Anne Rice: political correctness is new form of censorship in the book biz

[wysinwyg]

Now, for the utility argument. If censorship just means criticism, and criticism is not a bad thing, then we must conclude that censorship is not a bad thing either.

But obviously the chief rhetorical purpose of the term “censorship” is to denote a bad thing.

So criticism and censorship cannot be exactly the same thing, unless we want to admit there are good kinds of censorship. This is confusing and will inevitably lead to squabbling about whether this particular phenomenon is good censorship or bad censorship.

Much better and more useful to have a strict definition of censorship that is pretty much always a bad thing.

[wysinwyg]

@popobawa4u

Nobody has more power than anybody else. What people interpret as power differentials are simply:

people with different abilities
people with many friends
people who who have gullible people who listen to them

Any reasonable definition of “power” in this context includes those conditions.

I’d strongly advise moving away from semantic arguments, adjusting to other peoples’ usage of words, and having discussion based on the content of people’s arguments rather than nitpicking the forms.

[sargemisfit]

A persons desire to “not to have [their] ears filled with obscenities” does not trump my right to express myself in the manner I am most comfortable with.

What is it people always say? “If you don’t like it what you see, don’t look. If you don’t like what you hear, don’t listen.”

[wysinwyg]

@sargemisfit

What is it people always say? “If you don’t like it what you see, don’t look. If you don’t like what you hear, don’t listen.”

Proves a little too much.

“If you don’t like the sight of freshly butchered human corpses weeping blood into the gutters, don’t look. If you don’t like to hear the sound of innocents screaming in pain and horror, don’t listen.”

I don’t really have a problem with salty language, this is just obviously a really bad argument.

[Missy_Pants]

And your desire to fill the air with obscenities does not trump my desire to not hear them.
We are at a standstill.

Freedom of expression is not freedom from reaction or freedom from consequences. You have every right to say whatever you want, and I have every “right” to react in any way I see fit.

(I’m still not sure you have a “right” to swear… but I am Canadian, we have a different relationship with rights when it comes to expression than our neighbours to the south. In that it is not absolute nor guaranteed.)

[popobawa4u]

@wysinwyg

you flat out contradict yourself here

You misunderstand the difference I was making. Which is that specifying one meaning does not invalidate others. This is what bothers me about arguing words with people, they almost always insist that other meanings don’t exist, which is demonstrably untrue, when all they need to do is say which meaning they are working from for the purposes of being understood.

I agree that the Latin definition of censorship as criticism is not useful within the scope of the discussion. But the only reason I brought it up is because some said that the term cannot mean this, and I wanted to point out that it is one of the possible meanings. Apparently it is a “recent” meaning - I used it just yesterday. XD

@wysinwyg

But obviously the chief rhetorical purpose of the term “censorship” is to denote a bad thing.

I agree, but relying upon this connotation also makes for what I think is bad rhetoric.

@wysinwyg

I’d strongly advise moving away from semantic arguments, adjusting to other peoples’ usage of words, and having discussion based on the content of people’s arguments rather than nitpicking the forms.

This is sound advice, but many frame discussions about topics which are real to me in concepts which are not, which becomes difficult. Since I think that the idea of power over other people is delusional it seems prudent for me to explain that its not how I use the term. I don’t have a concept for influence as power, because in my conception, trying to influence others is a sign of impotence - a lack of power. This is the difficulty of discussing issues among people with different conceptual frameworks.

[wysinwyg]

@popobawa4u

This is what bothers me about arguing words with people, they almost always insist that other meanings don’t exist, which is demonstrably untrue, when all they need to do is say which meaning they are working from for the purposes of being understood.

Look, you can use words to mean whatever you want them to mean as I already mentioned. I fully acknowledge this. It’s a question of whether the usage in question is standard enough that anyone is going to understand you.

You are proposing a highly non-standard interpretation of the term “censorship” here. It does not make anything more clear. On the contrary, it makes people write hundreds of words trying to explain to you why introducing a non-standard usage of the word is not conducive to good discussion.

@popobawa4u

I agree that the Latin definition of censorship as criticism is not useful within the scope of the discussion.

We are using the English language word “censorship”. “Censorship” is not a Latin word at all – it is derived from Latin, but it is not a term in Latin.

And there is no guarantee that a word in language B derived from language A but several hundred years after the fact will preserve the connotations and denotations of that word in language A.

For example, in English “mead” is a drink made from fermented honey. It is derived from the proto-Indo European language. However, it probably did not mean “drink made from fermented honey” in proto-Indo European. It probably just meant “honey”; we can infer this from the fact that the Russian language derives the term “meäd”, meaning “honey” from proto-Indo European.

Today, in the English language, “censorship” is not a simple synonym for “criticism”. You are grasping for excuses to smuggle in a meaning of a related word from a completely different language even though by your own admission doing so is not useful for the purposes of this discussion. The whole thing has me baffled.

[Missy_Pants]

Dude.

@popobawa4u

You misunderstand

You have GOT to stop saying that.
If every conversation you have devolves to that… well, we’ve had this conversation haven’t we?

[popobawa4u]

You said it yourself, that the reason why most people use the term “censorship” in a discussion is as a rhetorical prop which connotes “a bad thing”. Using it in such a shorthand fashion may cause people to take for granted how the process works, preferring instead to react against what they find implicit in it.

Unloading emotionally-loaded language seems to encourage more varied and more productive discussion.

[wysinwyg]

Yes, great points. In many cases, I think tabooing a certain word to eliminate its emotional valence from a discussion is the right way to go for exactly the reasons you give.

However, in this thread we are discussing Anne Rice’s use of the term “censorship”. It would be really strange to taboo the term that the whole discussion revolves around.

What seems to me a more useful course would be to find a pretty strict definition of “censorship” that most people in the discussion can compromise to agree to, and then to determine whether Anne Rice’s use of the term is valid given that definition. If not, then we can conclude that Rice doesn’t really have a point and is just using the term, in your words, as a rhetorical prop which denotes “a bad thing”.

That is, we can remove the emotional valence of the term by simply not using the term, or we can do so by very careful analysis. I believe this is a case for the latter.

[anon50609448]

@popobawa4u

Nobody has more power than anybody else.

I just don’t buy it. People really have more power than other people. Some people like to say that even if they are in chains their minds are still free. That’s nonsense. We are apes. We can be physically restrained, made to feel bad, or even killed by other apes. If someone has the practical capacity to do those things to me and I do not have the practical capacity to do those things to them then they have power over me.

If someone has a billion dollars then it doesn’t matter that in another world no one would care about that, because in this world they can use that money to direct the labour of people, to influence social policy, to get away with crimes, and so on. If someone is elected to an office then it doesn’t matter than in another world the people might simply say, “We don’t recognize your authority” because in this world that is a lot less likely than being hit by lightning and doesn’t meaningfully affect the discussion.

@popobawa4u

Censorship can be as simple as destroying a single book so that it can’t be read. Or refusing to let your kid read it because of its content. Or refusing to have it in your town or school library because of its content. It includes any acts undertaken to prevent people from obtaining or reading the book due to differences of what the author says. On a small scale, this does not need to prevent the book from existing, or prevent everybody from possibly reading it. It could be very localized.

That I totally agree with. If I destroy the only copy of a book because I don’t think the contents should be shared then you could say I’m censoring - but having access to the only copy was a lot of power. If I won’t let my child read something I might be censoring, but I have a lot of power over my child. If local libraries were the only practical way to access books then I would agree they could censor too.

But if me not letting my three-year-old have a book with graphic violent images in it because I don’t think it would be good for her to see them, and that’s “censorship” then we’d all have to agree to not attach any negative connotation to the word. That’s not going to happen. “Censorship” invokes police states and dictatorships. People don’t call oxygen chambers “gas chambers” because they don’t want to invoke the holocaust. I’m not going to call any instance of someone deleting, destroying or making inaccessible any written or spoken word censorship.

@popobawa4u

Unloading emotionally-loaded language seems to encourage more varied and more productive discussion.

Wait, seems to do that, or seems to you like it ought to do that. Because I’ve watched you have similar discussions on this board tons of times, and I have never once seen the result you say you are trying to achieve. The effect of your actions is to have people explain, over and over, that if you say use a word in a non-standard way you will be misunderstood, while you say you are being misunderstood. It has gotten to the point that one has to wonder if your goal is to be misunderstood so that you can point out that you are.

Maybe unloading emotionally loaded language would make for more productive discussions. Your attempts to unload emotionally loaded language in these forums never have.

[popobawa4u]

@anon50609448

We are apes. We can be physically restrained, made to feel bad, or even killed by other apes. If someone has the practical capacity to do those things to me and I do not have the practical capacity to do those things to them then they have power over me.

It is not only a matter of capacity, but also inclination. The average person can beat, restrain, or kill other people - but chooses not to. I think this makes them no less powerful. Humans are, for the most part, within comparable scales of strength and intelligence to each other. I think that power over the self is primary, and that those who seek to control others lack this self-control. Those who strive for authority are quite truly slaves to their instincts.

@anon50609448

If someone has a billion dollars then it doesn’t matter that in another world no one would care about that, because in this world they can use that money to direct the labour of people, to influence social policy, to get away with crimes, and so on. If someone is elected to an office then it doesn’t matter than in another world the people might simply say, “We don’t recognize your authority” because in this world that is a lot less likely than being hit by lightning and doesn’t meaningfully affect the discussion.

But authority cannot be taken, only given. The value of money, the control of politics, etc are given to it by the people. It is a choice, and as such should not be taken for granted. This is the very foundation of social structure. Nobody just “has power” over masses of people, the masses put them there by means of their own power.

[sargemisfit]

I am also Canadian. I know that we hold all of our rights as being equal, that one right has no priority over the other. I also know that we hold acceptance and tolerance in very high regard. This is who I am and this is how I express myself. I do not have to justify that. You can accept it and tolerate it, or not.

[Missy_Pants]

It really depends on what you’re saying and where, as you can be arrested here for your words. So no, I don’t have to “tolerate” it, no one does.

[Mal_Tosevite]

@HMSGoose

I bristle when anyone uses the term “political correctness” as it is, more often than not, deployed to strike down much needed criticism of bigots.

A couple of thoughts on this…

First, “political correctness” is mostly meaningless. It’s used almost exclusively by social conservatives to describe liberals’ reactions to things. Conservatives are every bit as likely to demand boycotts in my experience, and every bit as likely to form a horde that gloms on to something and says, “I’m offended.” But their definition has morphed from making fun of people who demand the use of “differently abled” instead of “disabled” or “mentally handicapped”, to today, when some of them just want to be able to spew vile, racist bullcrap in public and be congratulated for their wit.

And second…I honestly think there’s something to “political correctness”. It goes so weird when the mob mentality kicks in. I mean, take the “Blurred Lines” controversy. Anyone remember Robin Thicke? Anyone? *crickets* Anyway, when a handful of people decided the lyrics were “rapey”, I think of all the time and energy expended getting the song banned. When people like me said, erm, yes, well, first of all, what about the line, “the way you grab me”? Isn’t she the one assaulting him? Well, no, he’s a man and she’s a woman. Oh. Well, that’s wrong, but…okay, what about hiphop? Yes, well, he’s a white man. So…does that mean that he should know better because as a white man he’s inherently better? Well…no, what they meant was that he has more influence…yes, well, get back to me with that when someone makes a major motion picture about Thicke and Apple makes him a billionaire.

*clears throat*

But there have been other examples as well, especially someone like Justine Sacco, who didn’t even get a chance to give her side before the horde got her fired.

And I’m assuming that’s at the core: media companies are weary of the cycle of someone taking great offense at something so small, and being forced into the unwinnable situation of either ignoring the angry mob, or apologizing which is an admission of some sort of guilt. And so we get “safe” entertainment.

And the PC machine gets it wrong sometimes. No, really, it does. I feel fortunate that I was in a school district that allowed Catcher In The Rye and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I think it’s beyond offensive that such a progressive 19th century literary classic is banned for being “racist”.

@sassl

Find an author who is prevented from self-publishing their work and we’ll all agree it’s censorship. Until then it’s just people who feel entitled to someone else’s platform getting upset when they’re denied it.

You know, I can publish anything I want, on my own. But since I have no pre-existing audience, I’m not going to sell many copies. I could write the next great American novel, but if my marketing campaign is unsuccessful or I can’t afford one on my starving-artist budget, it will languish; and to keep this in BoingBoing territory, if Xeni posts “OMG LOOK AT THIS CUTE KITTY. JUST LOOK AT IT.” BB will almost certainly make more money on that post than my self-promoted book that I spent a year on. (I did no such thing, just an example.)

I’m pretty certain that if JK Rowling had chosen to self-publish, we never would have heard of Harry Potter. The mere fact that it was published at all was literally just pure dumb luck, but the way we knew about it was that her publisher promoted the hell out of it.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are self-promotion successes, but that market is saturated. I’m betting that for every Wool, there’s 1000 decent scifi stories we’ll never see, languishing on Amazon.

[Missy_Pants]

@Mal_Tosevite

I’m pretty certain that if JK Rowling had chosen to self-publish, we never would have heard of Harry Potter.

And yet…

JK Rowling unmasked as author of acclaimed detective novel

@Mal_Tosevite

And the PC machine gets it wrong sometimes. No, really, it does. I feel fortunate that I was in a school district that allowed Catcher In The Rye and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I think it’s beyond offensive that such a progressive 19th century literary classic is banned for being “racist”.

I would argue that it is not the PC machine that gets those books banned. Most of the people I see frothing at the mouth over “protecting the children from obscenity” would react very badly to being called “politically correct”. That is a term they use for the “left” while it is the “right” that is actually censoring books. Somewhat ironic no?

[anon50609448]

@popobawa4u

It is not only a matter of capacity, but also inclination.

I’m including inclination in capacity. Most people can’t conceive of the idea of deciding to want something different than they currently want. Their wants and emotions are part of their identities. If I don’t have the inclination to kill people to get what I want, I can’t suddenly decide to be the sort of person who does want to kill people to get what they want. Maybe one day we’ll be able to do that with brain surgery, but we are actually stuck with the ape bodies and brains we have, and that includes our emotions and inclinations.

@popobawa4u

I think that power over the self is primary, and that those who seek to control others lack this self-control.

So some people who lack control over themselves manage to nonetheless effect control over other people. That is, you can control others without controlling yourself, and those others are not controlling themselves (except deep down inside, whether they know it or not).

It’s self-help bullshit. You can’t just say to people, “Take control of your mind! Live your own life!” people are doing the best they can. If your experience has been that you have an unlimited reserve of willpower to make decisions with and that you can simply will yourself to be what you want yourself to be, then congratulations, you are Nietzsche’s overman, but most people are not. What is the difference between being technically capable of self-control in a deep-down-whether-you-know-it-or-not sense but choosing not to exercise it (and continuing to make that choice for the rest of your live) and being incapable of that control? What test could we do in the real world to determine which of these hypotheses is true?

@popobawa4u

It is a choice, and as such should not be taken for granted.

It is a choice made by billions of people, and as such should not be dreamed away by some kind of personal empowerment theory. That other people make money have power is a fact about the world. But if a billion people are giving power to money, then money has that power. Or are we incapable of actually making that choice?

[shaddack]

@Mal_Tosevite

And the PC machine gets it wrong sometimes. No, really, it does.

The Shirtgate, for example. Or that partial quote of that scientist - you apparently have to make sure that not even part of a sentence can be interpreted wrong. Or, the brouhaha in Sweden where the pharmacies are now scrambling to find a manufacturer of dark-colored band-aids, because the usual colors are racist. I thought it’s a hoax, but the google has a bit too many hits for that (which still may mean it is a hoax but…)

In this age, you can be sure of only one thing: somebody, somewhere, is Grossly Offended and something has to be done about it.

[anon8420928]

How dare you say that.

[armozel]

I know that Anne Rice means well in her opinion but I don’t see any active attempts by private firms to censor Huck Finn or Catcher in the Rye or any other book that has questionable language or scenes. If anything, it seems the modern publisher wants to release work that is more base in content (Fifty Shades of Grey comes to mind) than ever. So, I really don’t see the effect to her vague causes. It just seems to me that she’s probably upset that she can’t get published like she use to.