(via Agence eureka)
Code de la route (1954)
“This week, we give you ten science fiction novels that have been or have been threatened with being removed and banned from libraries and schools. Some of these are among the most popular and beloved science fiction works of the last century. They’ve told us how bad the future might be before we get there, how free you can be if you don’t follow blind belief, and that children are perfectly capable of digesting some pretty heavy concepts, actually.”
#10. Shade’s Children
Shade’s Children is filled with a creeping dread that the computer intelligence that leads the teenage main characters (through the hellish wasteland of our world filled with terrifying robot soldiers with grafted human body parts who fight over territory in a decades long war-game played by three alien tyrants) does not have their best interests in mind.
Yes, all that other stuff is creepy, including the fact that one of the kids didn’t escape the prisoner camps until after he was castrated, but the real slow horror of the book is that eventually Shade is going to betray the children who trust him and learned from him, and no one taught them to think critically enough to see it coming.
Trusted caregivers put Shade’s Children on the top 100 banned and challenged books of the nineties.
#9. The Giver
The Giver features a dystopian setting where citizens have their sex drive removed, certain women are given the “job” of bearing artificially inseminated children, and where babies are euthanized for developing at a different pace than others. All ideas and memories, history, and art that would help in the governance of a society but at the same time cause inconvenient emotions are held in the mind of the community’s Giver, who begins to pass on his gift to the main character Jonas, beginning his eventual disillusionment with the status quo. It makes the point that history, memories, and art; no matter how painful or difficult, are still necessary for a functioning humane society.
A staple of many, many middle and high school curriculums, it was also the 11th most frequently challenged book of the 1990s, in school districts in South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Ohio, and Colorado.
#8. The His Dark Materials Trilogy
Says Phillip Pullman on the reaction to his trilogy of children’s books: “I’ve been surprised by how little criticism I’ve got. Harry Potter’s been taking all the flak… Meanwhile, I’ve been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God.”
The Golden Compass was the 4th most frequently challenged book of 2007. It rose to 2nd place in 2008, probably because of the “organized campaign that the anti-defamation group the Catholic League launched against the film version of The Golden Compass.” Their president called it “atheism for kids.”
#7. Stranger in a Strange Land
Stranger in a Strange Land is a pro-religion, anti-theist book about free love and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and was controversial even when it was published in 1962.
So naturally it was challenged as part of the curriculum of a summer “Science Academy” course in Texas.
#6. Nineteen Eighty-Four
In a textbook example of “missing the point,” in 1981 Jackson County, Florida challenged the presence of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in its schools and libraries, claiming that the book was pro-communism, anti-Semitic, and had sexual references.
While that last one is certainly true, it still sounds like somebody only read the first twenty pages before doing their book report.
#5. Fahrenheit 451
In 1998, Fahrenheit 451 was removed from the curriculum in a Mississippi high school because a parent objected to the use of the phrase “god damn.”
Is it ironic if you suppress a book that condemns the suppression of print information?
#4. A Wrinkle in Time
A target that seems to be ripe for the ban hammer is any book that stands firmly on the line between children’s and adult fiction.
A Wrinkle in Time is the beginning of a four part series by Madeline L’Engle that tackles the the vastness of time and the universe, the nature of evil, and the dangers of blind belief. But, it’s got characters known as “witches” in it, so it was the 22nd most frequently challenged book of the 90’s.
#3. Slaughterhouse-Five
Aside from its crunchy science fiction coating,Slaughterhouse-Five is also a near autobiographical account of the author’s experience as an American prisoner of war in World War II, including being present at the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany where tens of thousands of German civilians were killed by American troops. It is also one of the earliest acknowledgements in popular literature of the fact that the Nazis persecuted homosexuals.
Not only banned (in New York State, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, and Wisconsin) and challenged (in Louisiana, Michigan (twice), Texas, Virginia, Rhode Island, Illinois, Kentucky (twice), and Wisconsin again), copies of Slaughterhouse-Five were burned in North Dakota in 1973.
#2. Brave New World
Brave New World is an example of being banned for advocating things that it in fact advocates against, because the book actually requires you to pay attention to what it is telling you.
It was banned in Ireland in 1932, a Missouri town in 1980, an Alabama high school in 2000; and challenged in Oklahoma in 1988, California in 1993, Texas in 2003, and Indiana in 2008. Compliants mostly dwelled on the book’s supposed endorsement of free love, free drugs, atheism, and rejection of the nuclear family. This would be half-way legitimate if the fictional society promoting those traits was presented as a utopia, but… it’s not. Brave New Worldhas been compared to Nineteen Eighty-Four in its contributions to dystopian science fiction.
Ah, the narrator of relative reliableness. Without it we wouldn’t have, oh, The Tell Tale Heart, orThe Yellow Wallpaper, or Fight Club.
#1. A Clockwork Orange
The film version of A Clockwork Orange has taken the lion’s share of controversy for the IP, as visual art is wont to do. Books, after all, can be boring and take a long time to finish. Movies don’t stop playing even when you look away, and you can actually get through one in just a couple of hours.
However, in 1973 a shop owner in Utah was arrested for selling the book, and though the charges were later dropped, the store was forced to relocate due to the controversy. Later in the 70’s it was removed from two high schools for “objectionable language.” Presumably they didn’t mean bratchny, droog, or garbles.
(via g-uys)
The Writing Centre, Saint Mary’s University via Noah Eli Gordon
I reblog this everytime I see it.
"What is to be done? To this I answer: you. My sweet sweet Trotsky."
—
V. I. Lenin (via antisocial-socialist)
And the party after the revolution starts with
(via arielnietzsche)
Brilliance…
(via ftm-communist)
(via fabulous-trotskyist)
"
“The dog loved it,” Ann Romney said. “He would see that crate and, you know, he would, like, go crazy because he was going with us on vacation. It was to me a kinder thing to bring him along than to leave him in the kennel for two weeks.” […]
“Once, he — we traveled all the time — and he ate the turkey on the counter. I mean, he had the runs,” Ann Romney said, laughing as she explained how the dog got diarrhea.
"—
Ann Romney, appearing in a joint interview with her husband, Mitt Romney, on ABC News.
What you just read was the Romneys admitting that they indeed put their dog, Seamus, on the roof of their car for a road trip, and they also confirmed that the dog defecated on the car.
Heck, they even laughed about the dog getting diarrhea, while the dog’s insides were going haywire. The speed that the car was traveling probably induced the diarrhea, and the Romneys can only laugh about it, when the dog was in pain.
If they laugh about things like this, imagine what they would do if they were let loose on America. I shudder with horror and disgust even thinking about the nightmare that would be Romney’s presidency.
You already have Mitt saying that he doesn’t care about the poor and the middle class of America, that he doesn’t care about single mothers or non-working mothers (similar to his wife with the exception of finances). Also, you have Ann Romney admitting that her financial security (that millions of other Americans don’t have the legacy of having) enabled her to stay at home with her five sons. She admitted that because she is rich, she got to stay at home with her kids.
The Romneys expect that women voters will be falling over themselves to come vote for Mitt. That is the furthest from the truth. Comments like Ann’s and Mitt’s have alienated female voters, and they have jumped ship to Obama’s camp.
If the Romneys were smart, they wouldn’t act like spoiled rich brats when they are talking to the American people, to prospective voters.
But, hey, this is the Romneys we are talking about. They can blend in with any group of people and make them think that they actually support them. Just ask the master of political disguise: Mitt Romney.
During different times of his political life, Romney has been a conservative, a moderate, and a liberal. One thing he has never been: presidential material!!
Whether it is giving President Obama the framework for the Affordable Care Act, flipping his stances on every single political issue known to man, or resorting to talking about Michigan’s trees when asked about his disdain for the auto bailouts, Romney is a walking Freudian slip.
Banana peels have nothing on Romney’s political clumsiness!
(via thepoliticalfreakshow)
(Source: mediaite.com, via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)
Where I fall on the political spectrum.
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My day begins at four in the morning, especially when my compañero is on the first shift. I prepare his breakfast. Then I have to prepare salteñas because I make about one hundred salteñas every day and I sell them on the street. I do this to make up for what my husband’s wage doesn’t cover in terms of our necessities. The night before, we prepare the dough and at four in the morning I make the salteñas while I feed the kids. The kids help me.
Then the ones that go to school in the morning have to get ready, while I wash the clothes left soaking over night.
At eight I go out to sell. The kids that go to school in the afternoon help me. We have to go to the company store and bring home the staples. And in the store are immensely long lines and you have to wait there until eleven to stock up. You have to line up for meat, for vegetables, for oil. So it’s just one line after another. Since everything is a different place, that’s how it has to be.
From what we earn between my husband and me, we can eat and dress. Food is very expensive: 28 pesos for a kilo of meat, 4 pesos for carrots, 6 pesos for onions… Considering that my compañero earns 28 pesos a day, that’s hardly enough is it?
"— Domitilia Barrios de Chungara
My political compass test results.
So apparently I’m as right wing as you can get. Not surprised.
“Not surprised I’m a fascist.”
From the same site:
Glad you’re cool with being near Thatcher and not too far from Hitler.
I’m no where close to Hitler. If it’s because we’re both on the right side, then all of you leftists are like Stalin.
Well actually, you’re in the same quadrant as Hitler.
I really don’t think any of us are in the same quadrant as Stalin.
^What he said. We’re all in the same quadrant as Gandhi. Which kinda fucking rocks.
ohh my god please don’t compare margaret thatcher to adolf hitler
Seriously
One of them was a maniac whose policies caused the death of many working class citizens and the other was Hitler.
