Banning Shakespeare, AIBU to think

[FluffBalled]

it's about time isn't it?

All that transphobia, prejudice and antisemitic language - it is amazing schools have allowed this stuff to continue.

Also fewer people read books than watch TV. Used to find some really interesting stuff at the library written in the 1800s but no one would have much of a clue what a teenager was reading compared with people wanting to censor TV programmes.

R&J:
Gang Violence. Teenage Sex. Child Bride. Illegal Drugs. Suicide Pacts.
What's not to like?

Ha!

As for banned books in the UK:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments

Latest on the UK list is Lord Horror (1990)

Banned in England in 1991 where it was found obscene; it is currently the last book to be banned in the UK. The judge ordered the remaining print run to be destroyed. The ban was lifted in the Appeal Court in July 1992 but the book remains out of print.[204]

So yes, we still ban books.

I love the suggestion that ‘you can’t rewrite history’ up thread. Shakespeare would beg to disagree!

Shakespeare ...copied many Persian stories. [] In fact, his real name was Walid Shakesh Kapur: Indian!

I can't recall the show (maybe "Goodness Gracious Me") but there was a sketch with 2 actors insisting they were the original James Bond ... their names where "Shahn Kanari" and "Mikhail Kahn" or something similar.

I still think it's funny.

@Vivi0

You obviously don’t have any space in your life for the arts or literature. If you did you’d probably have developed the intellectual capacity over time that would make you ashamed to make such an infantile statement

In what way is our artistic and literary heritage or culture being eroded here? Genuine question.

What?

Societies that destroy what came before to fit current ideology never seem to end up doing very well do they?

American Revolution
French Revolution
Ataturk
The Bolsheviks had a good run
Chinese Communists
Postwar Japan
Reunification of Germany

There is no automatic outcome from replacing the symbols and culture of a previous regime. Maybe it helps the new regime consolidate control, maybe it doesn't. Maybe the new regime is actually more democratic and enlightened than the old regime.

To say that a country as old and firmly democratic as the UK cannot survive the removal of a few statues and TV shows isn't showing much confidence in your nation.

The ban was lifted in the Appeal Court in July 1992 but the book remains out of print.

So yes, we still ban books.

But it's not banned! Can people not read.

There are thousands and thousands of books out of print, this does not mean they are banned.

Especially these days, you can probably grab the rights for any out of print book and publish it as e-book.

CHIRIBAYA; Where does the Bible claim that we are all descended from a white man and a white woman? The geographical location on Eden in the Bibelot is in modern day Iraq.

I think the point is that if you're going to ask people who are not white to put up with racist and degrading language, the work of art should be so great or important that it justifies asking that.

Shakespeare arguably does. One episode of a decades-old TV show probably doesn't.

If you're going to argue that every single bit of culture that is racist needs to stay forever, then how are we meant to reduce the amount of racism in our society?

We got rid of minstrel shows. Doesn't seem to have caused any harm.

Can people not read.

From the thread I was replying to How can we have LESS banning of books when NO books are currently banned

As I said “yes, we still ban books.“ and the one in my post was just the most recent example in the UK.
I didn’t say it’s still banned. Although from the link, others still are.

I did not posit a moral to banning or otherwise, I merely pointed out that actually we do still ban books.

@FluffBalled please to God tell me you're kidding!? You can take Little Britain and Fawlty Towers but leave the Bard alone!

Many years ago, the newly elected National Socialist Party and the shortly after self-declared dictator, ordered the burning of censored literature. A film is still available where it can be seen that people were throwing books onto a huge bonfire directly in front of the Government Building.And look what that to.

That said, a few days ago I was under the impression that people were able to watch Fawlty Towers and understand that it reflects actions which were very prevalent at the time. If people watch Fawlty Towers and come to the conclusion that, because a TV show several decades ago used the word N* (and not in a promotional manner, if I'm remembering correctly), then it's okay to use it now then the problem is an exceptionally ignorant individual, not the TV program.

It's peculiar, sometimes period dramas or older dramas can get away with this sort of language because it is clear to everyone that it is supposed to be bad. But comedies, when it is equally a non-promotional context, don't seem to be given the same respect.

It would be a travesty if we had to have Animal Farm type explanations of works before we allowed teenagers to read things freely surely.

This is very much the approach now in education. When they say they want to teach critical thinking skills, what they typically mean is that they want to gloss the texts the kids read so they will be sure to come to the correct conclusions about them. It's common in university education as well.

Of course this is actually directly opposed to education and is anti-intellectual. And as the rest of the post implies, pretty dismissive of children's ability to think about what they see and hear. But you can see the outcome when so many young adults are unable to really explain or defend their views with any intellectual rigour - they haven't really had to think them through and they've never been really tested. And it's also why hearing other perspectives makes them so uncomfortable.

I notcie nobody, not one single voice has come out about the thousands of statues of Lenin removed in Eastern Europe

You've just completely made that up, Goosefoot.

Why are books/plays with disgusting racial slurs ‘springboards for discussion’, but TV shows aren’t?

Cultural snobbery.
Absolutely right

We got rid of minstrel shows. Doesn't seem to have caused any harm.
I'm of the generation which watched The Black and White Minstrel Show as teatime 'entertainment'. Do we pretend it never happened? What about Al Jolson?

This is very much the approach now in education. When they say they want to teach critical thinking skills, what they typically mean is that they want to gloss the texts the kids read so they will be sure to come to the correct conclusions about them. It's common in university education as well.

Can you provide the evidence to support this assertion, Goosefoot? As an English teacher, that is actually what I require the students to do - support their assertions about the text with evidence from it. They're more capable at it than you are, to be fair.

Of course they cant, its a conspiracy theory developed by the actual nazis- i.e cultural marxism

They have to find a bullshit reason (rather than the obvious one) for why educated people tend to be more Left wing.

Many years ago, the newly elected National Socialist Party and the shortly after self-declared dictator, ordered the burning of censored literature. A film is still available where it can be seen that people were throwing books onto a huge bonfire directly in front of the Government Building.And look what that to.

And then when that regime was defeated, they destroyed all the Nazi newspapers and books and textbooks. Look what that led to!

As user says, when all the communist regimes fell in Eastern Europe, they tore down the Lenin statues and mulched all the Marxist textbooks. Have we all forgotten those regimes existed?

Are we seriously saying that people of colour have to keep putting up with racist culture so that white people don't forget how racist they were? Ok.

I'm of the generation which watched The Black and White Minstrel Show as teatime 'entertainment'. Do we pretend it never happened? What about Al Jolson?

Are you saying there should still be minstrel shows on TV?

Are you saying there should still be minstrel shows on TV? Oh my God you must be joking. The BaWMS was unmitigated shit. What I mean is that we must not forget that they existed.

What did you expect I'd say. That we should put this show back on?

I know that lots of women on MN are rightly sensitive to the topic of censorship right now, with everything they've experienced from TRAs and the wrong-think twitter police, but I think we need to keep these two things in firmly different catagories. TRAs are trying to censor and manipulate language in order to normalise beliefs that causes demonstrable harm to women. Anti racist activists are doing the opposite - they are trying to reduce the normalisation of language that causes demonstrable harm to people of colour. Black people asking white people not to use (even as a comedic device) language that has been specifically linked to their violent murders, in order to equalise them as a political class, isn't the same as men asking women to not use language about our own bodies in order to erase us as a political class. There are a few posts on this thread that suggest people are letting their feelings about the latter influence their feelings about the former.

As someone said above that Lord Horror book is not banned and no book has been banned in the UK I think it says above since 1991. we have had years of litigation over these issues in the UK - Lad Chatterley's lover litigation. Mary Whitehouse used to be quite vocal. I think we have come to not banning material in the UK not least because the internet makes it pretty much impossible but I am very unhappy about some of our recent censorship laws in the UK and I wish both main political parties could start to cut them back - eg the extreme porn laws go too far and much else. If we let freedom prevail we have better societies.

I want us to stand up against censorship even of those whose views we think are appalling.