Dark Sentiments Season 7 – Day 6: Forbidden Reading
Posted By Randy on October 6, 2016
The 1953 Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451 is set in a totalitarian future version of our world. Inspired by a combination of his love of libraries, and his coming to know in his formative years that Adolf Hitler was burning books (in concert with incarcerating and murdering intellectuals), the book tells how at first, only books that were considered politically “dangerous” were targeted, but this soon devolved into all books, of all kinds, so that any report that one had been found would result in the response of a brigade of “Firemen”, to burn the book and arrest of everyone implicated in its possession.
Teachers of the current era report that fewer of their students are actually reading books, and often both lack the focus to read anything longer than a Twitter post, and stridently object to being “forced” to do so as a condition of passing a course. Books have come to be feared by a generation that considers it quite reasonable to read everything through a fine toothed comb in search of offensive triggers. Teaching classic Greek and Roman literature is under attack due to references to violence, rape, incest, and assorted other novelties that are in no way limited to classical times. And so, arguments are raised that such fundamentally critical components to an understanding of Western civilization are no longer valid, and in fact, hurtful to the modern student. And so the seeds of weakness and ignorance are sewn, and all is safe and warm until the taloned hand reaches through the door of your safe space.
Directed by Mark Johnston, produced by Amanda Handy, and splendidly narrated by Alberto Manguel, Forbidden Reading is the third installment in the “Empire of the World” series which described as, “… a compelling look at the act of reading.” Either before or after tonight’s feature film, you may also wish to read a relevant interview with Mark Johnston here.
If you have read my poem Most Loved and Frightful Seed that appeared here in Day 4, bringing this to your attention is a continuation of that line of thought. If you have not, then get out of here and don’t come back until you do. For the rest of you, get comfortable, pour that drink, but keep the refill flagon handy because this will take most of the next hour.
Definitely worth the whole 52:29. Learned some new things that I hadn’t been aware of but not necessarily surprised. Being the cynic I am due to a long history of observing the world around me and in other places, I find the evil in all of hte censorship concept soon will be a functional reality due to the limitations being put on the internet and now further exacerbated by the IiC of my country giving free reign to other societies to control the flow of information and to subjugate it to the whim of the current authoritarian complex. The colleges are a perfect example of the manner in which certain information will be disseminated under the guise of freedom of the press as long as it concurs with the party line at the immediate moment.
I remember well the ignominious stupidity of the 60’s about Miller, Lawrence, Selby, Burroughs, etc. and how everyone had copies of their works nonetheless and coveted ownership of same lending only to those whocould be trusted to return the book intact.
We ain’t seen nothing yet..