Last month Young Adult Fiction author Bill Konigsberg wrote what is perhaps the best written, most comprehensive refutation of book banning I have seen. It was in reference to his novel, "The Bridge" (pictured to the left) which deals with teenage suicide. In his letter, Konigsberg tries to speak rationally to irrational people in a tragically pointless appeal to their intellects. If there have been any responses from the "concerned parents" who wish to remove his work from school libraries, I haven't seen it.
It's doubtful they will engage him in a battle of wits when they are so poorly equipped. Book banners are not thinkers, they are reactors. They allow emotion and beliefs of a mostly archaic nature to guide their choices. There's also an element of tribalism in their decision-making, whether it be racial or religious in nature. It's often both. These are people who lack the ability to think beyond themselves, the pinnacle of provinciality.
Most often, the parents demanding book removals from school libraries see the world in a severely limited way. It is a form of magical thinking that frames all issues into an odd combination of advocacy and promotion. Because so many of them operate based on nothing but faith, they are unable to grasp the concept of presenting ideas just for discussion or as a challenge to preconceived notions. This is threatening to the magical thinker because an alternate view only exists to lure them away from the absolute certainty of the system they follow. For example, Yoga cannot be positive in its purest form because it has a spiritual component. That automatically means there is evil encoded in its rituals and one must be on guard against its conniving ways. For the magical thinker, the only good alternate idea is one that has been co-opted by their belief system.
Take a look at karate if you don't believe me. I'll even make it easy for you. Take a look at this website. Read their bullshit spin job on the history of martial arts where they try to justify their outright theft or cultural appropriation by citing other cultures with martial arts traditions from the ancient world that were not Asian in origin. They weren't Christian either but who needs details to spoil a good lie? They even somehow include creationism and the absurd claim that Earth is 6,000 years old as a method for whitewashing their use of a non-Christian fighting art. If they have concerns over the "strong occult powers entrenched in Asian practice," why don't they practice one of the other arts they mention from Egypt and Pakistan?
Quick answer: They don't need to. They already control the narrative.
But they don't control the narrative of books like "The Bridge" or Art Spiegelman's "Maus," another title these tireless parental crusaders have gone after because it makes their sensibilities all squirmy. The latter is an even more egregious example of book banning. These close-minded individuals took this man's father's life experience during the Holocaust and got rid of it because there is foul language and some nudity. One parent even accused the school library of "promoting" these things by carrying the book. Once more we return to magical thinking, where no idea is up for discussion because it only exists to disrespect the Absolute Truth. Instead of talking about these elements of a story and placing them in proper context, i.e. the supposed "sexual explicit behavior" in Konigsberg's book of which there is none. I read it.
I read "Maus" too. So I can tell you without fear of contradiction that only a person with little to no ability to use basic cognition would be offended by it or even want to prevent their teenaged child from reading it.
Despite my obvious disdain for the realm of dogmatic reactionary claptrap coming from the majority of these parent watchdogs, there is another aspect to all of this that I feel is being either ignored or going unnoticed.
Much of what gets read these days is fluff. It's been that way for decades, especially in the mainstream Fiction world. Sadly, there are two celebrities we can thank for that. Oprah started it with her book club and Reese Witherspoon has continued it with hers. Both of these women, neither of them authors of fiction, do what most non-experts do when it comes to selecting titles for their respective clubs. They choose what they like based on how the books make them feel. Sometimes there's a challenge embedded in the stories, but somehow things usually work out favorably by the end. Discomfort becomes a temporary thing, the method by which the reader can be transported into a tale that will ultimately make them feel good about themselves and the choices they have made in life.
That is, of course, a generalization. I know Oprah recommended books such as "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison which, by no means, ends in a mostly positive place. And I'm not even referring to the book clubs these two famous actors endorse as trash peddlers. There are plenty of quality works on their lists. But the readership is not looking for stories that pull them too far out of their comfort zones. And if adults feel this way, they naturally assume they must protect children from the opposite as well.
Discomfort is important. Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" wasn't written so that we could applaud the bombing of Dresden. He was there. He lived it. And just like Spiegelman, he wanted to share that part of himself with the world in an attempt to help his fellow humans understand what we are capable of and why we must expose ourselves to things that don't make us feel good about ourselves. Not all reading is for entertainment. I would expect even the least educated parents out there to know that titles in a school library are there because students can learn from them.
Even when they have naughty words and side-boob and make us wonder if our beliefs suck and need to be changed.
No comments:
Post a Comment