amc cultural diary

My cultural diary

Censorship in literature

Kelyan Roux

Introduction

For centuries, books are writed by people that are called authors to educate or entertain populations, but also are banned and censored by governements or either by the church in most old times, there is multiple reasons for theses censorship and that's what we gonna see in this diary. For a decade now, with the rise of popularity of the social media, a form of censorship has apparead and it's "the cancel culture", and i gonna explain what it is and give my opinion on. we're going to see this all through documents we studied in class. So we gonna ask ourselves : is the censorship is necessary in our society ?

Presentation of the documents

Doc 2 : Youtube comments on Roald Dahl bans

Doc 1 : Time to fight back

The first document of the synthesis is an article who was published on the guardian in April 2023, he talks about the censorship of books and where these bans are the most present ( principaly more censorship in republican state), this artcile explain too that authors and librarians can have juridfic problems if they oppose to the censorship and that's problematic, he also explain that parents have an important role in this fight because they choose what there kids read at home. I like this document because he permit to show the bad side of the bans of the books in usa. my personal opinion on this subject is that the bans of the books in usa are too abusive and unfair. and i agree the point of view of the guardian

the second document is some comment that was written by person on under the youtube video of a tv channel who was talking about the change made in the new edition of book of Roald Dahl, these change was about the modification of single word like fat to enormous for describe someone in charlie and the chocolate factory or the changing of women's occupation in the book the witches. These modification cause a lot of controversy in the world of the litterature , some people was saying that these changements was useless and a disrespect to Roald Dahl because these books represent his times, people also gives exemple like if you modifie books because they don't fit the modern society, you can also modifie mona lisa or the bible I agree with the comments because do these changements can maybe means to certain person that it's not good to be fat etc.

link of the article

Presentation of the documents

Doc 3 : Critics reject changes to Roald Dahl books as censorship

This document is a video, an exctract from a TV show on france 24 english, the tv show talks about the changes in the revised version of the Roald Dahl's books, these changes are principaly on "language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race have been cut", for exemple, the word "enormously fat" in the original charlie and the chocolate factory is just "enormous" in the new edition. The publishers says that they trying to make the books more accesible to modern readers, who could be offended by certain comments in the books. On the social media, a lot of people don't like this new version because they say that it's a disrespect to the work of Roald Dahl and i am quite agree with them because if certain people don't like the book, as he was written, they just have to not read this book.

Link of the video

Presentation of the documents

Doc 4 : Subject matter of banned content

This document is an iconographic document about thhe subject in books that are the most banned between july 1, 2021 and june 30, 2022, the source is Pen America. We can see that the two most banned subject in books are LGBTQ themes, protagonists or prominent secondary characters, and protagonists or prominent secondary characters of colors with 41 and 40% of books banned respectively. The next subjects are sexual content with 22%, titles with issues of racism (21%). This document says a lot about the problems about the liberty of expression especially in United-States because even if we not agree with the ideas present in the book, it's maybe too extrem to ban him because a lot of work is behind this book, in my opinion. And we can see that the most banned subjects are the subject of a lot of controversy in usa and in the wolrd in general so, on one side, it's not a suprise to see that these subjects are the most banned.

Personnal document / exemple :

1. DaBaby, l'exemple de la cancel culture americaine sur la scene rap

DaBaby, from his real name Jonathan Lyndale Kirk is a famous american rapper especially know for his titles : Rockstar and levitating. DaBaby know a lot of succes during the years 2019-2021 but this success was short-lived because in the middle of the Rolling Loud festival of 2021, DaBaby say homophobic comments on the stage, he says that people with AIDS are dirty and a lot of bad things, he also attacked LGBTQ people, next to the publication of this video, DaBaby faced a wave of massive boycott because what he saying was irespectable and chocking, he later affirmed his comments on social media, who put him in a more serious situation. The consequences of this Boycott by people was bad, especially commercially for DaBaby because his last show was canceled due to the miss of people and his last album has not been sold much. Personally, even if i like DaBaby and his music, what he say is very bad and clumsy, however i still listen his music.

Here is 1 article about the subject and a youtube video that helped me

youtube video about dababy and his cancel

DaBaby ou l’exemple de la cancel culture ?

Conclusion

So, to respond to the problematic, i don't think the censorship is really necessary to our society because everyone have a different opinion in the society and especially in litterature, because every author write their thinking and they reflect their period, also censoship isn't necessary when you can just ignore things that you don't like today. But in special case, censorship is a good way to shut down a bad person or bad actions made by someone, however, people don't have to abuse of the censorship because it's the affair of the justice. In this chapter, i liked a lot see the document and the different exemple of censorship we see in class like J.K Rowling etc, but in general i liked this chapter.

clic

Thank You : )