Probably too late to really do anything about it, but this week was (is) banned books week, a week to celebrate books that some caring, rightous, well-meaning, lovable (I can’t take my own BS anymore!) people want removed from schools and libraries. The 2006 list of most challenged books is here, and the list of most challenged of the 21st century up to now is here.
Maybe next year a banned book can be the book of the week.
Captain Underpants? are they kidding?
Of Mice and Men used to be on the “most challenged” list? REALLY? One of the most beautiful little novellas in the whole of English language literature? What could any self-righteous windbag possibly have against that book?
From wikipendia:
According to the American Library Assciation, Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series was banned for insensitivity and being unsuited to age group, as well as encouraging children to disobey authority.
OH NOES! Jokes that are aimed slightly above the child can be bad! And remember kiddies-if you disaobey authority you’re EVIL!
Give any book to the right person, and someone will find a reason to ban it.
naughty words, Armando…it’s amazing the reaction some parents have. It’s not as if they could read along with their kids and talk about it together, right?
What, and teach our kids to read and maybe even think for themselves? Why do you hate America so much, Lady D? Why? Don’t you know that when you hate America, the terr’ists win?
LOL, Armando, now you sound like my mother
lol One guy wrote a letter to the editor in our horribly biased local paper (The Tallahassee Democrap) about all the KKK books that have been banned and how we should seek them out. One of them was the inspiration for “Birth of a Nation”. Not often do I get embarassed for living in a town full of rednecks (along with elitists who think they aren’t rednecks lol), but this easily qualified.
Y’know, I know this isn’t what you were saying, but I’d love to read that book.
What is it with film? Some of the best stuff gets made under some of the worst regimes. I defy you to find another art that can make that dubious claim.
Well, hey, strangely enough “Birth of a Nation” was the first big hit as far as movies go. My gosh, the poster for it sends chills down my spine. Even as a kid, seeing the outfit they wear in movies and such absolutely freaked me out. Useless side note, but my grandmother has an booklet she showed me a few years back that (no lie) the KKK gave when they came to speak at her church when she was a child.
Well, music. Richard Wagner was a raving anti-semite whose operas are full of symbollism extolling the virtues of the German “race,” yet they’re some of the most incredible and influential music ever written.
Literature. Virgil’s “Aeneid” is little more than Julio-Claudian propaganda meant to justify the rise of Rome’s first dictatorial dynasty, yet it’s a beautiful poem that continues to be read 2,000+ years after it was written.
I’m sure there are examples of visual art that apply as well, but my art history is a little fuzzier here. Anyway, I think it’s an Arts in general kind of thing, rather than specific to film.
-Your friendly neighborhood fuddy-duddy.
Birth of a Nation is an uncomfortable masterpiece, isn’t it? It was the first film to use multiple reels and show that audiences would sit for movies that took longer than a few minutes to tell their stories. Too bad it’s full of some of the vilest nonsense ever committed to celluloid as far as its themes are concerned!
I’ve never really thought of it as a masterpiece. It certainly marked a real change (nice, huh) in film technology. If I remember correctly, it was also one of the first times they moved the camera – specifically I remember it chasing a wagon – and it was certainly the first time anyone put thought into cinematography as a method of moving forward narrative.
But masterpiece? Nah. Besides the horrid content, it didn’t (thankfully) speak nearly as well to the masses as many other less technical works of the time.
Fair enough. So you would consider communication (especially over the long term) a requisite for “masterpiece” status? Seems fair to me, especially since, like “artist,” the term “masterpiece” tends to be thrown around a little too easily sometimes. (Which is to say, I retract my use of it. Mistakes were made. Etc.)
I wasn’t really thinking that way when I wrote the response above, but now that I do think about it, I’d say yes, that’s probably true. Maybe a better was to say what I was really thinking is that Birth of a Nation strikes me more like an etude then a masterpiece. It shows some (for the time, of course) technical prowess, but doesn’t do a good job of effectively putting that prowess to use. Know what I mean?
Hrm.
Of course, the original meaning of “masterpiece” was just that: demonstrating your technical prowess, and thus moving beyond journeyman status.
Dont get me started on this topic… this is the one topic that always sends me into a tyrade. Banning books is the one thing that makes me want to literally punch someone. If you have ever seen the scene in field of dreams where kevin costners wife in that movie goes ballistic at their kids school over the banning of a book. Yea thats me.
I’ll push that button then.
Some books do not belong in public libraries or in school libraries. Period. Some books simply ARE inappropriate for given age groups. Some books are simply inappropriate for the information they make available, or the content they extoll.
My local taxes pay for my local library as do my donations. I, as a citizen, have a right to help shape what is and is not PUBLICALLY available through that venue.
What gets my panties in a knot is when people confuse “challenging a book in a school library” and “Government Censorship”. I don’t any child of mine to be able to walk into their elementry school library and check out this month’s Playboy Magazine, or “The Joy of Sex”. Perhaps those might have a place in a public library, but what does a school aged child need with a copy of “The Story of O”?
I would never dream to deny these to an adult, but that’s not what this is nessecarily about. The reality is that sometimes schools just should not make any book a child asks for available. There are PLENTY of other books that the school can stock and PLENTY of other means for those same kids to get those books, such as THROUGH their parents.
Heck, I actually suggested our High School library stop stocking the book “Salem Falls”. I found it an interesting read, but I found it questionable that they kept a book on a shelf where the protaganist is twice falsly accused of having sex with a teenaged girl and is punished repeatedly for it. Why should we be handing teen girls a “manual” on how to get a male teacher fired?
Sorry to dissagree with many here, but America is not nessecarily about letting our kids read whatever they want when they want; part of it is about respecting my right as a parent to control what my CHILD sees and reads.
Rorlins
My response would simply be we all have the right to free speech and the reason its censorship is because its attempting to control human nature. Yes you should have the right to control what you kid reads, I acctually dont care what schools do and do not have in their library based on ciriculum (aka the joy of sex, or playboy), it is their library even if it is a govt. institution I treat it as the schools personal collection of books that are relevant to their curriculums. However if they reject it on the principle that someone doesnt agree with it, then thats not control thats censorship saying that because we dont like it we are going to pretend it doesnt exist which is stealing the right to read it from someone else who does approve of their kid reading that book, I find that wrong. Because, for instance some people have a problem with the kite runner at my old Senior high school (they and as a matter of fact I read it for english class) because of its rape scene. Yet, I find the Bible just as offensive in its violence but I dont want eithier one removed from the library.
So in this era where sex is so much worse that violence it must be noted that it has always been this way if not “worse”. Why now do we care whether we stay fully aware of the exsistance of sex and violence, yes we have better technology, but we are none the more civilized, we just self project upon ourselves an ideal of moral highness. Which of course since morals are in a historical prospective just guidelines set down to allow for successful procreation and propogation of our species. In the future we are probably going to have some cultural aspects such as morality and others that are seen as stupid and outdated relics of the past. Just as “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” were banned for the black kid and the white kid being friends. Although I would never compare the struggles as the same, I believe sexuality will be looked at in the same way in the future.
I could go on but this is a rant that I can literally go on and on about. But I will say that keep in mind that, one thing that at least I believe, is that person or thing controls your actions, your always influenced, its un-avoidable unless you want to be non-exsistant. But, still the final decision rest with the person who does it. If those hyphothetical girls choose to get a male teacher fired, then they could have just as easly done it without it. If you think because they read a book like that, that it is the direct cause of the teacher getting fired then, then you are forgeting that it could just as well have happened without the books influence.
P.S. It was really long I know so im sorry about all the errors.
Absolutely. I think it’s an excellent point, too. There are lots of instances of this in the history of art. Lots of pieces that are important perhaps more for the new and/or interesting techniques they brought to the table than for their communicative or expressive power (a lot of representational art from the 16th-18th centuries feels this way to me, and there are lots of pieces of music in the classical repertoire that would fit this description as well). They’re important and worth studying and experiencing, but they don’t always stay with you at the “Dionysian” (expressive/visceral) level.