Board 8 > The Banning of Maus is hitting me pretty hard.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I imagine this is a non-issue for some people, and still others have hardly heard of the title, but Art Spiegelman's Maus, a graphic novel that relays the story of the Holocaust through the lens of cats and mice, was banned by a school district in Tennessee this week. I find it particularly troubling because, as many of you know, I am an avid comic book reader. Maus was a title I discovered through my high school English literature class, and it propelled me to begin reading more independent titles in the sector. I returned to it again in college as the subject of one of my term papers. The tale of Maus is an intimate one, weaving a careful line between accuracy and poignancy, and as I've recently dealt with the aging and senescence of my elderly grandparents, the story's quiet but starkly realistic depiction of old age often leaves me teary-eyed.

It truly boggles my mind that, as a society, we allow non-literary minds to dictate what passes for appropriate literature. In the past, censorship focused on scrutinizing for foul language, gratuitous violent practices and sexual whatevers, but today, I think that it is less about an overly protective Puritanical desire to shelter children and more about the sheer ignorance people have when it comes to anything that they can't read on social media, anything with more than 50 words and a picture. Maus, for me, was foundational in my comic book critical thought and also my literary thought as well. It is, without a doubt, the most important depiction of the Holocaust in history, artfully crafted, and truly emotionally resonant even to someone with no real connections to those terrible days 80 years ago.

I guess I don't know why I felt the need to post about this, but it's been hard to see something that means so much to me being pulled out of the hands of the next generation, even if it's just one backwater district in one backwater state.

Honestly, I'm glad you said something. This has been in the back of my mind the last few days too. It's just rather shameful how we'd rather hide and ban seminal works of fiction, sacrifice that chance to learn and grow, just to appease what a select few see as "indecent" while also completely missing the point of the actual work.

Yeah, it's unbelievably stupid. At least it's only one small county.

In general, the books that get banned in American schools and the reasons cited for the decisions are kind of laughable. The most frequently-challenged book is Captain Underpants, of all things, and the Bone series of comics also got banned for "racism," which having read those books I couldn't tell you for the life of me what was being referred to.

With Maus, when I first heard about this Pulitzer-winning comic on the Holocaust being banned, I thought it would be because of the subject matter it covers. The real reason sighted was that the book includes the words "God Damn." It's a joke.

This should be a bigger deal. It's not like it'll be the last book to get banned under these pretenses.

This is what happens when a lot of people go 'ergh I am sick of politics.'

Politics matters. A lot. I wish more people understood this.

https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1486479833932738565

Edit: I'm also reminded of when Schindler's List aired unedited on ABC, people actually called the FCC to complain about nudity. I can't even comprehend the kind of person that would have such a reaction. I almost find them being a Nazi sympathizer who is using nudity as a pretense to be more comprehensible.

I generally don't even bother trying to parse who is just ignorant and apathetic and who is actually a Nazi sympathizer because those in positions of power who refuse to take the slightest steps toward educating themselves on how to not hurt people inflict just as much harm. And they are just as useful to the Nazi sympathizers as if they were ones themselves.

Every puritanical drive that uses children as the core basis for censorship has a wicked ulterior motive and they dramatically underestimate what children are able to handle.

Yeah this is not some sort of ignorant causality over art discourse or attention spans, nor is it a puritanical one to protect children from questionable content, this is a deliberate political move to ban a work that can be used to accessibly teach a young audience about the Holocaust and fascism. The flimsy excuse they give does not really matter. People should be looking at this in the same vein as all the "CRT" uproar - books by Black authors are also being banned in the same way. Maus is one of highest profile things to be banned in this manner but this is a pattern that has been going on for a while now.

edit: here's an article I found on it with a quick Google. Coincidentally enough: also involves comic books!
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/book-bans-schools-are-catching-fire-black-authors-say-uproar-isnt-stud-rcna10228

I heard something about it being related to the woman that ran an ad about wanting Beloved by Toni Morrison banned because scary black people and that whole shtick

DoomTheGyarados posted...

This is what happens when a lot of people go 'ergh I am sick of politics.'

People are more invested in politics than they've been in awhile.

It just doesn't matter because people are stupid.

Censorship sucks. Period.

Book bannings, cancel culture, it all needs to go to hell.

Yeah I don't know much about the Maus situation but I was pretty up in arms about a similar situation last year. The school district I grew up in decided to ban dozens of books and a bunch of scholarly resources about race or diversity from being available in school libraries or used in classes. The "harmful" books included things like All Are Welcome and Hair Love and I Am Rosa Parks and Skin Like Mine and Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and so many more. Other resources included things like "tolerance.org" and all of Jane Elliot's videos and I Am Not Your Negro and the list just goes on and on and on.

I don't think I was ever more digusted by where I grew up than I was over the course of the last year. The ban lasted a year, was met with huge protests from both former and current students and teachers from the school district, and was only overturned when it received national attention

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/02/us/york-pennsylvania-school-books.html

It's an embarrasing decision that has made a lot of immediate money for the author and bad press for the county in question.

wow.

it could be worse as long as it's just that one school district but that's a really crappy decision.