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Gregor9
Registered User
(2/20/02 9:15:58 am)
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When reality breaks down, does it attack fantasy?
A small town here in Pennsylvania made the news in the last few weeks when the fire-police chief announced that his crew would not provide security or assitance at a local YMCA event because the Y allowed the reading of Harry Potter books to the local children, and that such books promote witchcraft and satanism.
I know, from a discussion I had with her once, that Jane Yolen has encountered this sort of fanatical incomprehension of fantasy literature on the part of local rabid book banners; further, that people, when looking for an excuse to dodge their own responsibility, will sometimes point at something fantasy-related (e.g., Magic the Gaming cards found among the possessions of the Columbine shooters) and blame that.
What I'm wondering is--first, how did Christianity get so looney that it sees all things fantastic in the arts as demonic; and how, given our own bent for fantasy, do we answer credibly against such outrageous charges when they're made?
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Jess
Unregistered User
(2/20/02 10:44:42 am)
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hmm
Legally, where does one's responsibility to the public-safety end. It seems that the Fire-chief is completely out of line on this one. Would he fail to provide fire protection to a hotel because it might be used for prostitution? He is clearly confusing his own moral positions and legal obligations.
Now, on to the larger question of fantasy and Christianity. There are always going to be people that take it upon themselves to be the moral conscious of society. These people rarely take the time to understand what it is they are protesting, or they come with such preconceived notions that there is no way to overcome them. Christianity itself is not looney, but as we have seen all too clearly with our war on terrorism, people use religion as a basis for their own power and their own means to regulate the world.
Fantasy is the natural target for these people because it is not serious and it doesn't have serious backing, that is as an religious alternative. The illogical construct of Christianity v. fantasy makes most of us laugh, but it is an easy victory for those would be censors.
I have many more thoughts, but I am afraid I couldn't state them clearly at the moment. Don't get frustrated.
Jess
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Laura
McCaffrey
Registered User
(2/20/02 11:57:19 am)
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censorship of fantasy
Interesting question.
I have censorship much on my mind as I started working as a school librarian this year. I have children in my school who are not allowed to read HP. Thankfully they and their parents do not expect me to police this - the children must be responsible for their own book choices. I do not, however, read HP aloud to classes. I also check before reading other books that children might not be allowed to hear at home - Halloween books etc. I do believe there is a difference between having a book available and requiring a class to read or hear it. However - if my local police or fire chief refused to assist the school because of books read or available in the library I would certainly argue against their position. There are other ways to address this issue without jeopardizing children's safety.
An editor friend of mine pointed out something about this issue that I had not considered before. People challenge books because they believe the books have power, almost as if the books were magical themselves. In this, I agree with book censors. Books do have power. Books do have their own kind of magic. A magic I believe should be kept on the shelves and available to all who choose to learn from it. As a librarian and writer I try to educate people about intellectual freedom and the rights of individuals to make reading choices. Parents have the right to choose what their children read. They don't, however, have the right to prevent me, my children, or others from making our own choices.
Fantasy literature is not the only literature to be vulnerable to book censorship. Hucklebury Finn often tops the American Library Association's list of most challenged books each year, as does Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia.
Thanks for bringing the subject up Greg.
Laura Mc
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Richard
Unregistered User
(2/20/02 12:37:32 pm)
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When Fantasy Attacks
One answer is that ideas are powerful, and imagination is powerful, and people with safe, dogmatic and consciously limited worldviews are afraid of both and rightly so. I'd quibble with the idea that Christianity has gotten more "looney" in this regard recently; there have always been a substantial subset of believers who feel this way. They don't speak for all Christians, but they are louder and get more attention. I do think that as a society we've gotten more fearful and neurotic and more willing to listen to such nonsense. There's the real danger.
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lmallozzi
Registered User
(2/20/02 1:26:04 pm)
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the power of books
Perhaps those who want to ban Harry Potter do believe in the power of books. After all, many fundamentalist Christians believe that their most holy text, the Bible, is the literal truth. They believe that the earth is only 5000 years old and that Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt. And if the Bible is a source of power, why not other books?
I still remember reading "Inherit the Wind" and being astonished that people could be so afraid to open their minds to new ideas and possiblities. The Harry Potter books open up whole new worlds and ideas that are intensely uncomfortable to those with extreme fundamentalist beliefs.
At least that's my opinion, anyway.
Luciana
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ZMethos
Registered User
(2/20/02 1:53:16 pm)
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Re: When Fantasy Attacks
I agree with Richard. I grew up with an Evangelical minister for a mother, and she made it a point to point out everything she didn't agree with in the world. ;-) HP is one of those things, something she believes "encourages" children to think about wanting to be witches and dabble in witchcraft. In her world view, any kind of magic or witchcraft is demonic. There are no shades of grey, no "white magic." And she's loud about her beliefs, too; that's part of being Evangelical, I think--sounding it out so that everyone knows where you stand. So, as Richard said, the loud ones are the ones people see, but not all Christians are like that.
Now to refuse to keep kids safe because of HP, well. . . That's one step away from saying, if a bookstore were burning down, that he wouldn't save it because it sold books he didn't agree with. A dangerous precedent.
~M. Pepper
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Laura
Registered User
(2/20/02 2:05:38 pm)
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Fantastic censorship
There are so many angles from which to approach this topic. Most times, I try to stick to the biggies, those even the most hard-headed have heard of: Narnia, Lord of the Rings, etc., and end up with Potter. Lewis and Tolkien were both fervent Christians (one for the Protestants and one for the Catholics), and as such their beliefs appear in their work. If Jesus himself could have taught with parables, taught through metaphor, then why is it wrong for these men to do something very similar? These works, and a great deal of fantasy in general, are stories of a hero, or heroes, engaged in a struggle against Evil despite overwhelming odds. To a Christian of any kind, what is that but the story of the church and its followers? Some people, if approached gently enough, can be convinced through this line of reasoning -- if not to like the books, then at least to see that they are not advancing "satanic" principles. Evil doesn't win! Wouldn't that be a requirement for it to be a work of the devil? Certainly LOTR never glamorizes evil, and I don't recall Narnia doing so either, especially. Another approach for some of our librarian friends -- or really anyone with access to a library -- would be to provide these would-be censors with copies of one of the recent Christian-based explorations of the Potter world. I saw some come through our library and heard there are some very good ones, compelling to those whose minds aren't completely closed but merely a little leery. Have any of you had experiences with those books?
And one brief off-topic question: I had remembered that Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia is so frequently challenged, but for some reason I never recall why. I read it in school as a young girl and nothing seemed objectionable. Could one of our librarians present here remind me?
Laura Scheuer
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janeyolen
Unregistered User
(2/20/02 2:16:47 pm)
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3 reasons
The three reasons--as I have heard Katherine Paterson tell it--that "Bridge to Tarabithia" has been banned: "The father says "Hell" once 2. The child does not listen to the adults 3. The incest.
Then she stops and laughs. "What incest?" she asks the audience. She certainly hadn't written anything like incest in the book.
Frankly, I think it more likely that people want to ban it because the kids play imaginative games.
Jane
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ZMethos
Registered User
(2/20/02 3:06:48 pm)
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imaginative games
Oh, my friends and I played many of these. . . We even still do, in a different kind of way. My mother was very disturbed by it, as I recall. There's a question of control, I think. Many extreme religions (or extreme branches of religions) want to make sure you aren't thinking anything irreverent. And when kids are playing imaginary games, how can they tell what the children are thinking?
Other interesting things that were banned in my church growing up: "The Smurfs," "Scooby-Doo," and the unicorn versions of My Little Pony.
~M. Pepper
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Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(2/20/02 3:20:53 pm)
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Re: 3 reasons
Oh, I could say so much more here if I weren't on a 15 minute break, but I second Jane's list of reasons for "Terabithia" being banned. Those are the reasons I have heard before, too.
Fortunately, I haven't had HP problems here at the library. We even had a magic themed summer reading program last year without any real objections. I have parents ask me about the books, but no one has asked me to remove them or to take them away from the children. The issue I have faced several times is when parents have told the kids to put "Goblet of Fire" back because it is too long and they will NEVER finish it.
Nikki Giovanni spoke about HP banning at the SCBWI conference in August. She said that many of the parents in her small Vriginia community are forbidding their children to read the books. However, there is a high theft rate of the books from the local booksellers. She assumed that children are stealing the books and reading them. If it is just one copy at a time, I imagine her assumptions are right, but I didn't get a chance to ask.
The question I am sure being asked in that community is if Harry Potter is encouraging evil since the kids are motivated to steal the books in order to read them. Interesting dilemma!
I will also cast my support for Christian fantasy authors. I even took a class on them in college and loved it. Every time I recommend "A Wrinkle in Time" to a kid needing a Newbery book and wanting to read fantasy, I wonder if the parent is going to remember it as an oft banned book.
Heidi
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Laura
McCaffrey
Registered User
(2/20/02 4:36:51 pm)
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Briar Rose
Jane -
I know Briar Rose isn't fantasy but I know it is often challenged and wondered if you wanted to chime in on what that's been like for you. It was challenged in a town a bit away from mine a few years back. The challenge divided the town, but in the end the review committee and the school board voted to keep Briar Rose on the shelves. (Yay! Yay!) And, I should add that because of the publicity, I think more kids picked up the book than would have before.
Laura Mc
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eearth
Registered User
(2/20/02 4:46:07 pm)
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Christians and fantasy
One thing to remember is that the three wise men were magi . . . and they seemed to be okay with the baby Jesus.
Some time back a Christian librarian wrote a reasonable article in Horn Book, setting forth the objections to Harry Potter (I'll try to get the exact reference). I guess that if you believe that evil is a real thing, and that people can be won over to evil, and if the Bible specifically forbids things like magic and fortune telling and all as evil . . . then you're troubled by things like HP.
Personally, I think that if magic and witchcraft were real, a lot more of us parents would be turned into toads by our witchcraft-practicing progeny, right?
Elise
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ZMethos
Registered User
(2/20/02 7:13:48 pm)
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Re: Christians and fantasy
1. I think when they refer to the Three Magi, they are probably referencing the term for the Persian priests (which may or may not have performed acts of "magic," I suppose).
2. Deuteronomy 18:9-13 is pretty clear about sorcery being "detestable to the Lord." Also, Acts 16:16 references fortune-telling as the result of possession by an evil spirit. So that's where the conservative Christian element is coming from, I think.
3. Having grown up with Voodoo/Catholicism on my father's side of the family, I would have to say I *do* believe magic exists, just not in the ways people usually think of it. But that's just my two cents (probably not even worth that much).
~M. Pepper
Edited by: ZMethos at: 2/20/02 7:19:12 pm
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janeyolen
Unregistered User
(2/21/02 4:33:34 am)
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Briar Rose
Well, BR is a fairy tale novel, without fantasy elements in it. Or at least not perceiveable fantasy elements.
The reason it gets banned is 1. there is a homosexual hero and quite a bit about the Pink Triangle Camps, concentration camps in which the Nazis placed homosexual men. And 2. a sex scene which consists of the words "short savage thrusts" (I believe. I myself haven't read the book since it was published ten years ago!) For a YA book these days that's pretty tame--and it was originally published as an adult book, though coming out from Tor's new YA line, Starscape this summer.
Not only banned in a variety of places--but actually BURNED by a group of would-be censors on the steps of the Board of Education in Kansas City.
Jane
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Don
Unregistered User
(2/21/02 7:18:20 am)
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Burnings
What's remarkable about the fire chief's claim that he will provide security at the YMCA where Harry Potter is read is that he's proposing to trump the book burners by bypassing the books and burning the children who read them.
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Don
Unregistered User
(2/21/02 7:19:33 am)
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Correction
Correction to above posting: "that he will NOT provide security . . ."
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Carrie
Unregistered User
(2/21/02 8:07:45 am)
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myths
I have a friend who once put a Bible on my bookshelves to see if I would notice it, which I did in less than a few minutes of coming home. She laughed and said she thought it would be a good addition to my library. To which I replied that I had a copy of my own. She just didn't see it because it was with my books on fables and mythology, right next to a book on Hebrew myths.
She hasn't been the only one who has been offended that I classify the Bible as a book of myths. It really makes me question the constitutional right of religious freedom. The things America's founders fled when coming here have unfortunately manifested in a different guise. It's really quite a shame in my opinion. To ban literature...I shudder at the ignorance. And to burn books...it makes despair.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(2/21/02 8:17:04 am)
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Bible
Carrie,
And my Bible is in my philosophy/political thought section next to Marx, the Federalist Papers, general philosophy, etc. So you see, it isn't always obvious where these things go.
My sister, the archeologist, and I have had many a long conversation about the myths in the Bible and how they parallel other societies' myths. T
Jess
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Gregor9
Registered User
(2/21/02 8:51:52 am)
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Wow
I do believe I struck a nerve. Thanks all for your answers to what is, for me, an unresolvable problem. My Christianity question was somewhat intentionally dubious--I've spent the last year or so studying a variety of Christian phenomena related to the novel I just turned in for Terri, and so know that the fundamentalist fringe of it has always been somewhat, well, mad. The so-called "Burned-Over district" of New York state is, by itself, an amazing phenomenon. More religious movements thrived in and around the Fingerlakes area in the 18th and 19th centuries than maybe anywhere before or since. It was as if experimentation and fanatical belief were in the water.
I've had numerous conversations with contemporary Christians of various stripes on the topic of fantasy, and HP in particular. There are the reasonable parents, who are either just happy that any book has gotten their child to read on her/his own (a neighbor of mine) or recognize the fantastic for the form of expression that it is (a Baptist minister); and there are those who adamantly deny fantasy in literature, some singling out only the perceived "Satanic" texts (HP, Terry Pratchett, etc.--all of which seem to have the witches up front), and others who think that all fantasy is the work of the devil. There seems to be no ground to stand on with such individuals, as the very suggestion that their own most holy book is a great work of fantasy pretty much terminates the conversation. Neither side is willing to make a paradigm shift in their perspective to it. I can't agree that the book is the absolute and actual word of God and that everything in it really did happen. They can't admit some of it might be wrong much less fictional, as their entire world view hangs upon it. It is perhaps the willful ignorance this position requires that frustrates me the most.
Regarding the theft of Harry Potter books in communities where they are banned: I used to work in a Barnes & Noble in Philadelphia. The most frequently stolen books in the store were bibles.
I am also curious if anyone's aware of similar bans called on Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, which effectively makes the church a huge villainous entity, but does so in books far more complex and subtle than HP. In essence, I'm wondering if the embedded material gets by, whereas in HP the witches are in your face and the text is totally transparent.
I think I'll stop rambling here.
GF
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Richard
Parks
Registered User
(2/21/02 12:29:14 pm)
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Now You See It...
You may be on to something there, re how blatant the imagery has to be before it gets the attention of the censors/banners. I'm not saying the Pullman books haven't had any trouble of this kind, but I haven't heard about it. HP being the most visible YA out there right now gets most of the flack, but as we all know it's been going on for a long time. The Oz books are frequently banned. Why? Because there's a "good witch" in them, and according to the fundi worldview there's no such thing. Or Miyazaki's "Kiki's Delivery Service." Same thing. There was at least one organization boycotting Disney for distributing a work that "encouraged witchcraft." I think visibility is one of the key issues, as well as how accessible the material is. Someone would just about have to read Pullman to realize how subversive it is. Those who decry Harry Potter on religious grounds needn't bother; it's all in the open.
Just as a side note, and so you know where I'm coming from: I was raised Southern Baptist. There were more conservative sects, but not very many. I grew up in a place where the "If it's not God, it's Satan" worldview is deeply entrenched and accepted without question. There is, as Greg noted, no winning this argument. All we can do is work to keep our religions and our laws as separate as possible. Which, in a roundabout way, is why the actions of the fire chief and department in Pennsylvania are so disturbing. A person's religious beliefs are their own, and they are entitled to them. However, when -any- official's religious beliefs interfere with their duty to protect the public, it's time they sought an alternate career. There is a line; there has to be. And they crossed it.
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Karen
Unregistered User
(2/21/02 1:58:03 pm)
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A question
I find this topic terribly interesting as we don't seem to have this phenomenon (for want of a better word) here- there's a furore about a new movie every now and then, but it rarely gets as far as banning- it's even rarer with books. Certainly, I wasn't aware of any controversy surrounding Harry Potter.
What I want to ask- a lot of people use the word "challenge" above and I was wondering what exactly the process of challenging a book involves- is it simply a case of a parent objecting to a book which has been placed on the school syllabus? Also, with these bannings- what is the extent of a "banning" and which regulatory bodies are involved? Which levels of government have the jurisdiction to ban a book? People talk about churches banning books above, but that ban, of course, could only extend to their own followers- so the effect is hardly deafening, on a national scale.
From my observation (of this country at least) most of the censorship scandals stem not from the churches but from some obscure local MP trying to advance their political career- this happened quite a few years OK when a couple of back benchers in the federal parliament kicked up a storm about the most recent version of 'Lolita". The curious thing was that, at precisely the same time, a film called 'Happiness', which is far more explicit in its depiction of child abuse, was playing in the art house cinemas. And yet the politicians targeted the comparatively mild Lolita- because they'd heard of it. because the name was notorious and would therefore lend greater glory to the would-be David if (s)he could topple it.
karen.
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