Roger Day wrote:
> American bannings are two a penny: their school libraries have
> committees which are battle-grounds for the inclusion/exclusion of
> books. Harry Potter is a notorious example of this - the poor, deluded
> fundies trying to stave off the influence of the heathen (WTF?). There
> are lists on line of books that have been banned in the US. Are there
> any for the UK?
>
> Roger
>   

Fundamentalism, as tasty an explanation as there is for banning and 
textual doctoring, isn't the whole story.  The explanation I've heard as 
to why there are separate American and British editions of the Harry 
Potter books is that American children are not educated in the 
vocabulary of their own language, or how to use it to read and think 
critically.  In other words, *boobus Americanus* lives on and on, and 
not just in politics.

There is also politically-based discomfort.  The fundies get all 
exercised over depictions of fucking or over what they take to be 
Satanism in Rowling's books.  The ever-so-tolerant left on the other 
hand will become exercised at whatever it defines as a stereotype from 
the fundy right.  I was once taken to task (I *know* I've said this 
before but it is a reminder to me of why I am not enamored with anyone's 
politics) by an editor for using the word "Jewess" in a poem.  "Would 
you use the word 'Negress'?" he challenged.  Answer: yes, if it fit the 
time period.  The same as the offensive word "Jewess" was in a poem set 
in Poland in 1655.  Besides, "female of the Hebraic persuasion" didn't 
scan--not that anyone of mine did or does.

There is also the discomfort of the sword passing by the ear.  Expand 
the definition of "ban" a bit.  Look at what happened to opera before 
the influence of EuroTrash with its declared end to stodgy period 
literalism.

Verdi suffered from this to a greater extent than some other composers 
because he was willing to take significant risks when he selected 
libretti.  *La Traviata* (March 1853) bombed at its first performance 
not from political causes (because it satirized a King (Francis I) or 
depicted full-out murderous rage in a Lutheran pastor married to an 
adulteress (*Stiffelio*)) but because it was in modern dress and 
depicted current events: based on *La Dame aux Camellias*, it was a 
contemporary drama in which a lady of the demimonde was shown dying of 
consumption.  It's 1853 and who was safe from TB back then?  Nobody.  It 
was the Great White Plague, it killed randomly and across class lines.  
You want to go to a theater and see people in your kind of clothing 
dying of a nasty disease? That could be you next month.  "I go to the 
theater to be entertained."

At the same time (and there is a contradiction here), you also don't 
want to see a soprano built like the Potala portraying a consumptive.  
So Verdi, smart enough theater animal to spot the error, shifted the 
sets to the 17th century and got himself a soprano who looked at least 
frail, if not like Teresa Stratas (the most convincing consumptive I 
ever saw if only because she was frail-looking, and had the disease when 
she was a child in Toronto).

*Traviata* triumphs in its new *mise en scene*, and it is still triumphing.

Flash forward.  Before *Rent* could you imagine, say during the 1980s, 
an opera or musical in which the principal characters were involved with 
people who had AIDS?  From the great 19th century killer to the late 
20th century killer.  Right, fundies wrote that AIDS was God's judgment 
on those unnatural homos doing unnatural homo things and that therefore 
displeased Jesus Christ or Hashem.  I mean, the condemnation is right in 
the Scriptures, so it *must* be right....  Imagine a "EuroTrash" 
production where Violetta Valery or *Boheme's* Mimi was dying of AIDS.  
People would have walked out.  Everyone in the New York or San Francisco 
opera audiences of the 80s knew at least one person who had AIDS--it was 
an unbearable topic to see onstage. I didn't see *Rent* so I have no 
idea what audience reaction was--I gather people got rather upset but 
kept attending.

How many people are willing to go to the theater or to the opera and see 
life around them? And we can censor ourselves in what amounts to 
projective or prior restraint censorship, maybe the worst kind: "I can't 
write this because someone will be upset with me and it won't get 
produced anyway so why bother?"

I suppose anyone can be a poor deluded censor.  It depends what you find 
objectionable.

K

-- 
Ken Wolman	http://bestiaire.typepad.com	http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
-------------------
"Stare.  It is the way to educate your eye, and more.  
Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.  Die knowing something.  
You are not here long." -- Walker Evans