Breaking News: “Social media platform suspends Greek philosopher Aristotle for perpetuating the dangerous belief that the world is round, risking the lives of countless sailors.”
If you read that article today, you’d think it was from The Onion, yet the sad reality is that we are living through events future historians will judge harshly. As of yesterday, Twitter has suspended the President of the United States. Some may bemoan this while others cheer, but I see it as the start of a terrible precedent.
The reason I am writing this is that I am an author and I feel the need to take a stand against the insanity that seems to rage around us in the form of cancel culture and censorship. In a way, I feel that I am fortunate that I am on the back end of life, because those who are just starting out will have a bleak future if this madness continues.
I grew up reading in one form or another; comic books, magazines, and books littered my room. Okay, truth is they were all neatly arranged in chronological or alphabet order, but that is a topic for a different day. The point is, I read a lot. In fact, many of the books I read in school are now being banned. Classic reads such as To Kill a Mocking Bird, Of Mice and Men, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, and Animal Farm. The latter I can appreciate, as it is a warning of the dystopian times we currently live in and we can’t risk people waking up to their own demise.
How long before The Great Gatsby, Catch-22, or 1984 make the list?
Oops, just checked and 1984 is banned. Life comes at you fast.
As an author, I am appalled at the growing calls for censorship, especially when it comes from those in my field. At what point do we wake up and see the folly of our actions, or will we? When the mob gets done with the low hanging fruit, those things we seem to find easily objectionable, will they then pursue loftier goals? Will orders come from on high that quantify what we as authors can write? Will authors who write about a different gender, race, or creed be ostracized for having the audacity to write outside their lane?
Don’t think this will happen? Think again. I belong to several substantive industry groups, and this subject has already reared its ugly head on several occasions. Heated debate has risen on what some authors should and shouldn’t do. It seems farcical, but how long before it gains traction and becomes mainstream thinking?
My principal character in the James Maguire series is a man of Irish descent and a member of the NYPD. I should be safe with him, but what about Alex Taylor? Will I be banned from writing any future stories because she is a female and I don’t meet the gender threshold? How about Angelo Antonucci, since I’m not Italian? I guess I’m really screwed with my latest book, Awakening, which is a vampire saga.
The point is, censorship, in any form, is wrong.
Years ago, I read Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. I did so as a historian who wanted to understand the inner workings of the man who brought so much pain and death into the world. You can also add Otto Skorzeny, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, and others. I’ve also read books on several American luminaries such as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Complex men who may invoke equally complex feelings depending on what side of an issue you find yourself on, but isn’t that what a book should do? To make you think?
As an author, I feel it is my obligation to make you feel something when you read my books. I want to take you to a place that causes you to think. One of the greatest compliments I ever received was when a reader told me she had cried over a character. What’s that you say? You cry over characters all the time? That’s awesome, but did I forget to mention that this character was a terrorist?
Life is complicated and we do ourselves a terrible disservice when we try to sanitize it. Echo chambers are not healthy, nor do they stimulate thought and reason.
The actions being taken today, under the seemingly benign guise of tolerance and diversity, do not differ from what the aforementioned Hitler did. It’s ironic that those screaming ‘fascist’ the loudest are engaging in the same fascist actions they apparently abhor.
Mark Twain famously said, “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open your mouth and remove all doubt.” I would argue that it is better to open one’s mouth, and let others judge you for the content of your argument, than it is to keep your mouth shut just to appease the intellectually stunted.
Sadly, many in my field disagree with that sentiment, and that should worry you.
We often take the literary genre of Satire for granted. Historically, it has satisfied a need to debunk or ridicule those in politics, religion, and other figures of power. Some of you may have even read the book ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, but did you know he wrote another book called ‘The Swineherd’? Both of the aforementioned books were satirical. The former pointed to the courtly pride and intellectual vanity of the king who’d been fooled by two weavers that gave him invisible clothes. Everyone went along with the charade, because he was the king, except for a young boy who could see he had no clothes. In the latter, a poor prince is rebuffed by a princess and takes a role as a commoner who provides the princess beautiful gifts in exchange for kisses. When her father the king finds out she is kissing a commoner, he throws her out. The prince then washes his face, puts on his royal attire, and spurns her. In both instances, the high and mighty receive their comeuppance, but there is more to the story.
After writing those satirical works, Anderson purportedly received a gift of a ruby and diamond ring from the Danish king. After receiving the ring, he never wrote another satirical story. In fact, he went on to pen The Ugly Duckling, a transformative story that many consider to be analogous to Andersen himself. Some suggest the ring was a successful attempt to curb Andersen’s political satire and successfully bring him into the royal fold.
Is that what we are seeing today? I believe so.
Those in the creative arts, whether writers, actors, comedians, have always been at the vanguard of not only entertaining us, but making us uncomfortable at times. Lately, this group seems to grow more angry and inclined to demand that you conform to their world views. If you do not, you subject yourself to cancel culture. This is a very scary place to be. If we can’t write what we are motivated to, what is the point?
Consider what happened to literary titan, J. K. Rowling, last summer. Ms. Rowling tweeted something which was deemed to be anti ‘LGBT’ and the cancel culture mob immediately descended on her. Interestingly enough, two of the people leading the charge were Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, the two actors who achieved incredible success playing characters from Ms. Rowling’s books. Let me say at the outset that I am not a fan of Ms. Rowling, and I have found myself in disagreement with her positions in the past, however I respect her work as an author. I feel no need to cheer for her opponents and no desire to cancel her for her opinions. It’s called being an adult. If I find something to be distasteful to me, or something that goes against my beliefs, I simply do not support it, but I certainly don’t go out to the village square and demand that everyone else conform to my positions or else. Yet that is what we are currently seeing in our society.
I am merely an entertainer; my opinions and positions are no greater, nor any less, than yours.
Yes, my books contain positions and topics that often coincide with my own, but they also contain elements that go against some of my beliefs. I push myself as often as I hope I push you. I will never write what is safe. For me to do that, I would simply have three blank chapters in every book: The Beginning, Things Happened, The End; and you would be left to fill in what you preferred to read. Not exactly an edge-of-your-seat thriller.
Maybe it’s time that we all just go back to being examples of courtesy and respect, instead of being harbingers of our own demise.
