Banned Books Week!

[jediliz]

I loved reading Grapes of Wrath and that’s a banned book. I’m indifferent on Huck Finn…didn’t care either way.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a shocking book, but an important read. I didn’t hate the book…its something we all need to read…to show how horrible racism was in the south and how we treated our fellow human beings because of the COLOR of their skin.

The movie left out some stuff like Scout and Jem’s visit to the church where their housekeeper worshiped.

 

[Hastrman]

The problem is who gets to decide what is trash and what isn’t? The majority? The people with power? I’m sure we can all name plenty of places where that has gone horribly wrong. I’m sure we could find plenty of atheists who think the Bible isn’t “worth the paper it was printed on”, but I’m guessing we don’t want them as the arbitrator of what is “good”.

I’m afraid that you are here asserting that the abuse of something abolishes its proper use. That’s a fallacy.

And as for the store display, it is as used bookstore, I imagine a lot of the deciding factor of what gets displayed is what happens to be in stock at the moment, not what they would choose if they were totally free to design the display.

You don’t understand, this was Bookman’s, a chain of used bookstores in Arizona. They routinely have as much inventory as any new bookstore, and the same shelf-space, plus a wider selection because they’re not limited to what’s coming out now. They were more free to design the display than employees at a new bookstore would be.

And I was not saying that the books in the display should be censored, I was saying that, as crummy books, they weren’t what you base a case against censorship on. You have to make your argument based on things whose value is agreed upon. It’s like, if you’re arguing against anti-Semitism, you pick Einstein and Jonas Salk, not the pornstar Ron Jeremy or the Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz.

I admit that the anti-censorship people can get a bit carried away sometimes. Saying things are not age appropriate is not censorship, eg books with lots of sex don’t belong in elementary school libraries, but overall I agree with the idea that censorship is not a good thing.

Censorship is a neutral thing, like speed limits or import regulations—it can be abused, but that does not prove it does not have a use. Some ideas are pernicious, and there is no reason to allow their circulation.

 

[Dale_M]

“Challenged” clearly isn’t the same things as censorship. It just means somebody complained about the book, somewhere in America

No, the ALA considers a book to be challenged when an individual or group attempts to ban the book or otherwise restrict it.
ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/aboutbannedbooks/index.cfm

 

[Matrix_Refugee]

If I remember correctly, Ray Bradbury once said that one of the inspirations behind the book was the censorship of comic books that happened in the 1950s. One guy whose name escapes me wanted to see some amount of regulation applied to the sale of comic books, so that kids weren’t getting ahold of age-inappropriate stuff, but it turned into an outright witch-hunt of comics, even resulting in people burning comic books publicly and coercing their kids to take part in these demonstrations.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Frederick Wertham, yes. Interesting fellow, most comic book fans despise him and see him as some kind of evil raving right-wing reactionary. He used very specious arguments for censorship of the comic books of the time, but generally he was a political liberal who promoted social justice causes. He opened the first free psychiatric clinic in America for African-Americans (in Harlem), testified before the Supreme Court about the psychological effects of racial segregation on the young (which was later cited in the Brown v. Board of Education decision), wrote about the German doctors’ involvement in the Holocaust, and revisited comic books to write a later book about comic book fandom what was generally positive.

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

A bookstore where I live has a month-long anti-censorship campaign, but they go about it all wrong. Not only do they sell a T-shirt that says “Censorship: the Death of an Idea” (imagine if censorship was all it took to kill ideas like racism or Marxism), they have a gigantic display of a bunch of books and DVDs that have been censored. Only, most of them are garbage. Other than Fahrenheit 451 and a book of Aristophanes plays (and those are only valuable for their historical significance), not a single work in the display was worth the paper it was printed on; humanity would, emphatically, be better off without them.

But then again, this reflexive “How dare you ban a book!” “Censorship bad!” thing is just another unthinking taboo. I’m sorry, my civilization doesn’t believe you can curse me just by getting hold of my hair, and we don’t believe drowning is caused by witches. Why do we pretend that deciding not to allow the circulation of certain works will have some nebulous terrible consequences?

Oh by the bye, Fahrenheit 451 isn’t primarily against censorship. It’s against television, and mass-marketed media in general. Have you read the thing?

Aristophanes, besides being hysterically funny at times, provides insight into the society, ploitics, and religion of his time. Some of his themes, like war, the war between the sexes, and imperialism, still resonate today. Yes, he can be VERY pornographic at times, but he comes from a non-Christian culture which celebrated that kind of humor, after all.

But there is more to him than just writing works of “historical significance.”:yup:

My two cents, as always.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Agree with all of that. Some of those horror comics of the 1950s shouldn’t have been available on newstands to young kids. The ECs generally were quite good in art and script, but there was a lot of really nasty stuff beyond the ECs (which themselves generally should have been for a more mature audience.).

Off-topic, but are you by any chance a Michael Moorcock fan (judging by your screenname)?

 

[Matrix_Refugee]

Frederick Wertham, yes. Interesting fellow, most comic book fans despise him and see him as some kind of evil raving right-wing reactionary. He used very specious arguments for censorship of the comic books of the time, but generally he was a political liberal who promoted social justice causes. He opened the first free psychiatric clinic in America for African-Americans (in Harlem), testified before the Supreme Court about the psychological effects of racial segregation on the young (which was later cited in the Brown v. Board of Education decision), wrote about the German doctors’ involvement in the Holocaust, and revisited comic books to write a later book about comic book fandom what was generally positive.

That’s the name, thanks!

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Yep. some of those ECs were amazing, for the time. When I was a kid I picked up a couple of 1960s B&W paperback reprintings by Ballantine of the EC adapations of Ray Bradbury short stories. (Back to Bradbury, again.) I went to a speech by him once and he said originally, they just adapted the stories without attribution or royalties until he found out and had his attorney ready to sue them. Then he saw how much he liked the adaptations and said, basically, “Okay, start crediting me and pay me 25 bucks a story and you can keep adapting them.”

I read a lot of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion and Jerry Cornelius series back in the day and enjoyed them, but probably like you, disagree with some of his literary and political (and religious!) views.

 

[GIR]

They should put the bible in there because it’s banned or censored in some countries

 

[Dale_M]

They should put the bible in there because it’s banned or censored in some countries

No doubt, but the organization which created Banned Books Week isn’t international, and is only concerned with what is happening in the US.

What you mention is very much a matter of religious freedom, though. And there are international organizations concerned with that issue. However, I am not sure if there is much interest among most people about religious freedoms in countries other than their own.