Lisa Shapiro and T. Ford (Photo: Rebecca Jefferis Williamson)
By Donald H. Harrison
EL CAJON –Those who would ban books cite inappropriate language or too much sexuality or violence as their motivation for wanting them removed from library shelves. However, often their unspoken motivation is to suppress ideas that may disrupt the established societal order.
In observance of National Banned Book Week, a faculty-student panel at Grossmont College on Thursday, Sept. 26, delved into some of the themes and beliefs in books that had such critics up in arms.
English Prof. Lisa Shapiro drew parallels between Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, published in 1961 during the U.S. Civil Rights movement, and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, published in 2010. Both books, according to Shapiro, came during periods of pushback by white people in reaction to the gains made by blacks.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, a black man accused in the Deep South of raping a white woman is believed guilty of the attack by a large mob, which wants to spare the state of a trial by lynching the defendant. However, the case does go to trial and a white lawyer who believes every defendant deserves a solid defense, takes up the case. However, the case is stacked against the prisoner. When he tries to escape, he is killed by the mob
Today, with blacks having attained the highest of positions — Barack Obama in the White House, and Oprah Winfrey a media mogul — there is again pushback. In author Alexander’s view, it is taking the form of putting more and more black males under the thumb of the legal system– whether they be in prison or jail, or on probation or parole.
Groups called for the banning of both books. Though some piously said they were opposed to words in the book like “nigger” that degrade African-Americans, their real objection was to exposing the legal system as innately racist, according to Shapiro.
She said readers are “capable of dealing with rape and abusive language.” What the book banners are afraid of, in her opinion, is acceptance of the assertion that the legal system is creating a caste system, which is different from a class system in that in a caste system people cannot move up in social class. In a caste system, the people are permanently stuck in their positions.
“More than half the black men in the United States are under the control of the legal system” be that in prison, or parole or probation, Shapiro asserted.
“Today’s lynching is incarceration,” Shapiro said. “Mobs are in uniforms.”
English Prof. T. Ford showed some videos illustrating the point that many black people have internalized negative stereotypes about them. In one of the clips, Malcolm X, making a speech, demanded of his audience, “Who taught you to hate who you are?”
The torment that black people felt in their lives was often express through the blues, and there was perhaps no better blues singer than Bessie Smith, who lived from 1894-1937. Whit
e people were used to seeing black singers in “mammy clothes’ but Smith performed in stylish outfits that any white woman would have been pleased to wear, said Ford.
Smith was often barred from singing in white-owned establishments and her songs, some of them sexually suggestive, were kept off the radio. It was not the sexual innuendo that was the problem Ford said, it was what Bessie Smith represented: the dignity one could manifest in struggle.
Ford pleased the audience by bringing to the stage San Diego blues singer Janet Polite, known on the concert stage as Lady Jay. The singer introduced herself by saying that her father had been a preacher, and she and her siblings were brought up to be a gospel choir. Her father believed that the blues were the devil’s music. However, she grew to love the genre. She sang three songs, one of which was popularized by Ruth Brown. Asking members of the audience to snap their fingers, she sang:
Mama, he treats your daughter mean;
He’s the meanest, meanest man I’ve ever seen
From race relations, the banned book discussions moved on to the realm of fantasy.
James Strand is a student in the English class of the event’s organizer, English Prof. Joe Medina. He presented a slide and video discussion of the comic book here Superman. Created by two recent Jewish immigrants to Cleveland–Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel — the Superman character may have been a response by Siegel to his father’s murder during a robbery .
At first, Superman was unrestrained in the punishments he meted out to villains, and Fredric Wertham criticized Superman and other comic book characters for “seducing” the minds of children. In Wertham’s view, comic books were badly drawn, baldy written and badly printed, and ought to be banned.
Wertham’s concerns were taken seriously. Boy Scout troops across the country gathered comic books and threw them into bonfires, leading in 1954 to the adoption by comic book publishers to a restrictive self-regulatory code.
However, Stan Lee, creator of Spider Man, the Hulk and X-Man, among others, fought back, eventually rising to the status of guru within the world of comics. At the ComicCon convention each year in San Diego’s Lee’s appearances draw standing room only crowds.
Superman had a right to exist, declared Strand.
The final presentation of the evening was by retired English Prof. Linda Mitchell, whole tale about werewolves, Satawan: A Humboldt Pack Story is set to be published before Halloween.
There was a time, she said, than any literature with vampires was likely to be banned somewhere.
While today we think of a vampire as a creature who sucks blood to sustain eternal life, in historic times “vampire” referred to almost any one guilty of heinous behavior, or appeared to be deformed, or who deviated from religious norms, Mitchell said.
Bram Stoker’s blood-sucking Dracula changed the popular perception of vampires. This character in some ways was modeled on the 15th century Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, also known as Vlad the Impaler. He was reputed to be a vicious killer who impaled his victims on takes pushed into the bloodied ground of battlefields.
But vampire rituals also were parodies of the words Jesus spoke to his disciples, as reported in John 6: 54: “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Like many Britons of the Victorian era, Stoker felt constrained to write not too openly about sex, so instead he substituted the bite on the neck from which both vampire and donor experience an orgasmic joy, said Mitchell.
In the “Twilight” movie series, the beautiful young women who are enthralled by the vampire’s bite are experiencing the ultimate in safe sex, the professor added.
The young adult book Vampire Academy is banned in Texas supposedly because it includes sex and nudity. But the banners have called for the ban to be extended to any future books in the series — whether there be sex and nudity or not.
This, said organizer Medina, was an illustration of the thesis that many people who ban books have never bothered to read them.
Medina urged students in attendance to read books that have been banned or challenged, and to decide for themselves what value they have.
*
Harrison, editor of San Diego Jewish World, is serving as interim director of college and community relations at Grossmont College. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com