An Opened Mind to Censorship

When you asked in class whether we had had our minds changed about anything over the course of the semester, I tried to think in what ways this class has changed my mind about anything. I think the biggest change for me is that I have become much more, perhaps not sympathetic towards, but understanding of censors and their points of view. Prior to this class, most of my knowledge of book censorship related to the censorship of Harry Potter books, and as a huge Harry Potter fan, attempts to censor or ban those books always enraged and offended me. My mind has not been changed so much that I can claim to consider that subject more open-mindedly—I still think anyone who thinks the Harry Potter books are dangerous to children is crazy and completely out of line. But I no longer apply that generalization to anyone who tries to censor a book. Though the necessity and appropriateness of censoring books is always a subject of controversy, and in general I still fall in the camp of not censoring things for the most part, I now admit that there are many legitimate and reasonable arguments for censorship. Most of the arguments that I find most convincing (though they still don’t completely win me over) are those that argue for the censorship of certain books in schools. This class made me realize how difficult it must be as a teacher to walk the fine line between expanding your students’ horizons and making them overly uncomfortable in a classroom that is supposed to be a safe space. Whether books that fall on the wrong side of that line ought to be censored or not, I don’t know, but I definitely think a great deal of thought has to go in to what is the right thing for that audience.

Free Speech

Stanley Fish argues that "there is no such thing as free speech". Not only do I disagree, but I think that there are some substantial flaws with both his argument and his reasoning. He seems to say that the only way speech is truly free is if it is some absent, abstract, nonsensical speech which deviates from the norm, which he calls weightless situations. Oddly enough the thing that came to mind for me is the scene in Anchorman when Ron Burgundy and his crew are discussing the new female reporter, and Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) says "I just burned my tongue". Completely out out place, out of context, it bothers me to think that this is the only time when speech is truly free (seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiHdL-6U4Sk).

Later, he goes on to note that once speech is given for a reason, it thus negates all other possible reasons it could be given, constraining the previously "free" speech. By this logic, only speech that is given completely without reason is free speech. But after reading that, I realized that it's not an issue with what he says that I have, but that we are essentially speaking two different languages. Fish has a substantial lexical confusion with what the rest of us call "free speech". He considers speech without purpose free. Thus he is referring to whatever was said itself as free. Nowadays, we consider free speech the ability to speak freely. It's not that we speak without purpose, it's that we have the freedom to designate for a purpose whatever it is we want to say. This lexical confusion, for me, makes his argument seem much less plausible and coherent

Censorship

Throughout this class I've seen that censorship--what gets censored and who gets to decide it-- is a huge grey area. Material that has been censored spans a wide range of subjects, including sexuality, religion, politics, profanity, and race relations. The intended effect of censoring material varies as well. For example, The Catcher in the Rye is often banned in schools because parents worry that it will negatively influence their children. Similarly, literature and film about Communism was often banned because people worried it would cause people to sympathize with the political movement. To Kill A Mockingbird, on the other hand, is often censored because the language might be hurtful or offensive to those reading it. Most often though, it seems that literature is banned or censored because it represents an idea that the body with the ability to censor disagrees with. It is used as a means to quiet voices and suppress the spread of certain ideas. However, there is always disagreement over if and what should be censored, what is considered controversial, and who has the right to take away free speech. This class has given me deeper insight into the issue of censorship and greater respect for the writers who have struggled against and persisted in spite of it.

Censorship in my Eyes

This course has brought a few issues to my mind that I had not considered before. Although I had always known that censorship and book burning and other similar activities existed, I had never contemplated why. Because I grew up in the liberal, extreme-left San Francisco Bay Area, I have always thought that censorship was wrong and that the people who enforced it were narrow minded and had no business deciding what America’s youth were exposed to. After taking this course however, I can understand why some of the texts we read over the semester have been censored and why certain individuals and establishments have focused their energy on stopping youth from being exposed to certain texts.

I especially see this with “To Kill A Mockingbird.” When I read this book in high school, I felt extremely uncomfortable because I was the only black person in the class and every time one of my white counterparts used the word ‘nigger,’ I felt my spine cringe. It wasn’t because I hadn’t heard the word before; I’d even used it before. It was because I felt that myself and my feelings were not being respected in the classroom. I felt that my teacher and classmates were being inconsiderate by not asking me if I was comfortable with them using the word. Originally, I thought that if my professor had asked me if I was comfortable, I would have said no, the word wouldn’t have been used and I would have been okay with the book being taught in my classroom. After taking this course, I realize that isn’t true.

Even at 21, in a class full of my peers, I wasn’t comfortable communicating all of my emotions. This made me realize that there is no way that I would have had that comfort in high school. I’m sure that I would have told my teacher that I was okay with the use of the word in the classroom because I wouldn’t have wanted to hinder his teaching, but I also know that I would have felt extremely unhappy while reading the book.

Maybe the youth need someone to speak up for them. Even though the majority of my class may have been okay with “To Kill A Mockingbird” being on the curriculum, I wasn’t and I was the intimidated minority who wasn’t able to speak for myself. It would have been nice if someone had challenged the book for me since I did not feel I had the power to do so myself at such a young age. This causes me to believe that maybe censorship does have a place in this society. When censorship is used to protect a child’s comfort in the classroom, I think it should be exercised.

Censorship; The Household Right

Now that the semester is drawing to a close I feel that the line between censorship that should be upheld and censorship that should be admonished is harder to define than I first thought.
For instance, I think I truly believe in the right to abstain from something yourself, if you know it will be detrimental to your mental or emotional well-being ( such as violence in movies ) though I truly frown on those who censor their children from things they believe are detrimental to their well being. These parents censoring what their children hear or see usually have the best intentions, but so many take it too far. I watch Jesus Camp and get chills from how similar to brainwashing it is to restrict a child's view of the world to that degree. Knowledge is power right? The more you see and hear the more you know, so how do we decide what is detrimental and what is potential power for our countries youth?

So on that note I wanna write about when people take Censorship into their own hands ( in this case, for the worse rather than the better).

There's a play called Corpes Christi by Terrence McNally in which Jesus and his apostles are depicted as gay men living in modern day Texas. Now, i Understand how,, if one were to find this offensive they would simply not attenmd a performance or simply not buy the play. But people could not bear the thought that ANYONE would see or read this. Everywhere in Austrailia there were church leaders and soccer moms calling for the opening of the show to be canceled. The author even recieved death threats.
This is when Censorship scares me. When people have such a problem with a mere idea ( in this case ; the idea Jesus was gay) that they cannot be satisfied in simply rejecting that idea as a personal truth but they have to make sure no one else is accepting it or even thinking about it. And THAT is tyranny, when people believe they have the right to what you do or do not think or believe.

Stanley Fish and our classroom

I found that the entire time I was reading the interview with Stanley Fish I was constantly comparing his points to how we speak and view speech in this class. Overall I think Fish’s argument is interesting but in some ways extreme – I think his definition of “free speech” is pretty far from how a lot of people see it. However, there were a few phrases that Fish used that really jumped out at me and made me think about our class, for example “weightless situation.” Fish brings this phrase up in the context of his argument that we always speak for a reason, that speech has a purpose. In the context of our class, though, I was thinking that in a way we are in our own “weightless situation.” We are lucky enough to be in an environment where we can read these novels and discuss them without being actively censored and without really having to worry too much about what we say. This doesn’t make our conversations insignificant, but it does mean that they do have a certain hypothetical, non-weighted quality in them. I think the times when we, as a class and individually, have started to change our own opinions and struggled with certain topics has been when we start to think outside of that closed environment and ask questions like, would I really let my kids read that? Is it right to expose younger children to these ideas? The times when we’ve wrestled with these challenging problems and have really gotten down to working through censorship issues has been when we used the environment of a “weightless situation” to think about a time or place that is more consequential.
Another term that Fish used that I found really interesting is his idea of a “trigger point.” Fish claims that no one really believes that everything and anything should be said, and that we all have this point “which is either acknowledged at the beginning or emerges in a moment of crisis.” I think many of us entered this course without being aware of or acknowledging a trigger point, and some of the personal challenge came from a “moment of crisis.” The general views of the class all along has been very anti-censorship, but along the way we have encountered issues (for example, specific words or concepts) that have been triggers for some people and made others re-consider their ideas. For me, at least, it is this conflict between the idealistic urge to be able to say “no, I don’t think literature should be censored” and certain trigger points and personally sensitive subjects that cause a lot of my inner debate about these issues.

Response to Gladwell

I had mixed feelings after reading Gladwell’s article from the New Yorker. Mostly, I feel defensive of Atticus and of his role in the novel. Gladwell criticizes Atticus and the novel for not doing more to fight racial inequalities and tensions during the trial and argues that To Kill a Mockingird tells us primarily “about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism in Maycomb, Alabama.” While this may be true, I think another large part of the novel is Atticus’s character, and this character would have been drastically different had he acted differently at the trial. While Gladwell seems to view it as a negative characteristic that “Once again, he [Atticus] puts personal ties first,” I think this is one of the most notable and remarkable things about his character. This is a large reason behind his relationship with Scout and Jem and his respectability in the town. If Atticus was in fact “brimming with rage” in the courtroom like Gladwell suggests, that one action would negate and alter the entire perception of his character that Lee has presented up to that point. I believe that where Gladwell’s argument falls through is in understanding that Lee never intended for Atticus to be a civil-rights hero – she intended for the trial and the civil-rights conflict to be one of the many parts of Atticus’s character and personality. The trial is just one way in which the reader and Atticus’s children learn about him and how to treat people, in the same way that they learn through his interactions with Mrs. Dubose and Boo Radley. If we hold Atticus up to the standard of a civil-rights hero of course he will fall short, but that is not what he is intended to be.
I also think that making Atticus this kind of hero would take him out of the context of the novel. While this is what would be necessary to redirect the story into a more civil-rights oriented plotline, by broadening the context and losing the “profound localism” that Gladwell mentions, a lot of the beauty of the town and the community that Lee created would be lost. Overall, if Atticus was the hero that Gladwell wanted him to be, many other aspects of Lee’s novel that are desirable would have to be altered or lost.