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Originally Posted by guyy
I once read some books by a couple of German exiles that got me to thinking that the current social arrangements needed a fundamental re-working. I've heard that they used to confiscate these books in places like Singapore. I don't think the fear of political subversion was entirely unjustified.
That's why i don't like the argument that books are harmless. "Catcher in the Rye" was a big fuck you to mid-20th c. America, by one of its own, and in its own idiom. Why else do teens like it so much? I'm quite sure that the book did pervert many American youth -- and that's all to Salinger's credit.
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Sorry, my argument isn't that the message is harmless, it's that the message is more important then the taboo placed on it. I was obviously not born into Salinger's time, but I think the novel was meant as a reflection of the unspoken lives that young men were living at that age. When you were growing up, you had sexual thoughts, yes? Was it because you read about it, or was it natural? Salinger gave voice to a sexually repressed and emotionally sheltered generation who couldn't express it themselves; that's all. By calling it perverted is missing the point I think. Although, maybe I misunderstood.
Have you ever read Frank Wedekind's play Spring Awakening. It was written in 1890. It involves physical and sexual abuse, homosexuality, suicide, abortions, rape, and child abuse. People banned it. Although, they were missing the point. It was about a socially repressed group of individuals who, without being taught properly about life, began to try to find their own answers and ended up fucking themselves up. It's about ignorance for the sake of ignorance and tradition; to try to impede social evolution. A lot like the story Salinger penned for an equally repressed group of individuals generations later.
Most of it is meant to be ironic. If anything they were advocating education to save the secret lives their children were living, and they were ignoring; they wanted the botched abortions, and failing out of school, and hiring hookers, and suicides, etc, to end. And they wanted to let the world know that someone would say out loud "This is happening".
What happens when you ban materials is you are backhandedly allowing teens and children to go uneducated. Or a whole state. Or a whole Country.