As far as literature goes, I do not think that censorship should be allowed. A lot of the books we’ve read this year have been controversial titles, and most of it was because people just didn’t agree with the message or they didn’t like some of the more risqué material. In my opinion, I think that a book that generates talk or “controversy” for whatever reason is a good book. This usually means that they are interesting if they get a response, and this can be proven with the books we’ve read this year. Surprisingly, I haven’t met a novel assigned that I haven’t liked. Were they shocking? Yes. Should they be banned because of their shock value? No. Because of their “controversial” themes I actually found them more interesting.
Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 gained controversy because of “sexual themes, profane language and how he depicted war/military. Well, I don’t know what it was like 40 years ago, but I was definitely not shocked about any of the content in the book. I don’t know if it was because I read Brave New World first or because I was just used to hearing profane language, but I found it completely fine. I know that when I walk down the hallways or go out for lunch people drop the F-Bomb like mad. And I’m sure anybody has sworn at least once and probably heard it from other people twice as much. Yet when this “profane language” is written down in a book for people to read, alarms go off. I think that this both takes away from the realism of a book and stifles the author’s creativity.
As for Slaughterhouse 5 being censored and banned in places, I don’t support that at all. Like Kurt Vonnegut said, “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true”. The book talks about the firebombing of Dresden and the military during World War II, and it was censored because of “sexual themes and profane language”. Vonnegut wrote the truth, and followed his 7th rule when writing fiction; “Write to please just one person”. He wrote to please himself. He depicted the idea of war in a very unglorifying light (if that’s even a word), at the time when people were glorifying war like crazy, trying to get recruits for Vietnam. If you censor Slaughterhouse 5, then you should censor any history book that contains information about the second world war, because Vonnegut wrote about WW2 “more or less” how he saw it.
Zach - I liked the points that you made here about the necessity of reality. I think we're lucky to live in a society where differences in opinion don't always lead to censorship. I was listening to the radio yesterday and heard that China just issues a censorship band on any movie that includes scenes with time-travelling because it disrespects the past. Yet, China's government still refuses to release information about what happened in Tiananmen Square. Too often, censorship imposes a double-standard, and this imposition may actually speak louder than the text itself.
ReplyDelete