term is over-used. “Censorship” is probably more accurate. To my knowledge, there’s no big government agency out there insisting that all copies of an “offensive” book be destroyed and that no one is allowed to read it. Most of the reports of book banning are in regards to schools across the country. Parents and/or school boards find something inappropriate for the kids under their protection, and they insist on having it removed from the curriculum and/or the school library. (more…)

  • Reverse Psychology in Literature

    There will always be taboos in society and culture, even in literature. And because there will always be taboos, people will always try to challenge them. Sometimes I wonder if taboos aren’t created just so there can be radicals to toe that line.

    What is considered taboo today, I have no idea, but I’m sure writers do whatever they can to push that. I think it’s healthy. Signifies growth. Keeps us from becoming stagnant in our ideas. We might never have had a Renaissance otherwise.

    So perhaps that is why the tastemakers matter. So there will always be someone to thumb their noses at them. Turn standards on their heads and do the complete opposite of what is accepted in order to keep humans evolving mentally.

    Although I feel sometimes that we are de-evolving by allowing the tastemakers to censor literature and whatnot in the name of safety. Protection. Censorship is a slippery slope. Once you start saying no, there’s the question of where to draw that line. And who gets to decide that? I think each person should define their own boundaries, or the boundaries of their children. Also, perhaps, public areas where parents relinquish their control over their child temporarily.

    That’s not to say I don’t have my own personal boundaries, or things I consider taboo in my own writing. There are certain lines I won’t cross.

    Although I won’t say never. I have to continue to challenging myself, as well, so maybe sometimes I need to write what makes me uncomfortable. I wrote a novel where one of the main characters was a serial killer. I never thought I’d write gratuitous sex and violence, but the story took me there, and I am a better writer for it.

    So I think my final answer is that of course there are taboos, but that’s a good thing, the tastemakers matter because in their restriction they cause us to flourish, and that books should never be banned, only monitored around those not old enough to set their own boundaries who are away from their parental units.

    Is that all just semantics? Am I actually pro censorship? Do the reasons you support an issue matter in the end?

  • The danger of ideas

    Beware of books signI’ve seen both sides of the argument.

    Censorship isn’t a popular topic among writers, but I understand why some people feel justified in trying to protect their children, their families, and their communities from ideas that are not their own.

    Ideas are very powerful things. And when ideas conflict with our personal beliefs, our instinct is to fight back.

    After all, ideas can change people. Yes, as much as we like to deny personal responsibility, when we allow ideas to be shared we run the risk of changing minds. People introduced to new ideas begin to think in new ways.

    And if that happened, it could create all sorts of problems:

    • Women could vote
    • Children could receive an education
    • The disabled could find jobs
    • All races could be treated as equals
    • Anyone could fall in love and marry
    • Individuals could become more important than institutions
    • We could put an end to pollution, save endangered species and ecosystems, and become conservators of our planet
    • We could live in peace

    So, the next time someone says to you they don’t want you to read a book, remember this. They are probably saving you from ideas that could make you see things in a different way.

    Thank them. Put down your book. Go back to work.

    It’s probably safer that way.