Is This How the Book Burning Begins?
This is a reflection about our times. In recent weeks, the news has prompted me to ask this question. Yes, I’m sort of joking. Yes, it’s wordplay. But, to tell you the truth, it’s sort of not a joke. Not in my eyes. Here, I’ll examine current trends and dystopian models — and answer the burning question. Is this how the book burning begins?
If you’ve been following Voyage of the Mind for any time at all, you’ve probably picked up on my propensity for writing provocative pieces. I don’t like them too provocative. I don’t want to come out here and write something titled “Modern Liberalism is Destroying America,” though I could. Honestly, I don’t like throwing ideas in people’s faces.
But I do like approaching them from a slant — a provocative slant that makes people think (or so I choose to believe). When people read my work, I want them to ask questions and think deeply. This is my goal in writing “provocative” articles like this one. I think it’s really, really important for people to question not only their actions, but also the actions of others around them — and to think deeply about why things happen in a certain way, at a certain time and in a certain place.
What current events brought me to this train of thought?
A whole spat of them!
First off, there was the wholesale destruction of books in the Harry Potter series on the part of some fans following those tweets of J.K. Rowling’s. Please keep in mind that I’m not defending anyone here. I am just saying that the destruction of books put book burning in my mind — a train of thought you can probably follow.
Then there’s Gone With the Wind, a more serious example in my eyes. The discussion there began with the movie, not the book, but soon grew roots into the literary world.
Lastly, there’s the reinterpretation of Civil War-era stuff — books, statues, names — that’s been happening lately.
Why are these recent pieces of news worrisome to me?
If you’ve ever read dystopian fiction, you might have an idea why these recent pieces of news — and the idea of book burning in general — come as a bit of a worry. A lot of dystopian novels incorporate some component of the destruction of literary and historical materials. I just came off reading both The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s 1984 classic, as well as its sequel, The Testaments. (In fact, you can read my review here on the blog if you’re interested.) But there are a whole host of others. 1984… Brave New World… and, of course, the book all about book burning — Farhenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
Now, I’m not actually going to talk at length about any of these books, but suffice to say that with the spread of “cancel culture” — read more about what I think about cancel culture in my article devoted to the subject — and “trial” in the media, some sects of American society seem to be plummeting into “thought police” territory.
In my eyes, it’s a problem if you have to stop and wonder every single time you open your mouth who you’re going to offend and who’s going to step in to police you once you say something wrong. I agree that people should think before they talk and that you ought to expect some backlash when you say certain things. But at the same time, we have freedom of speech in this country. And freedom of speech, in my eyes, encompasses not only literal freedom of speech, but also the creation of a climate that’s conducive to free speech. That is, a climate that doesn’t frighten people into silence.
Unfortunately, in some liberal circles, people are being frightened into silence. This is part of the reason why liberal America has become more and more homogeneous over the past few years. It appears homogeneous because the people sitting at the top, the ones with the loudest and most hardline beliefs, have bullied a lot of others into silent submission. I don’t believe that all liberals are crazy. But some of them seem to have crazy ideas. Or, rather, not crazy — just not well thought-out.
In my opinion, it’s important to preserve history and literature.
The question is one of precedent. It’s a question about where we’ll draw the line.
Recently, there was a ludicrous article published about the movie version of Stephen King’s novel The Shining. It claimed that The Shining had not aged well because it depicted “abuse and violence.” The center of the argument was not that the cast had been abused in the process — but that the movie contained themes of abuse and violence.
This example was so beyond the pale that people of all stripes took to Twitter, questioning the article’s validity. Because, let’s be honest, The Shining is absolutely not meant to be a bright, sunny movie about ideal family life. And, let’s be honest again, most movies contain a lot of darkness.
This article would also give you the sense that the people in the 1980s (when The Shining came out) didn’t understand abuse and violence. Um, okay. Those people lived 40 years ago. You really think they were any different than we are now? In my opinion, human nature and even human culture don’t change that fast. Just look at history. Which repeats itself, if you haven’t noticed.
It’s a dark tunnel… and a slippery slope.
I understand complaints against certain pieces of literature and historical relics, like statues of Confederate generals. I really do understand these complaints. The point is not that I think the complaints are wrong. The point is that I think the action that’s taken is sometimes not thought out to the best of our abilities. Would you rather a single reactionary shove in “the right direction,” or a real reckoning?
Right now, we seem to favor reactionary shoves that build in one direction — and set dangerous precedents. You may not like the movie Gone With the Wind or its themes. But take a moment to consider. Do you want anyone to be able to get rid of any piece of media they don’t like? That’s the precedent you’re setting when you remove media from circulation, be those books, movies, or historical documents.
It’s particularly dangerous to destroy history. If we have any chance of learning from our past, we need to preserve every bit of history we can. Granted, Confederate monuments don’t fall into the kind of history I’m talking about, and because the Confederacy stood for slavery I favor the removal of those monuments. But a removal of monuments doesn’t constitute a rewriting of history. A rewriting of history occurs when pieces of information, like pieces of media, are systematically removed from the record. And that’s the slope that we’re unfortunately beginning to traverse today. In terms of historical documentation, the film Gone With the Wind is a hundred times more useful than a Confederate statue. Why? It shows what people thought at a given time in history. It gives us a gateway into their beliefs — beliefs we don’t want to repeat. Beliefs we want to study, so we know what went wrong.
In conclusion
America is at a point in its history where we need to take a hard look at the historical record and make changes going forward. I do believe that through a careful examination of history and the current climate, we can defeat systemic racism over time. Emphasis on over time. As unfortunate as it is, things like systemic racism don’t vanish overnight. Cultural change happens slowly. That’s not to say we can’t make progress quickly in the form of bills and and new laws, but we won’t change people’s hearts overnight.
I don’t think defeating racism will take a book burning. It shouldn’t take a book burning. If it does, we’ve resorted to the wrong tactics, tactics that will produce a tyrannical society, one in which the leading majority will be able to dictate happenings as they will. I don’t know about you, but that’s not the kind of society I want to live in.
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Are we going to destroy all the great works of art and literature down through the ages created by people that did not share our opinions?
Einstein was considered to be a racist, do we then negate the theory of relativity because he made racial slurs against a Asians? Churchill was a racist but a great man whose political acumen kept Great Britain out of the clutches of Hitler in WWII.
There are tons of examples of people who were a product of their age.
I understand the desire to pull down statues of people who subjugated another people, these men cast in bronze should not be glorified. By the same token what do you do with the Constitution of the United States it written by rich white men to maintain power for rich white men it was not written for ALL the people.
To ignore your history we will only be destined to make the same mistakes all over again.
Book burning is an emotionally immature thing to do like it has no higher purpose than a fan burning a sports jersey because their favourite player went to another team. It serves no purpose but to ramp up fear and hostility, it is a fruitless gesture.
I hate the idea of wiping out sections of history because they are unpalatable. The truth is still there, burying it or burning it does not negate it nor does it make the future better. It is how we move forward from this point on always knowing where we have come from that is important.
Thank you for this well-reasoned response! You feel as I feel. We are ALL products of our age, and we can’t ignore history if we’re going to try to make forward progress. Instead, we need to foster a deep understanding of history. Not blindly out of the belief that we’ll learn from past mistakes, but from the belief that we will become better if we understand why the mistakes were made in the first place, and to draw broader parallels to our present day.
Also, we need to keep in mind that all human beings are complicated. Virtually no one is wholly “good” or “evil.” And everyone is affected by the time they live in.
Thank you again for this comment and thank you for reading!
Hi Laura, thanks for another very good article! It is indeed getting harder each day to comprehend the levels of book burning happening and to remain tolerant of yet another virtue-signaling yet disingenuous or pointless statement, or gesture. I’m a big fan of Netflix’s Community, a show which I believe is rare in its upfront yet humourous and non-patronising way of handling sensitive matters. They recently pulled the ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ episode which is one of the best episodes for highlighting so many human flaws and hypocrisy. The character Chang adopted what has been interpreted as ‘blackface’ in the guise of an elf. Not only did the script include Shirley (a black character) pointing out the potential “hate crime” of his action, but I have since been enlightened that his costume could also be interpreted as a symbol of the inherent racism in many fantasy novels and games. This type of censoring is reaching a new level of complete futility and like your example of ‘Gone with the Wind’, depriving people of the opportunity to learn and draw their own conclusions from a piece of art.
As for JK Rowling – that one is interesting because she somewhat became the victim of a liberalism that she so far has strongly endorsed, other than when it came to an issue that directly affected her more than others. It just goes to show that where you fall on the wrong side of the opinion in today’s pro-victim, censorial culture, how quickly you become toast!
Thanks for this comment and for reading! I’m glad you found this article thought-provoking.
I hadn’t heard of the show Community, but I just did some research and read about the case you’re talking about. This is really not a case where the creators of the show should have felt obliged to take the material down. The episode *could* have served (and seems to have been serving, prior to its removal) as a conversation starter, whereas taking it down does nothing further the situation since the initial action wasn’t motivated out of racism. All the recent examples like this really worry me!
I agree about the JK Rowling example. I personally have never met the woman and it’s very difficult to ascertain someone’s true beliefs from their 280-odd character tweets or even from the letters they post to the Internet. I do think that she’s a victim in this situation, though, because it’s not as if her beliefs are hard-line by any meaning of the word, and no person deserves to be publicly hung for expressing middle-of-the-road beliefs. But that’s what this brand of liberalism has come to. It’s sad because it closes down discussion and doesn’t foster reasonable debate, which in my eyes are essential components of a working democracy.
Thanks again for the comment!
Now that you’ve researched that particular scene in Community I would highly recommend you give watching it a go! I don’t even know what genre of comedy it would fall into – possibly satire, but I find it to be wonderfully ironic and a great modern critique of society through the medium of very distinct and DIVERSE characters which it treats lovingly despite their flaws. In some ways it’s very ahead of its time and I can’t believe it actually stopped airing some years ago.
Agree that JK Rowling is indeed ultimately a victim from the unnecessarily vitriolic backlash against her. These new types of attacks really do set out to destroy someone and it’s really a sad indictment of a sector of society when people who preach and demand tolerance are not capable of expressing the same when it’s out of sync with their own personal worldview. Yes, I think that social media does not give the whole reflection of anyone and generally does not foster reasoned debate – I think it has created a false sense of security and entitlement to express your own opinion in an unapologetic, black and white manner. No skill is required that involves engaging with others in a respectful manner (as you see with many people who tweet something like “I’m done with you, bye” and frequent use of the “block” weapon!). If anything, tweets/posts convey just one dimension of someone’s character enough to give us some idea of what they passionately believe in and where we might share some common ground with them on a certain topic, but it’s not to say that we would necessarily be friends in real life with the person! Often people tweet out of emotion and that is not always showing you the best of them. Either way, it’s clear that any celebrity or individual is very vulnerable to persecution if they step out of line. JK Rowling certainly has a platform from which she should use her voice, and it’s a reflection on her opposers, not her, when she really is saying something pretty unextraordinary, like you observe. You mention at the beginning of this piece that you tend to write “provocative” pieces – I know what you mean of course, but similarly to the JK situation, why should a thought or view be provocative or controversial for simply stating the obvious at times! Or put another way, the unpopular truth…
I will give Community a go! I’d never heard of it before you mentioned it, but it sounds like a very interesting show. Thanks for the rec.
It’s a big hypocrisy, really, and it’s somewhat amazing to me that the people involved can’t see their own hypocrisy, but it seems like they can’t.
With Twitter, I mean, you’re essentially limited by a character limit, unless you’re going to create a whole thread. And you’re right, some people are so quick to block as soon as they get into a touchy situation, instead of trying to discuss with the other person in a reasonable way. With social media in general it’s too easy to just step away from whatever is bothering you. Which is good in some ways, but bad in others, because people never learn to deal with their feelings or treat others respectfully. In the celebrity case, I’ve always felt bad, because they’re so high-profile that their every move is scrutinized on social media.
Yeah, I feel that the view I express here is pretty middle-of-the-road. Very strange times we live in that a moderate view would be called “provocative” and that’s for sure. It definitely speaks to the polarized political climate.
Agree with all of your points! I just came across this article and thought you may be interested as it touches on the spirit of this same piece on book burning. I had a quick scan of their website and I am not sure I would agree with all of their viewpoints and also recognise several of their writers who definitely hold a white, “priveleged” middle-class conservative bias, but generally their motto is they do not follow the herd (hence the ‘Unherd’) – it seems like a bold statement but simply for the times we live in – the irony is that in another time this same group of people could not really hold claim to such a statement, it’s just the 180 degree turn that things have taken. Anyway, for what it’s worth I thought this particular piece was quite well written:
https://unherd.com/thepost/shouldnt-artists-be-worrying-about-beauty-instead-of-politics/
I just gave it a read and it was very well written! I think that the premise is correct, too. Art is art, not politics, but people always make it political these days. Thanks for sharing this! I’ll probably explore the website more when I have the time.