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More code than Bletchley Park
Sep. 29th, 2017 07:52 amSomebody 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.
