Banned Books

Jon Tveite (jontv@ksu.edu)
Fri, 26 Sep 1997 10:31:10 -0500 

Just a few (almost) random thoughts...

Does anyone else find it a little odd that "Banned Books Week" has
become so... uncontroversial?... boring?... pointless, maybe?  I mean,
sure, maybe some of the teachers and librarians and booksellers who
support BBW have actually read these banned books, but I would guess
that most Americans would never have heard of 75% if not for the list. 
That includes, of course, most of the fundie wackos protesting the books
in the first place.  Not that I'm *opposed* to BBW or anything -- I just
have a hard time seeing it as much more than another come-on from Barnes
and Noble.  (Yes, I know I'm too cynical to breathe.)  It's like the
powers-that-be are saying, "There's no harm in endorsing freedom of
expression -- since nobody actually reads anymore."

Or maybe it's upsetting because the things that get books banned these
days are so irrelevent to me.  Tasteful, affirming depictions of
homosexuality, for example -- only a dogmatic moron would argue that
books containing them should be banned.  Maybe I'm jaded, but it's hard
for me to get really excited about the struggle against these morons.

Which leads me to another rant: does anyone else detect a smug,
self-congratulatory note in celebrating "Banned Books Week?"  As if to
say, "Isn't it great that we've come through the dark ages?  Aren't we a
smart, tolerant bunch for allowing Catcher in the Rye back on our
library shelves?  People used to be so ignorant, didn't they?" 
Meanwhile, hardly anyone is writing books with really dangerous ideas in
them now, and the ones that do aren't getting published, and the
published ones aren't getting read.  Why not dedicate a week to
promoting *contemporary* books that are as subversive as Catcher was in
its day?

>From the article:

> "Saying, 'I don't want my child to read material is OK,'" said Krug.
> "But saying, 'I don't want my child to read this book and to protect my
> child I want you to remove the book so no one else has access to it,'
> that's a horse of a different color."

This is what it comes down to, for me: people want to the sanitize the
culture at large so they don't have to do their jobs as parents.  It is
the parents' responsibility to teach children how to think for
themselves within the value system the parents want to pass on.  Not
only is it stupid, unrealistic, undemocratic, and wrong to seek &
destroy every potential challenge to that value system in the child's
environment, it is also counterproductive: an untested ideology will
blow over in the first stiff wind the grown-up child faces alone. 
Furthermore, it seems like an admission that the value system isn't all
that great to begin with, if they think little Billy is going to forget
everything he learned in Sunday School the first time he stumbles across
a "beaver shot" (to quote Vonnegut, among others) on the Internet.

Okay, I'll stop now.

Jon (Tveite) <jontv@ksu.edu>
_________________________________________________________________
"Well you say that it's gospel but I know that it's only church."

                             Tom Waits, "That Feel," Bone Machine