More code than Bletchley Park
Sep. 29th, 2017 07:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mme_hardySomebody on Twitter just approvingly linked to a screenshot* of an article** Viewing With Alarm readers of YA.
There's also a heapin' helpin' of generalized Viewing With Alarm.
Increasingly, many of the works in question are not even proper books but rather so-called "graphic novels," which are novels in the same sense that the MoonLite BunnyRanch in Mound House, Nevada, is a farm. What are these things doing in school libraries in the first place except contributing to the now probably irreversible dumbing down of American education?
** Ban Banned Books Week
*** As I afterthoughted on Twitter, if you actually wanted to read Roman history, as opposed to English literature or historiography, you'd be reading Mary Beard, not Gibbon.
Banned Books Week, that annual festival of cloying liberal self-satisfaction beloved by people who like the idea of reading more than they do actually sitting down with Edward Gibbon [e:***] or even Elmore Leonard.
A.k.a. proper male writers.
"Read a Banned Book!"
Which one? The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? David Irving's revisionist histories of the Second World War? William S. Burroughs' sustained fantasy of torture, sadomasochism, animal cruelty, and child rape, Naked Lunch? The Douay-Rheims edition of the Bible?
Only one of which has ever been banned in the U.S., where Banned Books Week is celebrated. As far as I know, neither Protocols nor David Irving have been banned anywhere in the English-speaking world.
Only one of which has ever been banned in the U.S., where Banned Books Week is celebrated. As far as I know, neither Protocols nor David Irving have been banned anywhere in the English-speaking world.
In my experience, those with the strongest emotional investment in Banned Books Week tend to be people whose idea of literature is something called "Y.A.," [sic] which they can continue to enjoy well into their 20s, plus whatever they found themselves forced to slog through as liberal arts majors in college in between tweeting and watching prestige cable and old Buffy reruns on Netflix. These are people with cartoonish conceptions of history, in which the vast sweep of human affairs, the march of technological development, the fluctuations of wealth, the accumulations of capital, the misery of wars, the famines and floods and massacres, have been an inexorable progression culminating in America in 2017, where reading a pornographic pastiche of children's fiction called 50 Shades of Grey is an inalienable right.
Count the dog-whistles:
1. YA, whose breakout mainstream successes include The Hunger Games, Twilight, and Harry Potter. There are, of course, YA successes written by people who identify as male -- John Green for one -- but many of the mainstream breakouts were written by women. Ironically, Hunger Games has a great deal to say about the fluctuations of wealth, accumulations of capital, the misery of wars, massacres, and so on. Harry Potter has a lot to say about oligarchy and the misery of wars. Twilight ... um ... the inherent heteronormativity of many love triangles? Okay, it's a reach.
2. Old Buffy reruns. Not as feminist in the rear-view mirror as it appeared to me at the time, but so promoted at the time, and celebrating female heroism.
3. "a pornographic pastiche of children's fiction called 50 Shades of Grey" I admire the economy of this. Fanfiction ("pastiche of children's fiction"), YA (Twilight is most definitely not for children), and 50 Shades, a book that was notoriously consumed, avidly, by adult women.
Conclusion: things that women read, write, and watch are bad and unserious.1. YA, whose breakout mainstream successes include The Hunger Games, Twilight, and Harry Potter. There are, of course, YA successes written by people who identify as male -- John Green for one -- but many of the mainstream breakouts were written by women. Ironically, Hunger Games has a great deal to say about the fluctuations of wealth, accumulations of capital, the misery of wars, massacres, and so on. Harry Potter has a lot to say about oligarchy and the misery of wars. Twilight ... um ... the inherent heteronormativity of many love triangles? Okay, it's a reach.
2. Old Buffy reruns. Not as feminist in the rear-view mirror as it appeared to me at the time, but so promoted at the time, and celebrating female heroism.
3. "a pornographic pastiche of children's fiction called 50 Shades of Grey" I admire the economy of this. Fanfiction ("pastiche of children's fiction"), YA (Twilight is most definitely not for children), and 50 Shades, a book that was notoriously consumed, avidly, by adult women.
There's also a heapin' helpin' of generalized Viewing With Alarm.
Unfortunately for them, when you actually look at the lists, you realize that virtually none of the books being trotted out has ever truly been banned. It is not an act of censorship in any meaningful sense for a school librarian to decide that, on balance, it would be better if children did not have unfettered access to lurid, often illustrated, stories about drug use and underage sodomy.
Attributing decisions that, notoriously, are made by school and library boards -- hence "banned" -- to individual librarians. The decisions that get nationwide attention aren't librarians failing to buy; they're public pressure to prevent already-bought books from being read.
Increasingly, many of the works in question are not even proper books but rather so-called "graphic novels," which are novels in the same sense that the MoonLite BunnyRanch in Mound House, Nevada, is a farm. What are these things doing in school libraries in the first place except contributing to the now probably irreversible dumbing down of American education?
"I refuse to read the 1992 Pulitzer Prize winner about a Holocaust survivor, an award-winning memoir of growing up female in Khomeini's Iran, or another memoir of growing up lesbian with a closeted gay father that not only made "best book" lists but was made into a Pulitzer Prize-winning musical." That last, of course, was written by Alison Bechdel, the popularizer of the Bechdel Test. All of these books are whorehouses and should not be in school libraries.
* Screenshots on Twitter are such an appalling accessibility loss.
** Ban Banned Books Week
*** As I afterthoughted on Twitter, if you actually wanted to read Roman history, as opposed to English literature or historiography, you'd be reading Mary Beard, not Gibbon.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 03:44 pm (UTC)Like I'm a fucking official librarian. A youth and family services one even. I guarantee I have forgotten more about book banning than this person ever knew. I will even fucking punch him WITH A BANNED BOOK.
/is possibly more seethe about this shit than usual.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 04:25 pm (UTC)Like. I just. WHERE DO I EVEN START. NO SIR YOU ARE WRONG. ABOUT EVERYTHING.
*officially staples a notice to that articler's forehead that says "Sorry, after consideration of your opinions we have come to the conclusion that these are the mean, narrow-minded, self-centred views of someone with the intelligence and social grace of duckweed, and we must therefore remove you from public converse."*
*oh ghods I could write a book? about staring at my classmates and going "oh god you are all nice middle class kids from actually decent families - like, as in genuinely your parents are not evil and did a pretty good job - oh my god, even most of the PoC in this room are nice middle class kids, and YE GODS DOES IT SHOW and WOW PROF YOU ARE NOT HELPING".
Like. I was a nice middle class kid! It's just I went to a high-school in a town exactly the right size to on the one hand only have one high-school and on the other have openly the full strata of class and social situations and income challenges, both urban and rural, and because I was a Queer Alt Freak most of my bffs were NOT Nice Sheltered Middle Class Kids and when we were talking about When Everything Feels Like The Movies in class and attendant controversy I swear to god me and the girl who grew up poor and Arab in Paris until her family moved to Quebec kept LOOKING AT EACH OTHER LIKE WE WERE ON THE OFFICE and then sticking up our hands and going " . . . okay actually that sounds like entirely normal shit to me. I mean I'm not saying it's GOOD that this stuff happens with teens, especially teens messed up about their gender identity and sexuality because Our Society Sucks, I'm just saying, it's NORMAL, there are LOTS OF TEENS WHO HAVE THIS LIFE, there are a lot of teens who will SEE THEMSELVES in this book and acting like it's ~*totally inappropriate for fifteen year olds*~ is in fact telling them that their fucking LIVES are inappropriate for fifteen year olds and there is a Problem Here."†
We then met up after class to go THANK YOU FOR EXISTING AND MAKING ME FEEL NOT CRAZY/GASLIT.
†do I believe in CONTENT NOTES being available for all books for teens so that the teens THEMSELVES can decide if they want to read about this? Damn right I do. GOSH IT'S LIKE NUANCE IS A THING.§
§I should give up and accept that my pro blog name is going to be "Angry Dragon Librarian" shouldn't I. Sigh.
**NOT, note, that I personally have anything against Mr Leonard. In fact as far as I can tell Mr Leonard has an entirely sensible view about how fiction works and how literature works. It's just that he, like Dickens, has moved into the category of "literature of merit" simply by virtue of being old and well-known, as "Westerns and crime fiction trash" was the general opinion of his books back in the day, which just . . . why do people have no sense of history OR of irony. Why.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 05:09 pm (UTC)I find it telling that the author considers it daring and risky to recommend an author of gritty underworld mysteries. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler would like a word in the foyer.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-30 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 04:23 pm (UTC)I've just finished, as I mentioned, an analysis of literary influences on Harry Potter: Homer, Ovid, Milton, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, various obscure 17th century Quaker pamphleteers...
no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 05:23 pm (UTC)Literary influences
Date: 2017-09-29 05:12 pm (UTC)Re: Literary influences
Date: 2017-09-29 05:15 pm (UTC)Re: Literary influences
Date: 2017-09-29 05:23 pm (UTC)Re: Literary influences
Date: 2017-09-29 05:26 pm (UTC)Re: Literary influences
Date: 2017-09-29 05:22 pm (UTC)A lot of what Groves is talking about are ways in which the references are used to create and subvert a relationship between the Potter novels and the literary canon. For example, "dumbledore" is an old dialect word for bumblebee, but if you go to the bit of Thomas Hardy where it's used, it's a passage about code switching where a girl from a rural background has to unlearn her natural dialect, and so she not only has to learn to say "bumblebee" not "dumbledore" but if she's had a bad night, not to say she's been hag-rid but that she "slept poorly."
So basically it's an extended analysis of where HP stands in terms of its overarching themes, along with a comparison of how Voldemort slips up to how Milton's Satan does, along the way.
Re: Literary influences
Date: 2017-09-29 05:24 pm (UTC)Re: Literary influences
Date: 2017-09-29 05:26 pm (UTC)Re: Literary influences
Date: 2017-09-30 04:18 pm (UTC)I did The Pardoner's Tale for A-level and my reaction to the Three Brothers was "JKR likes The Pardoner's Tale" so I must read that.
Re: Literary influences
Date: 2017-10-01 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 10:00 pm (UTC)Hello?
no subject
Date: 2017-09-30 01:20 am (UTC). . . wow.
I can't decide whether to be impressed or take a shower. I hope there is smackdown commencing on Twitter, too.