Book banning

[arewethereyet]

Am I right in assuming that the worrisome character in the book is actually sympathetic. I think context is key to some things and throwing out a progressive book because sentiments have moved on would be a slippery slope. 

Juliet in Romeo and Juliet was supposed to be 13, should we dump what is one of the best romancs ever because the late middle ages were a bit un pc?

We are meant to see the injustice blacks face through the innocent eyes of young Scout and have fatherly Atticus explain it to us in a way that children can comprehend, among other themes in the books.  Racist characters do behave as we expect and another female character was raped, though in the book it was described as "taken advantage of".  Nevertheless some parents apparently have zero appetite for their children being introduced adult concepts in school.  It is a shame because it seems that civilization keeps pushing the age of adolescence farther and farther out.  Children in their early teens were once of marrying age and would have been working for years, but now are only expected to go to school and play.  I think we underestimate what children can do and understand.  What I see most often from younger people is sheer boredom with life.

Parents still have to give permission for their children to attend sex education...which is basically explaining to them how their bodies work and not really sex education.

The fact that there has to be class a school to teach basic personal biology tells you that we are still quite puritanical when it come to sex.

It's no surprise to me that at the time of the writing of TKAM the euphemism of "taken advantage of" was used in place of rape.  The book most likely would never have been published otherwise.

[Spongebob]

Parents still have to give permission for their children to attend sex education...which is basically explaining to them how their bodies work and not really sex education.

The fact that there has to be class a school to teach basic personal biology tells you that we are still quite puritanical when it come to sex.

It's no surprise to me that at the time of the writing of TKAM the euphemism of "taken advantage of" was used in place of rape.  The book most likely would never have been published otherwise.

No doubt.  I don't think we'll get past these puritanical ideals (to reiterate your words), until Christianity either evolves significantly or just goes away, which won't be in my lifetime for sure.

[Rev. Rye]

We are meant to see the injustice blacks face through the innocent eyes of young Scout and have fatherly Atticus explain it to us in a way that children can comprehend, among other themes in the books.  Racist characters do behave as we expect and another female character was raped, though in the book it was described as "taken advantage of".  Nevertheless some parents apparently have zero appetite for their children being introduced adult concepts in school.  It is a shame because it seems that civilization keeps pushing the age of adolescence farther and farther out.  Children in their early teens were once of marrying age and would have been working for years, but now are only expected to go to school and play.  I think we underestimate what children can do and understand.  What I see most often from younger people is sheer boredom with life.

Parents still have to give permission for their children to attend sex education...which is basically explaining to them how their bodies work and not really sex education.

The fact that there has to be class a school to teach basic personal biology tells you that we are still quite puritanical when it come to sex.

It's no surprise to me that at the time of the writing of TKAM the euphemism of "taken advantage of" was used in place of rape.  The book most likely would never have been published otherwise.

Yeah, “take advantage of” was a common euphemism for shit like that, whether it was rape or just what appeared in hindsight to be exploitation. And, frankly, the rape stuff isn’t confined to the whole Mayella/Tom Robinson storyline. Given the shit that’s implied about Mayella’s relationship with her father, it only makes sense that Harper Lee (or her editor Tay Hohoff) wouldn’t want to talk about it outright. It might have been a few decades for the masses to accept the truth in such blunt language.

And just for the record, here’s the shit I’m talking about:

• While trying to seduce Tom, she says "what her Pa do to her don't count.” This is the most straightforward acknowledgment in the book. Admittedly, it’s ambiguously-worded, and it could mean goodnight kisses, but Mayella’s 19 1/2 and Bob Ewell clearly ain’t the sort of doting father who’d kiss his kids goodnight.
  
• The other bit’s a thinker, but bear in mind these facts: 1) Mayella spends her days taking care of her younger siblings (and they are young), 2) it’s stated clearly that she can barely remember her mother, implying that she died when Mayella was very young, 3) there’s no mention of any stepmother having ever been in the mix, and 4) I refer you to the previous bullet point.
  
• For what it’s worth (and this is on the film’s Blu-Ray, mind you) Mayella’s actress Collin Wilcox was from the area and actually knew several girls like Mayella IRL, and it was kinda taken for granted that they were being raped by their fathers.
  

I strongly suspect that if Harper Lee outright stated the obvious implication and left the rest of the book as it was, it’d first and foremost have been remembered as “that book about incest.” And if the way people still perceive Lolita is any indication, people’d probably consider it pro-incest. And if she actually went so far as to point out that Mayella’s situation wasn’t an entirely uncommon one, well, the racial themes would almost certainly have been the least of the book’s worries.

[Spongebob]

These are good points and I suspect many of the themes in Hillbilly Elegy are directly proportional and the reason that book/film has received so much rancor. People just don't like their community's dirty laundry being displayed to the world.

[Belacqua]

I don't consider literature as carrying TRUTH, but rather as providing *insight*. It has you look at things in a different way. And, hopefully, that different way of thinking produces value.

Yes, I think this is a great way to put it. Insight, as I imagine it, will be something true, but also personal to the reader. It may or may not result directly from a declarative sentence in the text. 

And I think this points us to a number of issues with literature, and why it can't operate as journalism or science writing does. For one thing, we know that people will do just about anything to resist having insights, if they involve hurt to one's pride, or a challenge to one's metaphysical or ideological commitments. So saying something straight out, like "you are X when you should be Y" is likely to result only in a doubling-down on the X. In some cases, deeper insights probably come about more indirectly. So fictional presentations, strong and memorable imagery, etc., are more likely to have an effect. 

It's difficult to analyze because I think insight and how we get it can't be quantified, forced, or guaranteed. Obviously you can't say "read this book and you'll see why you're wrong" if you're not dealing with simple facts but with more subtle issues. And we know that insight can result from personal experiences that would seem trivial to anyone else -- as described by Proust's narrator stepping on uneven paving stones. 

That said, I do think that some books are absolutely more likely to provide insights than others, and that this is one big criterion for judging that a book is high-quality. It can't be demonstrated scientifically, but I think we could construct some strong arguments for some of the classic books. And conversely, there are certainly books that work against insight -- any of those which flatters the reader, deals only in received ideas and cliches, reinforces the common assumptions of the herd. Most best-sellers and all TV works in this way. It's a kind of psychoanalysis in reverse -- personal insight is pushed down deeper, defense mechanisms are reinforced. 

On a side note: I have never really understood the difference between metaphor and simile. Sure, there is a *grammatical* difference in whether you are using 'like' or 'as', but so what? Both are saying essentially the same thing, making an analogy between things, right?

This is an interesting question, and very tricky to answer. I suppose it depends on the subtlety of the work in question. 

I absolutely think that "Nature is a temple," is different from "Nature is like a temple," in the poem I mentioned earlier. 

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.

All English translations are cringe-making, but this one at least has the benefit of being literally accurate:

Correspondences

Nature is a temple in which living pillars 
Sometimes give voice to confused words; 
Man passes there through forests of symbols 
Which look at him with understanding eyes.

Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance 
In a deep and tenebrous unity, 
Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day, 
Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond.

There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children,
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows
— And others are corrupt, and rich, triumphant,

With power to expand into infinity,
Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin, 
That sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Granted, because we know in the case of both the simile and the metaphor that nature isn't really a temple, the mathematical (as it were) meaning is the same. But to me the sense is significantly different. But I can't prove it.

This leads me to another thing about the importance of subtlety in language. In some cases, I think, we can say that an insight is a discovery or uncovering of some fact which had been lying fully-formed but hidden. A truth about the past which we'd been denying, or something like that. 

But in many cases I think the benefit gained from the text is a kind of construction, an ability to think clearly about something in ourselves which previously was not adequately formed. The phrase or image "gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name," which allows us to realize something through making it concrete that had been diffuse and confused. 

Imagine that we had only two words for our emotions: happy and sad. We would not only be unable to describe more subtle emotions to other people, but we would be unable to understand them for ourselves. Because anything we can think clearly about demands language, whether verbal or visual or something. Advertising encourages the simplest possible expression: happy when you have the product, sad when you don't. When in fact we all know the mix of emotions that can be attached to an object. Literature gives insight by providing the language and imagery to conceptualize at increasingly sophisticated levels. 

This is why I think that the richer and more subtle our language is, the richer and more deeply felt our interior lives will be. (And of course you don't have to be a Freudian to hold that our interior lives may consist of wildly contradictory elements, which means that any book about the heart must not be held to logical standards.)

---

understand that the context of this action in California was regarding the use of this book as a tool to discuss racism and it didn't involve removing the books so much as replacing them with something better suited to the task.  When you ask the question, which classics should a student read, the context is completely different.  There have been schools that have banned TKAM outright from the school due to its graphic nature and I'm passionately opposed to that.  I think in some cases this can be easily explained by lazy educators who make a hasty decision based on a few poorly considered complaints about language in a book.  They just don't like getting calls from angry parents, so they do the easiest thing possible.

Yes, this is a good point, and tricky. 

There is a lot to consider when we want our literature to teach a moral lesson. A lot of people deny that literature can or should do this at all. All the "art for art's sake" people, from Oscar Wilde to Nabokov, denied that the arts can teach morality. If it tries to do so, it is propaganda, even if we agree with it. Or we could argue that the moral aspect comes only from whether the work increases or decreases the subtlety of one's thought, and that even the most obvious moral teaching (like "racism is bad") works against the morality of literature if it is expressed in a way which decreases the reader's personal experience.

This is why I'm skeptical about using books like this in a classroom, for a specific political purpose. It is very very easy for a student to read the lesson and agree, for the duration of the class, that racism is bad without gaining any increased insight into his or her own racism. I'm NOT saying this is true of To Kill a Mockingbird (I don't know that book well enough, and it would depend on how it was taught), but I think it is true of nearly all the easy moral lessons that appear in TV shows. In Star Trek, for example, we are repeatedly taught about the superior values of the brave and noble Earth people, who all share the values of liberal Californians. But I seriously doubt that these "lessons" do anything more than flatter the audience, making them proud to agree with the attractive actors, and comfortable in the notion that in the far future their own values will win the day. But no serious challenge is ever posed, and then most problems are solved in the end with a fist fight or phaser blast -- which in fact reinforces the common American idea that the Good Guy is always the one who makes the most successful use of violence. 

I'm tutoring a high school girl now, who's in the International Baccalaureate program here in my city. (I normally have a rule against teaching kids, but she's a bright girl.) The reading list for her English Lit class is like a list of socially woke propaganda, and virtually no discussion is made of any other literary quality. It's frustrating, because I agree with every single text that patriarchy is bad and micro-aggressions are evil, but since that is the only message included in the class I wonder about its quality. Like if the goal is really "teach them how to think, not what to think," then this class is a failure. 

But again, I don't know enough about what happens in most classrooms these days, so I'm not arguing on the subject of Harper Lee or use of her book at all.

[Spongebob]

Yes, this is a good point, and tricky. 

There is a lot to consider when we want our literature to teach a moral lesson. A lot of people deny that literature can or should do this at all. All the "art for art's sake" people, from Oscar Wilde to Nabokov, denied that the arts can teach morality. If it tries to do so, it is propaganda, even if we agree with it. Or we could argue that the moral aspect comes only from whether the work increases or decreases the subtlety of one's thought, and that even the most obvious moral teaching (like "racism is bad") works against the morality of literature if it is expressed in a way which decreases the reader's personal experience.

This is why I'm skeptical about using books like this in a classroom, for a specific political purpose. It is very very easy for a student to read the lesson and agree, for the duration of the class, that racism is bad without gaining any increased insight into his or her own racism. I'm NOT saying this is true of To Kill a Mockingbird (I don't know that book well enough, and it would depend on how it was taught), but I think it is true of nearly all the easy moral lessons that appear in TV shows. In Star Trek, for example, we are repeatedly taught about the superior values of the brave and noble Earth people, who all share the values of liberal Californians. But I seriously doubt that these "lessons" do anything more than flatter the audience, making them proud to agree with the attractive actors, and comfortable in the notion that in the far future their own values will win the day. But no serious challenge is ever posed, and then most problems are solved in the end with a fist fight or phaser blast -- which in fact reinforces the common American idea that the Good Guy is always the one who makes the most successful use of violence. 

I'm tutoring a high school girl now, who's in the International Baccalaureate program here in my city. (I normally have a rule against teaching kids, but she's a bright girl.) The reading list for her English Lit class is like a list of socially woke propaganda, and virtually no discussion is made of any other literary quality. It's frustrating, because I agree with every single text that patriarchy is bad and micro-aggressions are evil, but since that is the only message included in the class I wonder about its quality. Like if the goal is really "teach them how to think, not what to think," then this class is a failure. 

But again, I don't know enough about what happens in most classrooms these days, so I'm not arguing on the subject of Harper Lee or use of her book at all.

Yes, there are certainly pitfalls to the practice of 1. teaching morals from fiction and 2. intentionally baking morals into art.  Yet both are time honored traditions, so not doing this would alter a course that we've been on for centuries, perhaps millennia.  The key to successfully practicing the second is deft.  Since you referenced the ham-fisted efforts of early Star Trek: TOS episodes, I'll point directly at "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" as an example of poor quality, but I will reference one of the far more nuanced episodes of Star Trek: TNG, "The Crucible" as a much better example.  This story specifically asks us to closely examine what it is we call "intelligence" or "sentience" and to explain our definition of life and freedom and does so with exquisite skill.  In this episode, you realize what is happening but you don't care because you are caught up in the question and can actually see value in both arguments.

Regarding whether using fiction to teach morality "works", as in delivers a desired message to the student, I would argue that any reasonable means is fine since the end is learning what is socially acceptable.  I certainly prefer it to sermons, of which I listened to probably thousands as I grew up.  And sermons themselves often utilize stories to convey their message.  The Bible is full of allegory.  Weather a student accepts the message as valid and internalizes it is a completely different matter.  Different people respond to different stimuli.  Some people won't accept a message no matter how you deliver it.  Some won't accept any message at all while others are altogether too easy to shape.  That's why teaching itself is mostly art with a little science sprinkled in.  And as such, teachers use a variety of methods to convey a message.  In short, they use whatever works.

I've heard the cries of fanboys who hate stories that appeal to SJWs (as if that should be a pejorative thing), in particular in the comics world.  Some have sworn off the medium because of it, but those people are historically tone def.  Comics have essentially been doing this since there inception to varying degrees that change with eras.  During the CCA era they were essentially forced to do this to a ridiculous degree, but have since become far more adept at it.  One of my all time favorite story arcs was the Green Lantern/Green Arrow story "Snowbirds Don't Fly", 1971.  Again, the degree to which this sort of thing is palatable depends largely on the skill of the creators.

[Belacqua]

Star Trek: TOS episodes, I'll point directly at "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" as an example of poor quality, but I will reference one of the far more nuanced episodes of Star Trek: TNG, "The Crucible" as a much better example.  This story specifically asks us to closely examine what it is we call "intelligence" or "sentience" and to explain our definition of life and freedom and does so with exquisite skill.  In this episode, you realize what is happening but you don't care because you are caught up in the question and can actually see value in both arguments.

I'm sure that some episodes are better than others. And as I said to Polymath, we can't predict what will spark insight in different people. 

But as far as I can see all the Star Treks have worked hard to drive home the main American myth: that of the anti-authority maverick who saves the day through the use of violence. In one of the movies Capt. Picard leaves the Enterprise to disobey orders and save some planet, and when Mr. Data joins him he utters the American militia's favorite line: "Lock and load." I pretty much couldn't stand any more after that. 

I did watch a few episodes of the most recent series, because I hoped that with a black female lead things might be better. But she actually disobeys orders to start a whole war, reinforcing the cliche for a new generation. As we see in all the corporate media, increased diversity means that now minorities and women can fill the role of the violent cliche. (Just as Kamala Harris shows that black women can rise in power if they hurt the poor, help the rich, and support the military-industrial complex.) 
Nor could I stand the Mandalorian, which is just constant killing, with a cute puppy dog at the center. 

The Bible is full of allegory. [...] That's why teaching itself is mostly art with a little science sprinkled in.  And as such, teachers use a variety of methods to convey a message.  In short, they use whatever works.

Yes, I think that imagery and allegory will be far more effective, in the long run. And may even get across a deeper, more influential message than the more obvious moral lesson of the book or episode. Like a movie may try to say "be yourself," while its methods and images are so cliched that they basically teach the opposite. 

[Spongebob]

But as far as I can see all the Star Treks have worked hard to drive home the main American myth: that of the anti-authority maverick who saves the day through the use of violence. In one of the movies Capt. Picard leaves the Enterprise to disobey orders and save some planet, and when Mr. Data joins him he utters the American militia's favorite line: "Lock and load." I pretty much couldn't stand any more after that. 

I did watch a few episodes of the most recent series, because I hoped that with a black female lead things might be better. But she actually disobeys orders to start a whole war, reinforcing the cliche for a new generation. As we see in all the corporate media, increased diversity means that now minorities and women can fill the role of the violent cliche. (Just as Kamala Harris shows that black women can rise in power if they hurt the poor, help the rich, and support the military-industrial complex.) 
Nor could I stand the Mandalorian, which is just constant killing, with a cute puppy dog at the center. 

Here's the funny thing, in case you don't know the whole story of Gene Rodenberry.  GR wanted to create a very intellectual show but the networks didn't get it, so they forced him to basically dumb it down and juice the "cowboy" element.  If you watch the ST: TOS episode "The Cage", this was the original pilot.  They decided to reuse the footage and did a cut and paste job on it to bring it into the Kirk era.  You can see from this episode that the show was less "wagon train to the stars" and more brainy.  The network hated all of the elements that made it good, including Spock.  So, had they let Gene do what he wanted, I suspect the show would have looked much differently.  Even so, most of the many, many episodes of all the various series focus on intelligent issues and ideas.  There's enough violence and melodrama to keep the plot moving, but the show isn't based on simple militaristic violence.

Now, you might have misunderstood some things in the Discovery pilot.  Michael Burnham (she's a woman), does disobey her captain, but it's because of inside information about the Klingons that her adopted Vulcan father gave her.  It was good intel but her captain didn't agree.  Still wrong to commit mutiny but she did it for the right reasons at least.  I've watched half of the first season so far and this show escapes much of the episodic staleness of all the previous series.  It's a fresh look at ST while keeping the cannon mostly intact.  It's anything but cliché.  If you want to see cliché, watch Enterprise.  I've been trying to get through it but it's the most recycled ST ever.

I disagree with the idea that because Burnham is black (she was raised on Vulcan, btw) or female, that she should be exempt from violent or even inappropriate behavior.  That's not a realistic view of race.  Do I believe that women should get a shot at leading our country or military?  Heck yeah, I do.  But do I think that because they are women, they won't make a lot of the same mistakes men do?  No!  They will likely be just as fallible.  They're human; they're imperfect.  Humans make mistakes.  Being female or black or Scots-Irish doesn't exempt anyone from those liabilities.  In fact, the biggest mistake Burnham made in the pilot was following her Vulcan logic to far.  She should have stopped short of disobeying her superior even if it meant certain death.

[Belacqua]

Still wrong to commit mutiny but she did it for the right reasons at least.

See, this is exactly what I mean.

Despite your peace-loving nature, the show has got you to argue that there are right reasons for starting a war, and that disobedience, while unfortunate, was good in the long run. And this reinforces the cliches, like it or not. "We're Americans, so of course we hate war, but we always seem to end up fighting them, which is good."

A more challenging, cliche-breaking show would depict them avoiding war through negotiation. Or it would show the main character overcoming her own desires, being obedient, and having that be the best course of action. But no one would watch such a show -- it wouldn't sell.

The small town my brother used to live in is among the worst in the world for Covid infections. The mayor finally put in place a not-very-strong mask mandate, and within 24 hours she had so many death threats that she had to resign. Obedience has become such a dirty word for Americans that it's hard for us to conceive of it being portrayed positively. Each person who phoned in a death threat felt he was the hero of his own "mutiny-is-justified" drama.

[Spongebob]

See, this is exactly what I mean.

Despite your peace-loving nature, the show has got you to argue that there are right reasons for starting a war, and that disobedience, while unfortunate, was good in the long run. And this reinforces the cliches, like it or not. "We're Americans, so of course we hate war, but we always seem to end up fighting them, which is good."

No, I wasn't arguing that.  I was hoping Capt. Georgiou would realize Burnham was right and agree to her approach.  The idea was to attack them and thus gain their respect and maybe they back off (this was what Sarek told Burnham), sort of the same thing we tell kids who are being bullied.  They weren't likely to destroy the much more powerful Klingon ship but the Klingons were going to destroy the Federation ship otherwise.  Understand, violence was going to happen no matter what.  The Klingons were just not interested in peaceful negotiations.  

A more challenging, cliche-breaking show would depict them avoiding war through negotiation. Or it would show the main character overcoming her own desires, being obedient, and having that be the best course of action. But no one would watch such a show -- it wouldn't sell.

If you watched the entire episode, you would know that the Kingons had absolutely no interest in negotiations.  Their leader, T'kuvma, ranted about the Federation corrupting Klingon culture and rejected any possibility of peace.  This appears to be an allegory to groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda, who also have no interest in peace.  Unfortunately, there are cases where negotiation just won't work.  There really are no win situations in life.  And anyway, if the two captains had negotiated and flew off peacefully, that would have been the end of the show.  You have to have some sort of conflict for a TV show to work.

The small town my brother used to live in is among the worst in the world for Covid infections. The mayor finally put in place a not-very-strong mask mandate, and within 24 hours she had so many death threats that she had to resign. Obedience has become such a dirty word for Americans that it's hard for us to conceive of it being portrayed positively. Each person who phoned in a death threat felt he was the hero of his own "mutiny-is-justified" drama.

OK, let me get one thing perfectly straight.  I never suggested Burnham should have committed mutiny, nor did I say I supported that decision.  And I hope you don't think I would approve of those idiots threatening that mayor.  My position on those sort of people is that they don't give a crap about America or their fellow Americans.  They are exactly the thing they always complain about; they're just too stupid to realize it.  Nevertheless, I don't see any correlation between Discovery and that town's idiotic inhabitants.  You're trying to make an analogy between two things that just don't have any relation.  And, if you continued to watch the series, you would see that the show did not contrive moral justification for Burnham's actions.  She was prosecuted for it and remorseful.  You can't really judge an entire show by one episode.

Anyway, this is an interesting conversation, but it's way off topic for this thread so I'll let it go at this point.