Book banning

[arewethereyet]

There's a podcast I follow (can't wait for new episodes) that did a whole series on racism in movies such as Gone With the Wind and Disney's Song of the South (which has been pulled from circulation).

I remember seeing SotS when I was a kid and the things I took notice of was that it blended cartoons and live action and it had lots of music.  

I think people should teach kids that when reading a book or watching a movie they need to be mindful of when it was written.  The difference in time is important to grasp.  They need to know not just the time setting of the story but the time that it was written.  Banning such things is not the way to go.

A key thing to note about SOTS is that it was Disney itself who locked that movie away out of shame and there are a lot of very good reasons for doing so, the least of which is that the book it's based on was nothing less than a white man's theft of black cultural stories that made him some money.  I think anyone who produced a work of art should be allowed to sequester it if they so choose.  It would be like Mark Twain being embarrassed by a book of his and pulling it from a publisher.

---

Why does it bother you the book is written from the perspective of a white child?

It has to be written from someone's perspective.

Thank you for asking and it's a valid question.  For starters, Scout is a fantastic voice for a book, but probably not this book.  She's years ahead of women's rights but because of the time in which the novel was written, her voice and the tone of the book in regards to the real lives of black people in the south is extremely tame, so as not to offend anyone.  Lee can be excused for this but society has come a long way since then and even many books and films for children address important issues with more vigor.  In a way, I see the book as sort of two stories wedged together awkwardly; Scout's story and Tom's story (or perhaps Atticus's).

It's also impossible for us to see the book as a statement on racism when so little of the book actually addresses the topic because Scout is also dealing with questions of poverty, social niceties and friendship.  She's distracted from the most important issue of the book much of the time.  This works well with her story but does little to challenge views on racism.  And please understand that I view this book as a masterpiece, just not one that truly applies to the issue of racism.

I had one friend who criticized the book as "preachy".  He's an actual Alabamian and older than I am.  I rejected his criticism as misunderstanding the narrative and just focusing on key elements of melodrama in the book.

Another favorite author of mine is George Orwell and I still see the value of his books, 1984 and Animal Farm, as they relate to the nature of freedom and government, so I'm certainly not just opposed to books due to their age, but rather how well they address the issues for which they are selected.  I don't know what Harper Lee thought about her book being used to address racism; maybe she didn't like it herself or maybe she loved it.

Scout may have been what Harper Lee used to tell a story she was well familiar with.  After all, she was a white female child in the American South.

[Spongebob]

This to me is just an argument actually to keep teaching the book in schools.  You can always learn new things from old stories. Sometimes what the story teaches you, sometimes what the story doesn't teach you, and sometimes how silly the whole story is to begin with and shouldn't have even been written to begin with!  But even that last case you want to leave it there just to prove that point.

If you just ban the story, you'll never be able to go back and look various arguments, however contrarian to each other, surrounding it.  I think the point of fiction is not as much about the morals it teaches you or nudge you towards certain direction, but rather how it stimulates fantasies in people's mind in various directions.

Well, to be clear, the point of using a book to examine real culture is to stimulate the imagination and challenge accepted values.  To make the reader/student questions what they know and/or believe.  As a work of fiction, TKAM is superb, but as a stimulant for racial norms, it's only sub-par.  There are vastly better books available for this purpose and I think that's the salient point here.  In the case of Tom Robinson, his innocence is so absolute that the likely moral that students get from it is that something this egregious could never happen now.  Racial justice is far better now and its likely they will see it as just preachy.  I think books like Twelve Years a Slave does a far better job of challenging people on their racial values as well as educates them on actual history.  Also, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass does both better as well and is compelling as a story.

---

Scout may have been what Harper Lee used to tell a story she was well familiar with.  After all, she was a white female child in the American South.

Yeah, it's pretty clear she was writing from her own perspective and I don't criticize that.  But when viewed as a narrative on racial justice it comes up fairly short.  What can an eight year old white girl really teach us about deeply seeded racism in the south?  Really we only learn what she, herself can ask about it in the story and Atticus's answers are doled out as an adult would do for a young child.  They just don't tell us much.

FWIW, I found Scout's interest in Boo Ridley far more compelling and enlightening because as young people (and humans) we are inclined to fear what we don't understand, but Scout is far more courageous and inquisitive than most children her age.

[Rev. Rye]

I looked into the controversy, it seems that To Kill a Mockingbird’s view of racism is very white-centric, one where Tom Robinson’s passive as Hell and it’s up to Atticus Finch to try and save him, and, honestly, that’s a criticism that makes sense. The white savior narrative is kind of a hollow way of looking at racism and I can only assume it’s even more hollow if you actually are POC, but let’s face it, even that hollow view of racism is still far more enlightened than an alarmingly high proportion of the population are willing to accept.

But what I’ve been able to find, the controversy is less about removing it from libraries and more about trying to find ways to put it in a proper perspective (often by giving Go Set a Watchman more canonical importance than may actually be warranted, or by the more sound tactic of pairing it with a work about racism by a black author). And, on the issue of structuring lit curricula, well, there are literally thousands of great novels out there, and there’s so little time for a teacher to reach their kids. It only makes sense for teachers to try and change up the curricula to something that might strike a chord with the students. I’m reminded of the scene from American History X where Edward Norton’s talking with his dad about how his English class is teaching Native Son at the expense of some Victorian novel, I’m not even sure if they actually name one of the novels removed, and, while Dad is feeding his sons’ racism in ways I’m not sure I can post here, but, frankly, having read it, and seeing that the school is kind of a behavioral sink, the sort of place where, in the end, a black kid ends up shooting a white kid in the bathroom, the choice to teach that novel, of all novels, sounds like a good strategy.

[Apollo]

I do think that finding alternative narrative and lens for consumption of present day students that can better jive with them is certainly a good argument.

[Silver]

Ban all religious texts!

[Spongebob]

I looked into the controversy, it seems that To Catch a Mockingbird’s view of racism is very white-centric, one where Tom Robinson’s passive as Hell and it’s up to Atticus Finch to try and save him, and, honestly, that’s a criticism that makes sense. The white savior narrative is kind of a hollow way of looking at racism and I can only assume it’s even more hollow if you actually are POC, but let’s face it, even that hollow view of racism is still far more enlightened than an alarmingly high proportion of the population are willing to accept.

But what I’ve been able to find, the controversy is less about removing it from libraries and more about trying to find ways to put it in a proper perspective (often by giving Go Set a Watchman more canonical importance than may actually be warranted, or by the more sound tactic of pairing it with a work about racism by a black author). And, on the issue of structuring lit curricula, well, there are literally thousands of great novels out there, and there’s so little time for a teacher to reach their kids. It only makes sense for teachers to try and change up the curricula to something that might strike a chord with the students. I’m reminded of the scene from American History X where Edward Norton’s talking with his dad about how his English class is teaching Native Son at the expense of some Victorian novel, I’m not even sure if they actually name one of the novels removed, and, while Dad is feeding his sons’ racism in ways I’m not sure I can post here, but, frankly, having read it, and seeing that the school is kind of a behavioral sink, the sort of place where, in the end, a black kid ends up shooting a white kid in the bathroom, the choice to teach that novel, of all novels, sounds like a good strategy.

That was quite a good summary, RR.  My wife and I talked about some of these very points during our walk this afternoon.  Thanks for the excellent points.

But, I think I'm going to have to read this To Catch a Mockingbird’ book.  It sounds strangely similar to To Kill a Mockingbird.  ;-)

[Belacqua]

I wanted to open a thread about book banning in the US.  This came to my attention because the California education system decided to pull several classics from their curriculum of required reading.  They assert this is not a ban but rather a pause on these books as they investigate complaints they've received from families who's children attend public schools.  But this isn't remotely the first time this sort of thing has come up.  Among these books is To Kill a Mockingbird.  This is one of my all time favorite books and movies as well.  I've defended it in arguments as a true classic and work of art, but after reading a few articles about the book from the perspective of being black in America and educating students about racism, I now understand why there's good reason to pull this book and replace it with more appropriate books.  Understand, I never, ever advocate banning any work of art, but I do see why there are just better books out there if your purpose is to confront the issue of racism in America.  Although I'll never stop loving this book, I now agree that it's time to defer to something better for this purpose.  If the point is just to introduce students to fine, classic literature, then it still should be considered quite valid.

This present thing in California isn't something to get worked up about. It's not really a ban -- all the books can be checked out by kids from their school libraries. They just can't be assigned as required reading. 

https://ncac.org/news/california-book-challenge-2020

And I suspect that any whisper of a ban will encourage the smart kids to want to read those books more. Whereas the dumb kids wouldn't have gotten much from them anyway.

More worrisome is the fact that the newest book on the list is over 40 years old. These are the same old titles that people have been griping about for decades. What new books are being published that challenge any part of the status quo? What living writers are putting out exciting novels that we look forward to? 

Active censorship carried out through bans is far less effective than having corporations decide what to publish. 

In the 50s and 60s the CIA supported the Iowa Writer's Workshop and several high quality literary magazines, and exhibitions of modernist art, as a counter to the idea that only Europe had culture. A lot of what they supported was actually good. But they don't do this any more. And recently Disney has announced 10 new Marvel movies or TV shows, which are all made with the input and active support of the US Department of Defense. This is direct propaganda which attracts kids, and sucks the creative oxygen out of the culture. 

Also we're getting 10 new Star Wars movies/TV shows, which are equally propagandistic. They trick Americans into identifying with the attractive rebels, when in fact our tax dollars pay for the Empire which eliminates all rebellion.

[arewethereyet]

I wanted to open a thread about book banning in the US...  

This present thing in California isn't something to get worked up about. It's not really a ban -- all the books can be checked out by kids from their school libraries. They just can't be assigned as required reading. 

https://ncac.org/news/california-book-challenge-2020

Thank you for posting that link.
I am okay with certain books not being required reading.  That seems reasonable to me.

[The Grand Nudger]

Art and culture have always been weapons, Bel.

[polymath257]

As I see it, there is a big difference between a ban and simply removing a book from the recommended book list.

It is a good thing to periodically reconsider what constitutes a 'classic' and why. Sometimes, books that were highly regarded in the past are seen to be deficient now. And, of course, new literature is produced all the time and needs to be considered for the curriculum. And, if something gets added, something else is removed.

As long as the books are still in the library and students can access them, write about them, discuss them, etc, it isn't a ban.

That said, there is a legitimate question what *should* be considered a classic and what *should* be required reading. But that is a much more involved and complicated issue.