Cancel Culture in Tennessee

[togor]

Cancel culture is not a phenomenon peculiar to the left. Right-wing state legislatures and school boards regularly cancel subjects, for the same sort of "snowflake" reasons as the left.

Most recently a Tennessee school board has voted to ban a famous graphic novel about the Holocaust for the given reason of rough language and imagery. Apparently they don't want the kids upset by the subject matter or its presentation.

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2022/01/27/tennessee-school-board-removes-holocaust-mausart-spiegelman/9237260002/

Given the volume of nudity/profanity available to any kid with an internet connection, we all know that the given reason for the ban cannot possibly be the real reason.

[lyman]

pure and simple reason,

it's a comic book,

or more accurately, a trade paperback

wondering if the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund will chime in?,


I had a TShirt from them with a great illustration by Frank Miller on it years ago


btw, that's not really cancel culture,

[rayg]

The McMinn County School Board voted 10-0 to ban the book. That's 10-0, not a single Board member voted against banning it!

[togor]

pure and simple reason,

it's a comic book,

or more accurately, a trade paperback

wondering if the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund will chime in?,


I had a TShirt from them with a great illustration by Frank Miller on it years ago


btw, that's not really cancel culture,

I suppose it's a comic book to you.

But then are all such illustrated books banned or just the ones that depict the cruelty of life in Nazi death camps? We must protect the children!

Cancelling is cancelling, whether it be a person, or an idea or a thing. "________ makes me uncomfortable so things need to change."

[lyman]

I suppose it's a comic book to you.

But then are all such illustrated books banned or just the ones that depict the cruelty of life in Nazi death camps? We must protect the children!

Cancelling is cancelling, whether it be a person, or an idea or a thing. "________ makes me uncomfortable so things need to change."

it is, I have a pile of them, used to collect,
got a big handful of Trade Paperbacks too,

had a mailbox at one local Comic Shop for years,

even was able to special order, via the old Previews Catalog, what ever was out new,

MAUS, despite the story, is a Trade,

school admins etc think only grade shool kids should read comics, and then they should be Superman and Xmen,,
or one of the 12,867 Spiderman's


illustrated books are not Trades, or Comics,


there is a line,,


and yes, not cancelling,


if it was cancelling, they would go after the Author, printers, etc,


just a school board doing stupid stuff,

[Art]

Interesting

When I was teaching Maus was in common use in the public schools of Texas at the high school level, in the libraries and sometimes on the lists of optional reading books for some classes. Definately not on the Texas list of unacceptable literature. Schools individually might choose not to use it but that's a different issue than a statewide ban. I remember the movie "28 Days" being shown in Senior health class as a warning against a profligate life style in general and drug abuse in particular. I also recall the PG versions of some movies (Glory comes to mind) being edited for extreme violence but not language.

Apparently things are a bit different in Texas than Tennessee.

When I was a child "Mein Kamph" and "The Bible" were both in the library of my High School in Louisiana and I actually read "Mein Kamph" and I wondered how any thing so repulsive could seduce an entire nation. Obviously it did and Germany wasn't the only one.

Also, I hadn't thought of Lyman's observation of it being a comic book/"graphic novel" but I can see that argument too....sort of.

Lastly I can see the Tennessee book committee's concern's about nudity and violence, especially since kids are exposed to so much of it culturally, but sometimes the message might be allowed to trump that. I recall the girls track and cross country coach showing the documentary "eyes on the prize" about the civil rights struggle in the '60s in his AP history class. It had some quite graphic sections and was disturbing enough to bring tears to kids eyes but I think showing it was well worth the it.

Interestingly Spiegleman sometimes was a guest on religious TV shows like "The 700 Club" where the hosts were universally surprised to learn he was an athiest.

[togor]

I too remember when "Mein Kampf" was on the book list for a college class I took. But those were different times, and different circles, and the context was as Art describes: study and learn to avoid a repeat.

Times are different now, and with the last of those alive in that WW2 era pretty much gone, we see a generation coming up without the influence of those who lived it, and the revisionism begins.

People dig out old Allied and Axis newsreels and post them to YouTube. When the Germans are in action defending the Atlantic wall, invariably come the comments about how the Soldaten were just bravely defending their civilization and homeland like any other soldier would. The bit about the Germans being on French soil where they were never wanted in the first place (or Russian soil, Polish soul, Italian soil, etc.) gets neatly overlooked!

Just walking around I don't feel old (most days LOL) but every once in awhile when I see what the younger generation has left behind I realize that I must have lived longer than I thought!

[Art]

One last thing.

Appropriate for College, which is damn near anything, and appropriate for grade school are not the same thing.

The conservative opinion which I (and I think a big majority subscribe to,) is that parents are primarily responsible for the moral/ethical upbringing of their children, which means "Drag Queen Story Day" in elementary school is totally inappropriate, education on that should be handled at home.

There are also the documented cases of teachers telling children not to tell their parents what is discussed in class or telling parents they aren't to watch at home teaching during the plague (yeah that worked.) States have committees to determine curricula and it should understand there are some limits to teaching morality, especially sexual morality, in school. A lot of the current uproar is parents becoming much more aware of what is actually being taught K - 12.

I think Maus is appropriate for high school. Those Tennessee folks thought the violence and nudity trumped that and said so. Like Lyman I personally think that was a mistake. It was not cancel culture. Nobody was saying you were a bad person, for reading the book, or that parents were bad people for individually giving it to their kids, it just didn't quite make the cut as a Tennessee school book. Tennessee didn't say you can't teach the evils of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust; they just said you couldn't use Maus to do it.

[togor]

I disagree that banning, cancelling are different.

Someone wants something gone. A book, a person, an idea.

The fact that the school board had a reason is immaterial. The banners always have a reason. Ditto the cancelers.

And it's not a hard line. To the extent that there are some things that none of us believe are fit for public life, we all have a little cancel in us.

Where I do agree is some folks, often but not exclusively on the left, are looking for purity and want to cancel/ban their way to it. They're taking an otherwise normal impulse of restraint and taking it too far.

Take Neil Young, and I am told now Joni Mitchell not wanting their music on Spotify because Joe Rogan spews anti vax nonsense. Us or Joe, and so, it was Joe.

In my view they should have gone into the studio and recorded a catchy tune titled Joe Rogan that gave it to him with both barrels, and released that on Spotify. Like what Neil did after Kent State, you know? But they're old now, out of juice, so what they can't accomplish with creativity they try with celebrity.

More proof of my theory that liberalism has a guts problem and conservatism has a brains problem.

[togor]

https://www.thewrap.com/cpac-cancels-anti-semitic-speaker-invited-to-anti-cancel-culture-conference/

Like I said, we all have a little cancel in us. The trick is to use it wisely.

[Art]

I disagree that banning, cancelling are different.....

Boy do we have a disagreement on that one!!! There is a big difference between a school district deciding a book is not appropriate in that one venue and, lets say, a ban on the book in all schools at every level, or better still the congress banning the publication or distribution of a book, which by the way, has happened.

Mein Kamph is contraband in the public schools of Texas, do you oppose that ban?

When they were burning books, in Seattle I didn't hear a lot of outrage on that. This is just the left looking for a way to say "and you too."

[lyman]

togor,


once again going to extreme lengths to convince someone (us) you are correct, and doubling down to do so,

the anti Semitism speaker, had he been allowed to speak, would be have been fodder for another of your posts,

he was kicked out of a CPAC conference, not publically prosecuted, not doxxed , don't think he lost his income etc,



the book banning, is just that , a simple book banning,

the did not out the author, ban him, ruin his live, heckle him in the streets, remove any awards he may have won, etc etc etc,

just the folks banning the book,


if you go thru the news, you will find a similar story (books, speakers, etc) being banned or whatever quite often,
in fact it seems to happen just about every year somewhere,