Fear of the Improbable

Reading the first 100 pages of Inside Out, I noted a repeated theme that we've seen with the censorship discussed in the Grease documentary and also in the Harry Potter article - fear of exaggerated, and often unlikely, consequences.

Those who called for censorship of the Harry Potter series within public schools cited two major reasons that led them to their decision. The first pointed to Harry Potter as promoting the occult as a religion, while the second stated that the characters and plots of the series promote disobedient and delinquent behavior. Yet neither of these explanations provide a supported and legitimate concern that shows these books as a danger. Children have read series that include magical and fantasy-related content for years (A Wrinkle in Time, Half-Magic, The Hobbit, etc.) without forsaking their religion or attempting to invoke the spirit of Hecate. Similarly, the board could provide no evidence to show that the series had led to any unusually disruptive behavior among the students.

In the case of Grease, concerns seemed equally inane. Citizens in the community against the musical made explicit concerns that it may be harmful for an inappropriate act like teenage drinking to be depicted for the students to see. This reasoning neglected to acknowledge that teenagers are past the age where they imitate everything that they seen, and are exposed to teenage drinking and other questionable content through television and other media regardless.

In Bernstein's memoir, the threat of communism is not established with any more legitimacy that the threat of Harry Potter. Communists are pointed to as possible overthrowers of the government power, plotting to assassinate U.S. leaders and take control of the nation by force. Yet, the individuals foretelling this fate don't have any true evidence that this is the aim of the communists, and as Bernstein says, the communist group meetings would have been a lot more interesting had these actually been the topics of discussion.

What appears to be the case is that censorship of communist ideals, of fantasy fiction, and of campy musicals does not come from a place of legitimate concern for what will happen if action is not taken towards censorship. This censorship occurs in the grander scheme of sending a message. Harry Potter is banned to set a boundary that prevents more damaging texts from leaking into schools, just as communists and non-communist liberals are censored to send a message to anyone who may actually have scheme and plots on their mind. It is a scare tactic, rather than a solution.