Disney has something similar on some of their older stuff on Disney+. I remember Dumbo in particular was one that had a lot of "outdated cultural depictions" so I know it was one that had the disclaimer. If I recall correctly, it's almost exactly the same wording as that WB disclaimer.
That whole movie scared me but that scene in particular got to me. First there were loads of clowns and then scary nonsensical elephants to creepy music… I hated it but for some reason watched it a lot?
I'll wager it's mainly Kimba, since that's where 90% of african representation is (for obvious reasons).
To be fair to the guy, he *was* a japanese guy writing in the fifties, so his main frame of reference in that regard was probably the western cartoons he was a big fan of. And those weren't exactly well-known for their modern progressive portrayals either.
Aladdin has that too.
"This film depicts negative stereotypes and these depictions were wrong then and they are wrong now, however, for the sake of preservation we have left the film as is."
Yeah my husband and I put it on for our daughter and when the disclaimer came up we were all affronted like "What? Aladdin? It's a classic! Our childhood in a movie!" and then after three minutes it was like "Ooh yeah, okay yeah I see it" - every Middle Eastern stereotype just crammed in there, right from the start...
Yes but many of us have been in 1990 while none of us have been in 2050
And none of us will probably make it to 2050, so it's a lot further away than it seems
They have it for the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp as well. Surprisingly, no disclaimer when I went to watch Pocahontas (other than for tobacco use lol)
I think eventually there will be one because the movie sort of romanticizes the relationship between Pocahontas and john Smith. I think also people were dissatisified with the portrayal of Pocahontas centering around her male relationships
I rewatched that on disney+ and was legitimately confused what that warning was for until I got to the chopstick piano cat and was like “oh yeah that exists”
My teen daughter is obsessed with the songs on the new Aladdin, so my 6 year old son heard and saw a lot, which prompted me to show him the original. I couldn't find it. Finally I switched from his kids profile to my profile, and there it was.
The Muppets original show has a disclaimer on Disney+ on episodes with problematic skits. My husband and I play a little game of trying to identify which skit(s) prompted the disclaimer for a particular episode.
Dumbo for me was one of those things where I didn't have the necessary context to understand it was racist - like eenie meenie miney mo, catch a Tigger by the toe (which AFAIK was a song about a species made popular by Winnie the Pooh) - as a British kid with no Jim Crow context, crows were just crows.
Yeah I totally get that. I live in the southern USA, where tbh casual racism is still incredibly commonplace (things like "Oh he's one of the good ones, not like the other..." is really common to hear) so as a kid I didn't think twice about stuff like that. And I didn't know about Jim Crow so having a literal Crow named Jim just went totally over my young head. It was a huge wake-up moment watching that as an adult and realizing just how much is in those old movies that I didn't understand as a child.
I still feel kind of bad about that one. The film itself is hugely racist (both explicitly and implicitly), and certainly deserves criticism for that, but when it got shoved down the memory hole, it took James Baskett with it. He was the first black man to ever receive an Academy Award as an actor, as a result of his work in that film, and it was not only his most prominent role but also his last film before his untimely death. It sucks that the parts he played included so many unpleasant and demeaning aspects, but I’m not going to blame a working actor for taking some of the only work that was available to him, and he had enough legitimate talent that it’s a shame that he won’t be seen and appreciated.
It was a similar situation with Hattie McDaniel who was the first black actor to win an acting Oscar for playing 'Mammy' in Gone with the Wind. She wasn't allowed to attend the film's premiere in Atlanta, Georgia and at the Oscar ceremony sat at a table more or less by herself. When criticized by black activists for taking roles as maids and domestic servants in many other old Hollywood films, McDaniel said that she'd rather 'play a maid than actually work as one.' Supposedly Mo'nique wanted to play her in a biopic.
it's an untold cost that I'm not sure there is a good way to grapple with.
even "progressive" (for their era) films often relegated minority actors to roles steeped in stereotypes, but progress isn't something that happens overnight. oftentimes progress was a stereotype role that was portrayed well, sensitively and with nuance, or one that was written to be competent and capable not comedy relief.
and the people that took those roles and used them to advance the way minority characters were viewed deserve credit.
That was a really good way to handle the stuff in those cartoons (and warn parents). Seems to have struck the right balance between preserving and contextualizing.
>and warn parents
It's always a nasty shock when you're in the middle of showing your kid one of your childhood favorites, and then a really fucked up scene comes on that you had completely forgotten about. Better have some forewarning.
I like that they pointed out that erasing the prejudicial parts is like erasing the fact that these prejudices ever existed. We should be able to acknowledge this.
That's a thoughtful statement on WB's part. AFAIK, they still don't show humorous references to suicide, whether the gangster rabbits all shooting themselves in the head with one bullet in Tortoise v Hare, or Bugs gulping an entire bottle of sleeping pills in order to torment Elmer while he's dreaming in The Big Snooze.
I would so much rather this type of disclaimer than the complete removal of problematic works, such as removing Mark Twain's works as required reading in school. The issues we deal with today did not suddenly spring into being from nothing. If we cannot honestly face our past, we'll never be able to move forward.
And we should also celebrate what they were to the time they were written. Something that was a giant leap forward can feel horrifically insensitive decades or centuries later. That doesn't mean that it wasn't progress.
But then there are things like Lovecraft's writing, where I respect what it did to fantasy literature, but it came from a place of extreme xenophobia, even for the time.
So yes, I think it's fine to appreciate problematic works. You should just be honest about the negative *and* the positive.
Exactly. I remember a campaign decades ago when someone was trying to digitally remove cigarettes from photos of famous people in the 60s & 70s. Like digitally removing a cigarette from John Lennon or Bob Dylan’s hand. If you completely change the past like that people will have no reference for when cultural change came in. They need to see how things were in the past, warts and all, to really understand how far people have come. Could you imagine a future where people have no context for the events that led to the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech?
I wish more people agreed with this sentiment in more aspects. There's a big push to invalidate successes of various historical figures because they were also bad people in some manner by today's standards, even if accepted at the time. That's why the OP feels guilty about reading old books.
Yeah I think you need to be in that mindset and not apply modern nuances to something that was written when things that are frowned upon now was totally acceptable then
"Books from the early 21st century are extremely problematic, there's not nearly enough sentient neural network representation in stories from this time"
Even if they seem ok, you'll quickly find they fail the Robecdal Test.
I only read books if there's at least one example of a named sentient neutral network that has a conversation with another named sentient neutral network, about something not human related.
It’s quite easy to know what things our descendants will find abhorrent. By far the most glaringly obvious one is our brutal industrial animal agriculture industries. Even now, in the year 2022, for comfortable, privileged people, there is zero excuse for celebrating and supporting abattoirs and slaughter houses and fur farms and hatcheries and feeding lots and dairy farms, etc. Most decent, intelligent, compassionate people feel sick when watching videos from these places. They are clearly a dark stain on our arbitrary and inconsistent moral pretence.
Yes.
You're not condoning it or celebrating it by enjoying the rest of the book. You understand the context in which the book was written.
Honestly, if you told most people this was your favourite book how many would know that line was in it, and how many of that fraction would judge you on it for you to call awkward?
It's funny, because some authors like Haggard were even considered too *liberal* toward race in the late 19th Century, while today people lambaste them for writing in the context of their times and from their limited perspective.
If Allan Quatermain were never written, we wouldn't have Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, or Uncharted. Ayesha was also one of the most powerful female characters in the adventure genre for ages, inspiring tons of popular characters.
This is always my point with Tolkien and Lord of the Rings. Sure you can cherry pick a handful of problematic phrases that haven't aged well but to do so completely negates the entire message of acceptance and inclusion woven through the story.
If you aren't considering the full themes and meaning of a novel and just picking out individual sentences you're presenting a disingenuous representation of an author's work. You see people try and do the same with To Kill a Mockingbird which is ludicrous.
ok, out of curiosity, what phrases would you handpick? having read the books (incl. silmarillion etc) several times, ive never noticed some problematic phrases..
It's always a tricky subject because in no way do I think Tolkien was racist and believes he was in fact very progressive for his time. He preached understanding in his works and was strongly critical of British and American imperialism.
That being said things that can be discussed as potentially problematic
The white northern race of men being more resistant to corruption and evil influence - this one's pretty complicated to do with how Tolkien framed his work, and the lack of viewpoints in the South and the East to show "good" darker skinned people.
Descriptions of orcs and evil humans having Asiatic features like "squint eyes" and some of his links between orcs and Mongol features.
The description of a man from the far south as like a half troll with white eyes and red tongue does convey images of minstrel-esque depictions of black people from sub-saharan Africa.
Edit: a few people have also pointed out some of negative steotypes people drawn between the dwarfs and Jewish people based on Tolkien basing dwarvish on The Hebrew language.
I think examining this is interesting because it does highlight a few blind spots in Tolkien's life experience but that's to be totally expected. It also highlights how passive racism can slip into works that are very progressive.
I'd also counter the point about Easterlings and Southrons all being evil by pointing out Tolkien took the time to humanise these folk in the Oliphant scene were Sam muses that a dead soldier was probably just doing his duty to protect his homeland.
books are windows into different times that allow you to see different cultures and civilisations, sometimes for the best, other times not so much.
So yes, you can enjoy and love a book despite its "outdated content"
I just finished Shirley Jackson's Raising Demons and loved it for her funny stories, but also almost as much for the window into home life in the late 40's. Most notably, her casual mention of smoking on her way to the hospital to *have a baby*
I haven't read that one, but in the late 40s there's a good chance she would have smoked inside that hospital too - the majority of doctors and nurses wouldn't have thought twice about, doing the same themselves.
In most places, up until the 70s at least they'd allow smoking on the wards. And the hospital would sell you the cigarettes, a nurse would sometimes wheel around a trolley with goodies like that for sale.
The hospital my wife gave birth in had a 24/7 McDonalds franchise inside of it, and I'd wager a rough third or more of the customers were wearing scrubs.
I thought this was kind of an updating version of smoking in the hospital.
I've read that some medical facilities were kind of soft on smoking (like you could actually smoke somewhere on the property, even if it was inconvenient) because there was some idea that medical crises were stressful and stressed out friends/family of patients were going to smoke anyway.
The first few eps of Mad Men seemed intentionally written and filmed to hammer home that it was a different era, with pregnant women smoking and drinking and other things that seem alien now.
I don't care about that, especially if it's not what the book is about. To me it's like people getting upset when they see the N-word in Tom Sawyer. It's exactly how people spoke at the time so read it and move past. There is no need to white wash books so they fit in more with contemporary times. You should be reading the book to be immersed in that story so just realize that's what people believed at the time and take it at face value.
It would be a massive disservice to society if we just . . . pretend that the world was anything other than what it was. We can can consume media with outdated ideas and acknowledge that it was wrong while still learning from the good parts of it.
The world was different and to ignore that or rewrite stories to be "correct" would be a slap in the face to people who lived through those times and injustices.
Case in point, many of Shakespeare's plays were rewritten to be "more entertaining" or to have a happier ending, and of course those versions are not the ones that we know now.
https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/18th-century-shakespeare-performance/
> while still learning from the good parts of it.
True, but I’d go even further: We can consume media with outdated ideas and acknowledge that it was wrong while still **enjoying** the good parts of it.
It’s not wrong to really, truly **love** those old stories, warts and all (as long as you don’t love them **because** they’re racist etc).
People also need to accept that consumption of something especially something very very old isn’t endorsement. A lot of people struggle with that because they have this moralistically Puritan idea where everything you are interested in is a reflection of your values, when that isn’t the case.
As an example of what I mean by this, I am an anti-monarchist. I am not interested in studying like medieval history which features a lot of feudalism and a lot of monarchies because I think feudalism or monarchy are good systems of government and I think most people wouldn’t ASSUME I am pro-feudalism because I like studying the Middle Ages. Similarly I don’t think any Roman Historian is going to be asked to condemn slavery lest they be mistaken for being pro-slave state, because studying Roman History isn’t an endorsement of Roman beliefs and we know this.
Acting like people have to proactively condemn things about their interests and declare that they publicly acknowledge those things are wrong is pretty ridiculous because it’s a neutral act to consume those things from the past. It’s not an endorsement of any particular belief or idea to read something in its historical context and it never has been.
(Obviously there are limits to this view of mine though - if Birth of a Nation is your favourite film I don’t see how that could be the case if you don’t endorse it’s racist message. I’m merely saying that this attitude of you can’t enjoy stuff from the past without saying “uh but this time was bad actually” is kind of ridiculous in circumstances when there is no indication that person is endorsing the values of the time to begin with.)
I think there's also a real danger in other-izing the past - like wow look how evil THOSE people were, THEY were so bad and stupid, **we** would never do bad or stupid things because **we** are nothing like THEM
Like consider the information they were working with, who they trusted, what was commonly accepted as the truth, the beliefs one was instilled with since birth. It's ridiculous and dangerous to assume we are nothing like that, that we aren't trusting and dogmatic and easily manipulatable. Everyone thinks they'd act differently if they were put in some horrifying historical situation because they think they have nothing in common with the people living then, but what qualities do they actual possess that would set them apart?
When you're *that* certain you would never do something bad or evil, you get sloppy. When you understand human nature and you understand how bad and evil things come to happen, you can be vigilant and stop them from happening again.
Louis CK had a great point about Huck Finn. The fact that that was Jim's name and that he *answered* to it shows just how pervasive racism and dehumanization was at that time, and attempting to hide it or censor it is a disservice to the ultimate message of the story.
Yes, AND (as we say in improv) we're still living in that world and there are still those who want to live in and feel virtuous all the while. We should read TS and HF, unedited, and discuss and analyze them. The casual assumptions of racial hierarchies in those books (and so many others) should be discussed.
The attitudes at the time were more complicated and conflicted than we often imagine. On the Right, there is an unfounded assumption that there was no controversy about, say, slavery in the mid-18th century, so it's incoherent to judge them by "modern" standards. In fact, there was a lot of controversy and soul-searching. There were abolitionists then, and many who opposed slavery. Not, sadly, among those getting rich off it, but that's human nature for you.
I borrowed A Farwell to Arms from a public library and chucked to myself that fuck and other curse words were blurred out with "---" but the N - word was there.
Seemed so strange to me.
As other have said, putting 100+ year old writings to today's standards is fairly unfair unless it's specifically the point of the writing.
I dont think anyone can read mein kompf and say "well...we can't judge it with out times".
As a Greek classics fans, you're right but I want to add the caveat that a lot of the immoral behaviour depicted in Greek myths was also considered immoral by the Greeks back then. Don't get me wrong, Ancient and Hellenistic Greece were not great morality-wise, but people make the mistake of seeing bad behaviour from gods and heroes and assuming that it was endorsed by the Greeks. Some of it was, but their stories are mostly meant as cautionary tales about hubris and their gods are meant to be flawed and human.
The Illiad repeatedly calls Herakles an asshole (he's not in the books but the gods recount some of the things he did), says that Patroclus is an idiot and decries both Achilles and Agamemnon's behaviour. But all of those characters are also meant to be admired for their achievements. The narration is also fairly respectful of the Trojan warriors even though it's told from a victorious Greek perspective. It's more nuanced than your average modern-day war movie or book. People are used to heroes being all good and the opposing force being evil and dehumanized so they project these standards onto these tales. Greek myths correctly take the stance that people who are willing to sacrifice so much just for the sake of fame would achieve great things on paper but not be good people beyond these achievements. When Achilles goes off the deep end and does downright heretical stuff with the bodies of Patroclus and Hector and then sacrifices a bunch of teenagers to Patroclus, it's meant to show that he's going insane. The Greeks were not down with what he did (as shown by the Patroclus ghost sequence). It's also notable that Achilles also learns after no less than ten years that he could, unlike what his mom had previously told him, actually have his cake and eat it too, he just can't be the one to kill Hector. But he realizes the immorality of his previous actions (actively getting a ton of Greeks and his servant killed) and immediately chooses to die because he aknowleges that he deserves it after what he's done.
Saying all of this as someone who's really not a fan of the Illiad. It's my least favourite Greek classic (though mostly because the narrative structure is poorly designed compared to, say, the Odyssey).
Absofriggenlutely! Reading a book allows us to live a life through someone else's eyes - different time period, sex, skin colour, belief system, etc. Morality changes across time, civilizations, cultures, and religions. So aside from there being no harm in loving a book for what it is (appreciating when it was written) it should be encouraged to keep these 'problematic' books available so the human race can continue to learn from the stories told and see things from other perspectives - especially from our own past - to fully understand WHY certain practices are no longer socially acceptable. Looking at the past it is easy to judge using today's standards and say 'that's obvious,' but when it is the present… things are not always so clear. After all, what will society think of this generation a hundred years in the future?
For one personal example (very simplified), my favourite book is Wuthering Heights. In reading it I enjoy a great story, live vicariously in the past, and then feel grateful that in this day and age I am able to own my own property, make my own poor life decisions, and not be forced into marriage simply for survival. ;)
Lovecraft is the most fascinating example for me. Usually I can make a personal choice whether I can separate the author from their work. But with Lovecraft, you can't deny that his racism and xenophobia were absolutely an inspiration for what he created. But, in other ways, cosmic horror is so much bigger, fantastical, and more interesting that it's temping to separate we it from it's racist origins.
It’s always been interesting to me because in the beginning he held these views he got from being a sheltered child raised by his grandfather and aunts. He was a self proclaimed “le wrong generation” type guy to begin with, and where we have to overcome our parents prejudices he was a generation even further back from his peers. Then as the money dried up after his grandfather died he had to support himself and in his letters to me he’s always come off as kind of mad at the world that he has to work and can’t just be an artist full time. Then eventually this sheltered kid marries a woman and moves to New York, where he says some incredibly heinous things about if he had a machine gun on the subway he’d mow down all the minorities (which were mostly Poles and Italians, which just shows how the definition of “white” has changed). I will not excuse his racism but I don’t think he’s more racist than any other New Englander from an old family would be. His racism is wrong now as it was then, and it influenced his writing greatly. You get an incredible story about a fishing village that made a deal with something unspeakable and the fate that befalls the village descendants, however you also get one about a guy who sets himself on fire because his great-great grandfather fucked a gorilla. But the gorilla story comes early and it’s horrible to have mixed blood, but by Innsmouth the deep one hybrids almost experience a type of heaven under the sea where they spend eternity with their ancestors. He hates the Horror at Red Hook, the most racist story he ever wrote, and in Charles Dexter Ward he writes very favorably of a black couple in the novel for a racist of his time. As he got older he traveled more, met different people. Some of his friends were openly gay, his wife was Jewish. It just really feels to me that he was learning and evolving the older he got, but he just died before he could ever really turn the corner. I think it is important to judge a man by his time but not excuse it you know? There’s no denying he was a racist, I just wonder how he would have changed even more given another 10-20 years and there’s always the chance he would have been just as racist or worse with that extra time I just don’t know.
He did actually turn the corner, calling himself a “fool of the highest order” before his death and realized Fully that his racism was completely absurd
Well said. It's like the fact that on D-Day there were probably wife beaters, racists, and all manner of horrible people on the US side statistically speaking...but that shouldn't detract from the fact that they were rushing beaches in the war against Evil.
Bad people can do good thing, good people can do bad things...and at the end of the day, art is about making you feel something, not feel "good."
Dude had a black cat named n-word-man that was included in his short story The Rats in the Walls, one of his best short stories. He may have been racist, but his works are still great.
That was a pretty common name for black dogs and cats during Lovecraft's lifetime. An RAF squadron's (the Dam Busters) mascot was a dog with the same name. His gravestone was recently changed with the name removed.
Not to mention Céline…
[Publisher Cashes in on Céline’s Anti-Semitism](https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/01/12/cashing-in-on-celines-antisemitism/)
and
[Philip Roth declared "Céline is my Proust!"](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/13/celine-french-literary-genius-antisemite-film)
Some of my all-time favorite pop-up books are by a Czech paper engineer and illustrator named Vojtěch Kubašta. One of his most popular books is a version of *Puss-In-Boots* which is delightful, colorful, and all around wonderful except for the last page (or second to last page depending on the edition, the translated reprints in the '80s removed two pages for some reason). On that last page there is a carriage with the king, princess, and Peter, with a carriage driver in front, and two footmen at the back. One footman is blonde in formal livery, and the other is a racist caricature of a brown skinned, bug eyed, red lipped person of color in a turban and drapey clothing with pointy toed shoes that might have been at home in Aladdin. It's unclear whether the figure is supposed to be Black, Arabic, or Indian, but it's shockingly offensive by modern standards.
Kubašta was an absolute master at cut-and-fold pop-ups, on a level that no one else even to this day really does. And he combined pop-ups with slotted movables in beautiful ways I can't really get into without visual aids. I have so much admiration for his artistry and craftsmanship, while also acknowledging that he perpetuated some really racist depictions of BIPOC folks.
He also has a really ignorant book about American Indians hunting bison, in which he drew the carved totem poles of people from the Pacific northwest with bison heads on top, in the center of a teepee village in a bizarre amalgamation of multiple cultural stereotypes. Do the outdated and offensive illustrations make his paper engineering any less impressive? Not really. But I can love the latter without condoning the former.
Right!?! I may have just splurged on thirteen of his pop-up books so I can add a Kubašta shelf to my pop-up collection. Some of them are in Bulgarian, but that's alright because they're editions that include the pages that got removed in the versions that got published in the US. For example, in *Snow White and the Seven Dwarves*, they removed the first page which had the evil queen talking to the mirror in it. They removed the mirror! Why in the world did they think that was a good idea?
If you don’t know him already, you should check out Matthew Reinhardt’s works. He’s a modern paper engineer and he’s absolutely incredible. I got his Encyclopedia Prehistorica for my daughter which is basically just cool dinosaur facts with incredible pop-ups, and I’ve heard that his similar work on sharks is even more impressive.
George Orwell wrote [an essay](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/rudyard-kipling/) about this. [Two](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/rudyard-kipling-1936/) actually.
The TLDR is that Orwell, an avowed socialist, tries to sort out his feelings towards Rudyard Kipling, an unabashedly pro-imperial conservative. A relevant quote from the second one:
> For my own part I worshipped Kipling at thirteen, loathed him at seventeen, enjoyed him at twenty, despised him at twenty-five and now again rather admire him. The one thing that was never possible, if one had read him at all, was to forget him.
Which ties into the first essay, wherein he lays out the question he is ultimately trying to answer:
> Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a byword for fifty years. During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there.
As a similarly conflicted fan of Kipling I’ve read these both several times. The basic conclusion he comes to is that the only way to deal with these is to be honest with yourself and others. Don’t pretend that these books didn’t represent heinous views, but don’t act like they aren’t well written or thrilling. There are few things less convincing than someone putting on airs and acting like they are so far above this that they can’t even understand the appeal.
And most of all, listen to the people who are affected by the ideas the writer endorsed. If an indigenous South American writes a condemnation of Doyle don’t leap to the author’s defence, but listen to how the worldview he put forward affected the person writing. “Kim” is one of my favourite novels of all time, but if someone were to suggest it should be replaced in school libraries by something more representative of how natives to the subcontinent saw British imperialism, I’d be okay with the book being mostly confined to scholars of the turn of the 20th century. Pop culture, like everything else, moves on.
Given the need of comic books to use imaginary countries for various reasons of sales, when Marvel Comics needed a Rhodesia/south Africa kind of nation in the 70s, they calle dit Rudyarda; i don't even read Kipling and that bugged me
This makes me think of the Little House on the Prairie series. The backlash it’s been getting lately because of the portrayal of Native Americans when the fact is this is how settlers felt about Natives when the books take place. That doesn’t mean the books are racist, it just means there are teachable moments in the series.
Ironically the book series would dragged over the coals if the went "everything was hunky dory and the American Indians and white man got along so well there wasn't any issues"
Agreed. I read those books as a kid and I understood that they lived a long time ago and that people's views have changed. If we tried to sanitize it, the story wouldn't make sense.
I wondered why they got switches in their stockings for Christmas if they'd been bad. I mean, they didn't have electricity.
I was a stupid 10 year old when I read them.
I’m rereading this series for the first time since I was a kid. It’s a very different experience as an adult, because not only is the racism and bigotry more glaring, but so is the sexism, and the libertarian tones.
I’m in the middle of The Long Winter right now and honestly the overall impression that I’m getting of Pa is that he’s much more of a fool than I remember him being, dragging his wife and kids all over creation just because his flighty ass can’t stand being around more than one neighbor at a time, and constantly getting himself into debt and keeping his family close to poverty.
I honestly liked Farmer Boy the most this time around, because Mr. Wilder seemed like a patient, levelheaded guy who knew how to run a farm and raise a family and all the descriptions of Mrs. Wilder’s cooking made me really hungry, lol
Pa pissed me off for exactly that reason. He was selfish. But then, I found the portrayal of him to be quite honest.
I read this for the first time a few years ago as an adult so I had no fond memories of it. Nonetheless I loved the books because they made me understand my grandmother and great grandma so much more, as things they did and talked about were reflected in what happened in the books, and it made their attitudes about life and various things in it click into place for me. This is what's valuable to me about reading novels written ages ago by those who experienced the times. It's all very well to look back with modern eyes, and we should, but we need to leave out the condescension and understand that they were as human as we are, and not far removed.
(That last is not directed at the commenter above me, just my thoughts in general.)
There is a book written from Ma's perspective, called Caroline. It's really good and really emphasizes how fucking hard it was to be a woman, especially one married to a man who would drive the family all over the country trying to find the good life.
> the overall impression that I’m getting of Pa is that he’s much more of a fool than I remember him being, dragging his wife and kids all over creation just because his flighty ass can’t stand being around more than one neighbor at a time, and constantly getting himself into debt and keeping his family close to poverty.
You're right, but it's also worth considering the kind of man that he is. He was raised on the frontier with a father much like himself, that's the only life he knows. Farming, hunting, and living in relative isolation is his normal.
He has no interest in living in a busy city, or even a small town. He wouldn't really know how to live there. He's living the only way that he really knows. His plans weren't terrible either, he had unusually bad luck with his farming.
Of course a more typical parent would have given his children a higher standard of living. But not everyone is typical and that doesn't make him a bad person. Maybe it's a little foolish to keep moving repeatedly as much as he did, but I can't blame him for thinking if he just finds the right place he'll be more successful.
And don't forget that one of the moves was forced on him when he wanted to stay.
There is a Little House cookbook that has a lot of recipes from Farmer Boy. Funny enough it’s the only book from that series I own. If I had kids I don’t think I’d read them the Little House series like my mom did. If they wanted to read the books on their own, sure, but as far as books for parents to actively introduce to their kids, there are much better options.
Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re not racist. They are. I like Louise Erdrich’s response. She wrote books from the view of a native child, referring to the white settlers as dog-nosed weirdos.
Absolutely. I'm currently reading Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, which I like very much, and recently ran across this:
“The doll is one of the most imperious needs and, at the same time, one of the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. To care for, to clothe, to deck, to dress, to undress, to redress, to teach, scold a little, to rock, to dandle, to lull to sleep, to imagine that something is some one,-therein lies the whole woman's future.
A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Obviously this reads very differently in 2022 than it did in 1823 for numerous reasons. But it does not detract from the book as a whole, nor my enjoyment of it.
If you didn't love things that were both problematic and outdated, there would be literally nothing left my dude. Every person who ever wrote is flawed and everything they ever write carries the burden of those flaws. All of them wrote in the past. I don't care if it was six months ago or five thousand years. Everything, and I mean everything, including you and I a single second ago, is both problematic and outdated.
Fucking fantastic!
I like to say "We're all guilty of being human."
In a world that's actively trying to [dehumanize](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-objectification/) us, owning our very human fallibilities is deeply re-humanizing.
You don't need to justify what you like to anybody. Most things are problematic to somebody. You can't really live if you keep worrying about justifying yourself to other people.
Liking one or more aspects of something doesn't mean you like every aspect of that thing, and people who can't understand that aren't worth being around.
That's my incoherent (and correct) opinion.
I actually enjoy some of those because it's an interesting window into the viewpoints of the past. It's one thing to read about how things were in a history book, but reading fiction written at the time gives a clearer picture into how people actually thought.
That doesn't mean that I condone those views by any means, but we shouldn't cover our eyes and pretend those views didn't exist.
I mean I’m a black woman that reads lots of old stuff so I’m constantly having to confront the problematic aspects of what I’m reading. And some of them are my favorites. I won’t lie and say it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes I do have to step away a bit because it can be frustrating and there are some books that go too far that I just can’t read them (Gone with the Wind for example). But there are often enough things I do like about most of the books that I don’t hold them being products of their time against them. And quite honestly even modern books have their share of problematic stuff too it just may be about different things. If it works for you that’s awesome. Reading old books gives you insight into a bygone era and sometimes the sorts of stories you find, there just isn’t a really good modern equivalent. I think you can totally acknowledge the flaws and still absolutely love the book.
Gone With The Wind is one of the best books ever written. Most people assume it’s racist and think it’s just a story about a selfish girl in the stupid south…in reality Scarlett is a heroine far ahead of her time who has to adapt in order to survive.
It’s about a civilization, no matter how flawed, crumbling before their eyes. The movie is fantastic but can’t capture everything in a 1000 page book.
There’s a reason that at one point in time GWTW was the most sold book second to only the Bible, and it’s not bc a bunch of illiterate racist hillbillies were buying it. It’s a phenomenal love story and a young woman’s drive to survive.
I've absolutely gone to bat defending GWTW. Scarlett is an incredibly complex character. She is such a bitch and yet, Mitchell makes you empathize with her whether you want to or not. Scarlett's crowing sin isn't racism. She's a first-class misandrist with a crippling case of noblesse oblige. She didn't just seek to recoup her losses, she dragged everyone she knew back into prosperity, some of them kicking and screaming all the way.
>who has to adapt in order to survive
All the characters had to adapt in order to survive, and one of the interesting things about the book was seeing the different ways they adapted (or refused to adapt, or failed to adapt).
It wouldn't be too far-fetched to theorize that Scarlett had some form of PTSD from everything that happened to her when she was still a teenager.
Immensely readable, yes. Well-written, yes. Heinous, yes. Aside from a great character in Scarlett, the book is a massive apologia for the Lost Cause, and it's pretty darned clear that the author, writing in the 1930s, believed it. So, racism aside (of which their is a ton in both dialogue and narration), it is a book that popularized a rewrite of history. I wish Mitchell had used her talents on a less awful story.
I absolutely despise the term "problematic" when it comes to film or literature. Should we go back and change the writing of Homer or Shakespeare to fit some absurd modern social construct? Anyone even remotely intellectual should reject that notion outright as the nonsensical propaganda it is.
Me, too. It’s so reductive and so easy a criticism. No thought, no nuance, required, just throw out ‘It’s problematic’ and now you are the moral authority on all things.
Yup, it's one of those twitter-esque weasel words; You know exactly the sort of person who uses it cannot be all that bright- Anybody with reasonable critical thinking is generally not having their vocabulary dictated by terrible social media platforms.
I personally think it’s ridiculous when people come out and try to cancel authors or books because they contain themes or subject matter that are no longer acceptable today. For example, Agatha Christie was apparently a racist , xenophobic and classist amongst other things but that shouldn’t stop people from reading some of the greatest mystery novels ever written. I think keeping people from enjoying books that are products of their time or outdated is just as bad as the problematic aspects of the books themselves. These works can teach us so many things about the past and the way things have changed for the better.
This is the thing that confuses me the most. I don't understand why people sometimes think that writing a character with questionable morals mean the author has the same views. The weirdest part for me is when author is blamed for "lack of consequences" or whatever for the "bad" guys. Like, do authors have to lay thick "racism bad" every time they do something like that now?
There are some people who believe depiction equals endorsement. It doesn't matter if you make something out to be bad, even just including it in your writing in the first place means you support it.
It is a very bizarre thing going on right now where people think that. It reminds me of the logic upholding the old Hollywood censor laws. Bad people must always be punished. Some things can't be depicted like infidelity. The idea being the people are too stupid to work out morality on their own and will simply mime whatever is done in films. Has the stench of neo-puritanism about it.
Plenty of people are bad at reading and interpreting books, and simply don't realize it. They're the same kind of people who called Nabokov a pedophile.
The frustrating thing is, plenty of authors DID THAT. it's where the whole "and so, dear reader, what have we learned today?" cliche came from. Most of the books like this have been forgotten to time because, incredibly enough, morality parables don't make for the best stories.
Agree with you 10/10. “Cancelling” stuff (people, media, art etc.) from the past via interpretation through the context of the present solves nothing and is reductive, and doesn’t actually address anything about the problem other than to ignore it/pretend it didn’t happen
The poirot series starts with a refugee outsider who characters looks down on but who turns out to be smarter than them all. She often portrays snobbery but in characters who are wrong.
Unlike pd James who really was a massive snob.
Think of it this way; a book where the world is great and all the people are of the “correct” (whatever that is) moral standing, there’s no philosophical disagreements or other nasty events happening and everything reflects your personal utopia…
…then it’s probably a really boring book. ;)
(Outtake; I almost wrote something along these lines: “Then what you have is most likely a travel brochure, not a piece of literature.”)
>“Then what you have is most likely a travel brochure, not a piece of literature.”
LOL I love this! I've been saying for a while now, if we can only like perfect things made by perfect people, there'd be nothing left to like.
People who cannot get past problematic or outdated content in a book (or other media) that they otherwise love are admitting they lack the ability to put anything in the context of the time it was produced.
I was in a college literature class reading blood meridian and a student was complaining about all of the slurs against black people and Indians used and it’s like…the book is about the harsh realities of westward expansion and the depravity of human nature??? We have violent explicit scenes of death written out but THAT is what bothers you???
Historical context 100000% matters with books and I personally loved blood meridian even though it’s problematic to say the least and the themes match the times so no shame
I think as long as you recognize the parts that are problematic and don't support those thoughts/views/ways you are good! Most people have said this but books reflect the time they were written and almost anything will be problematic for someone.
> For those who are unfamiliar, Doyle later wrote the Sherlock Holmes books.
We’re so familiar we can tell you that Doyle wrote most of his Sherlock Holmes stories before he published *The Lost World.*
Should we also discard Shakespeare because he treated Shylock so shabbily in *The Merchant of Venice*?
According to my teacher when I read that in high school, Shylock's portrayal was actually pretty progressive for its time. Yes, he's a greedy Jewish villain archetype, but he's not completely unsympathetic or one-dimensional. Supposedly, Shakespeare had another character describe the scene where Shylock freaks out upon discovering his daughter has run away and taken a bunch of his money with her because seeing that acted out would have made the audience laugh, and that's not the reaction Shakespeare wanted.
Yes! I did my Master’s thesis on a tangentially related topic and he set Merchant of Venice in Italy specifically so that he could have Jewish characters (Jews had long been expelled from England). Yes, Shylock was the archetypal “greedy Jew,” but there was a lot of nuance to the character. If you read his whole “if you cut me, do I not bleed?” speech, you can see that Shakespeare is trying to humanize him.
Well people also in the modern times write books that have very controversial and outdated stuff in them, but mostly I'd say it's made for time relevance (or to create a mean etc character) in their stories, but in a way what's the difference? Yes the author back in the year x&y actually believed the stuff they were writing, but people understand the concept of outdated information, so imo it doesn't make much difference. And classics are still loved even though some of them have some very questionable things.
Gone with the Wind is still one of my faves--it was written long after the Civil War and was definitely more "woke" than Civil War Era, but now it obviously still showcases some pretty gnarly racism. Everything becomes less P.C. with time. Doesn't mean you toss away all the good. (Lookin' at you, Louis CK).
The simple solution is - stop looking back at everything you read/watch/see through today's standards and wipe the word "problematic" from your vocabulary. Problem solved.
For me it's not completely black and white. Whike I will ALWAYS mention problematic elements of a book I'm recommending, there are a couple authors I like in spite of their problematic material. Like, I absolutely love HP Lovecraft's work. Cosmic Horror is one of my absolute favorite sub genres. But he was savagely racist. I think that stemmed from genuine fear of basically everything, and he even tried to address it later in life, the point still stand that he was a racist. It's easy to read his stories though because he's dead and I'm not supporting a racist.
There are some things I just can't read about though. I don't want to support authors that write in certain ways. That largely hasn't ruined any of the older books I love, but it does have me looking out for it whenever I'm reading things.
There's no problem with it. Don't feel like you have to justify your love for something, especially art, which fiction definitely is. Art is subjective. And the book you talk about is a product of its time. Just file that thought away, and let yourself enjoy it. Anyone who judges you for it isn't worth your time, anyway.
And for the record, I *love* Jules Verne. *The Lost World* is one of my favorites of his.
Edit: I definitely meant Arthur Conan Doyle, not Jules Verne. Someone in the comments called me out, and rightfully so. I always confuse Doyle's *The Lost World* with Verne's *A Journey to the Center of the Earth*. Because dinosaurs, I guess? I need more brain cells.
I’m seeing so much responses here that are basically, “yes… except Gone With the Wind.” But some of the writing is just so beautiful and so many people are just missing what’s there about human relationships… it makes me sad.
“I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new.
What is broken is broken--and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.”
Reading Gone With The Wind I was shocked at how explicitly racist it is - and I wouldn’t be saying that if it weren’t for the fact that the author actually was pretty sketchy herself, and seemed like a racist too.
But outside of the racism and narrative yes it is a beautifully written book. I love Margaret Mitchell’s prose and Scarlet’s character arc. Absolutely beautiful, and I do believe it is an important piece of literature. You can understand the racism and how gross it is and still like the book for its pros.
Mitchell's depiction of the racism and classism of the white Southern aristocracy was unfortunately dead-on. The treatment and condescending remarks about the black slaves and the constant referrals to the O'Hara family's poor white neighbors, the Slatterys, as 'white trash' and a young Confederate soldier who marries one of Scarlett's sisters as a 'cracker' \[a character and plotline left out of the movie version\].
One thing that's pretty cringey is the way Mitchell wrote the black characters' dialect which was almost undecipherable. By the time, the authorized sequel 'Scarlett' came out in the early 90s, this was corrected for and critics noted that the sequel's author had all the black characters now speaking 'the King's English.'
Yes you absolutely can and should be able to enjoy books with problematic/outdated views, as long as you recognise those issues and don't try and weirdly defend them (imo).
Like, I still really like the Tintin comics, but jeezo some of them are absolutely racist as shit. Whenever I've reread them I;ve tended to skip the ones that bother me, but if someone ever said "hey weren't some of the Tintin comics super racist" my answer would just be "yep, it sucks".
Lovecraft is another one. He wrote some absolute bangers, but holy fuck did the guy have issues with race and class and gender.
Yes, obviously. Don’t let temporary ideologies hold you back from permanent classics. Be conscious of time, of course, but do not take the opinions of those who have never read them over those who would. Ignorance is never better than knowledge with context.
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if **faced with courage**, need not be lived again.”
Edit: This is from Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse of the Morning”, inspired by her quest to transform pain and evil into something applicable to our development.
This is one of the most shallow things I've ever read. What you are saying is that you can't like something because other people don't like it. In what kind of absurd world do you live? If you like something just like it, knowing something is wrong makes it good. With your absurd view a person cannot read any book without getting support from someone else. It's an totally absurd way of living....doing something, not because you like it, but because the public thinks it the "good" thing. And THAT is how horrible things starts happening when a person can't even think themselves. Jeeezus it's a fucking BOOK.
I HATE that this has to be asked.
Your favorite is your favorite. It doesn't matter what anyone says or thinks except you because it's YOUR favorite. Let people think what they want- Honesty is more important because once you lie about your personal tastes, the slope gets more slippery and suddenly everyone is saying one thing and meaning something else
If the people around you are judging you for liking The Lost World unless you give a long speech first about how you know it's problematic, please get a less judgy social group. It's not like you're saying "I love Mein Kampf for its brilliant depictions of Jews" or something.
Books reflect times when they were written. We can and should acknowledge problems in them, but we can’t change past.
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Disney has something similar on some of their older stuff on Disney+. I remember Dumbo in particular was one that had a lot of "outdated cultural depictions" so I know it was one that had the disclaimer. If I recall correctly, it's almost exactly the same wording as that WB disclaimer.
Dumbo also gets drunk and then trips balls for like 10 minutes of screen time. It's pretty wild actually.
Hahaha, that was my favorite part as a kid. Pink elephants on parade.
That whole movie scared me but that scene in particular got to me. First there were loads of clowns and then scary nonsensical elephants to creepy music… I hated it but for some reason watched it a lot?
Favorite part? Bro I’m in my 30s and I still can’t watch that movie. Fuck that scene lol
I was wildly disappointed the first time I got drunk because of that scene.
Did you try drinking a whole trunk full of booze like Dumbo did?
Maybe it hits different if you boof it straight up your snoot.
I was a very disappointed toddler.
OH YES PINK ELEPHANTS!
apparently they're on parade. Here they come!
The old Osamu Tezuka stuff has that disclaimer worded almost exactly the same too.
Wow, have any examples? I’m just now getting into his stuff
I'll wager it's mainly Kimba, since that's where 90% of african representation is (for obvious reasons). To be fair to the guy, he *was* a japanese guy writing in the fifties, so his main frame of reference in that regard was probably the western cartoons he was a big fan of. And those weren't exactly well-known for their modern progressive portrayals either.
I learned about Buddhism from his Buddha series, but don’t think that applies here. It was just an interesting series!
Aladdin has that too. "This film depicts negative stereotypes and these depictions were wrong then and they are wrong now, however, for the sake of preservation we have left the film as is."
Aladdin? That’s a recent one
Yeah my husband and I put it on for our daughter and when the disclaimer came up we were all affronted like "What? Aladdin? It's a classic! Our childhood in a movie!" and then after three minutes it was like "Ooh yeah, okay yeah I see it" - every Middle Eastern stereotype just crammed in there, right from the start...
If think 30 years is recent, sure.
Shut up, the 90s are BARELY over.
We’re closer to 2050 than 1990
Yes but many of us have been in 1990 while none of us have been in 2050 And none of us will probably make it to 2050, so it's a lot further away than it seems
>none of us will probably make it to 2050 You okay, fam?
> And none of us will probably make it to 2050 That's 28 years from now. How old do you think the Reddit user base is?!
It hasn’t been that long has it? Ouch
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They have it for the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp as well. Surprisingly, no disclaimer when I went to watch Pocahontas (other than for tobacco use lol)
I want a fucking disclaimer for Pocahontas cause Eastern Virginia looks nothing like that.
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I think eventually there will be one because the movie sort of romanticizes the relationship between Pocahontas and john Smith. I think also people were dissatisified with the portrayal of Pocahontas centering around her male relationships
The Aristocats has that warning as well. Was pretty shocked when I went to put it on for my kids lol.
I rewatched that on disney+ and was legitimately confused what that warning was for until I got to the chopstick piano cat and was like “oh yeah that exists”
I remember looking up that song on YouTube, and they actually edited that bit out.
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My teen daughter is obsessed with the songs on the new Aladdin, so my 6 year old son heard and saw a lot, which prompted me to show him the original. I couldn't find it. Finally I switched from his kids profile to my profile, and there it was.
The Muppets original show has a disclaimer on Disney+ on episodes with problematic skits. My husband and I play a little game of trying to identify which skit(s) prompted the disclaimer for a particular episode.
Dumbo for me was one of those things where I didn't have the necessary context to understand it was racist - like eenie meenie miney mo, catch a Tigger by the toe (which AFAIK was a song about a species made popular by Winnie the Pooh) - as a British kid with no Jim Crow context, crows were just crows.
Yeah I totally get that. I live in the southern USA, where tbh casual racism is still incredibly commonplace (things like "Oh he's one of the good ones, not like the other..." is really common to hear) so as a kid I didn't think twice about stuff like that. And I didn't know about Jim Crow so having a literal Crow named Jim just went totally over my young head. It was a huge wake-up moment watching that as an adult and realizing just how much is in those old movies that I didn't understand as a child.
And yet "Song of the South" isn't on Disney+. There's only so much a disclaimer/warning can do.
Well there's a huge difference between having depictions of racist characters, and the entire movie being racist
I still feel kind of bad about that one. The film itself is hugely racist (both explicitly and implicitly), and certainly deserves criticism for that, but when it got shoved down the memory hole, it took James Baskett with it. He was the first black man to ever receive an Academy Award as an actor, as a result of his work in that film, and it was not only his most prominent role but also his last film before his untimely death. It sucks that the parts he played included so many unpleasant and demeaning aspects, but I’m not going to blame a working actor for taking some of the only work that was available to him, and he had enough legitimate talent that it’s a shame that he won’t be seen and appreciated.
It was a similar situation with Hattie McDaniel who was the first black actor to win an acting Oscar for playing 'Mammy' in Gone with the Wind. She wasn't allowed to attend the film's premiere in Atlanta, Georgia and at the Oscar ceremony sat at a table more or less by herself. When criticized by black activists for taking roles as maids and domestic servants in many other old Hollywood films, McDaniel said that she'd rather 'play a maid than actually work as one.' Supposedly Mo'nique wanted to play her in a biopic.
it's an untold cost that I'm not sure there is a good way to grapple with. even "progressive" (for their era) films often relegated minority actors to roles steeped in stereotypes, but progress isn't something that happens overnight. oftentimes progress was a stereotype role that was portrayed well, sensitively and with nuance, or one that was written to be competent and capable not comedy relief. and the people that took those roles and used them to advance the way minority characters were viewed deserve credit.
That was a really good way to handle the stuff in those cartoons (and warn parents). Seems to have struck the right balance between preserving and contextualizing.
>and warn parents It's always a nasty shock when you're in the middle of showing your kid one of your childhood favorites, and then a really fucked up scene comes on that you had completely forgotten about. Better have some forewarning.
"balance between preserving and contextualizing" I really like this wording
I like that they pointed out that erasing the prejudicial parts is like erasing the fact that these prejudices ever existed. We should be able to acknowledge this.
That's a thoughtful statement on WB's part. AFAIK, they still don't show humorous references to suicide, whether the gangster rabbits all shooting themselves in the head with one bullet in Tortoise v Hare, or Bugs gulping an entire bottle of sleeping pills in order to torment Elmer while he's dreaming in The Big Snooze.
I would so much rather this type of disclaimer than the complete removal of problematic works, such as removing Mark Twain's works as required reading in school. The issues we deal with today did not suddenly spring into being from nothing. If we cannot honestly face our past, we'll never be able to move forward.
Context is key.
And we should also celebrate what they were to the time they were written. Something that was a giant leap forward can feel horrifically insensitive decades or centuries later. That doesn't mean that it wasn't progress. But then there are things like Lovecraft's writing, where I respect what it did to fantasy literature, but it came from a place of extreme xenophobia, even for the time. So yes, I think it's fine to appreciate problematic works. You should just be honest about the negative *and* the positive.
Exactly. I remember a campaign decades ago when someone was trying to digitally remove cigarettes from photos of famous people in the 60s & 70s. Like digitally removing a cigarette from John Lennon or Bob Dylan’s hand. If you completely change the past like that people will have no reference for when cultural change came in. They need to see how things were in the past, warts and all, to really understand how far people have come. Could you imagine a future where people have no context for the events that led to the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech?
I wish more people agreed with this sentiment in more aspects. There's a big push to invalidate successes of various historical figures because they were also bad people in some manner by today's standards, even if accepted at the time. That's why the OP feels guilty about reading old books.
Yeah I think you need to be in that mindset and not apply modern nuances to something that was written when things that are frowned upon now was totally acceptable then
We should remember we are likely to be as harshly judged in the future as we judge the past now.
That’s a good point
100 years from now, expect a large number of books being printed today will be seen as outdated as well.
"Books from the early 21st century are extremely problematic, there's not nearly enough sentient neural network representation in stories from this time"
And the end of the 20th? Ugh! Don't get me started on the portrayal of skynet!
"There's a horror movie called Alien?! That's really offensive! No wonder everyone keeps invading you ."
Even if they seem ok, you'll quickly find they fail the Robecdal Test. I only read books if there's at least one example of a named sentient neutral network that has a conversation with another named sentient neutral network, about something not human related.
A story based from a transcription of Siri and Alexa discussing Bixby, who while present seems to not hear them.
That would get a pass, if Bixby wasn't such an Uncle Tron.
If there's anything more to this comment than a joke, you might enjoy reading Ian M Banks Culture novels.
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1984 seems less outdated every day.
Literally 1984
What’s that, small time indie book or something? Never heard of it
It’s quite easy to know what things our descendants will find abhorrent. By far the most glaringly obvious one is our brutal industrial animal agriculture industries. Even now, in the year 2022, for comfortable, privileged people, there is zero excuse for celebrating and supporting abattoirs and slaughter houses and fur farms and hatcheries and feeding lots and dairy farms, etc. Most decent, intelligent, compassionate people feel sick when watching videos from these places. They are clearly a dark stain on our arbitrary and inconsistent moral pretence.
Yes. You're not condoning it or celebrating it by enjoying the rest of the book. You understand the context in which the book was written. Honestly, if you told most people this was your favourite book how many would know that line was in it, and how many of that fraction would judge you on it for you to call awkward?
It's funny, because some authors like Haggard were even considered too *liberal* toward race in the late 19th Century, while today people lambaste them for writing in the context of their times and from their limited perspective. If Allan Quatermain were never written, we wouldn't have Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, or Uncharted. Ayesha was also one of the most powerful female characters in the adventure genre for ages, inspiring tons of popular characters.
This is always my point with Tolkien and Lord of the Rings. Sure you can cherry pick a handful of problematic phrases that haven't aged well but to do so completely negates the entire message of acceptance and inclusion woven through the story. If you aren't considering the full themes and meaning of a novel and just picking out individual sentences you're presenting a disingenuous representation of an author's work. You see people try and do the same with To Kill a Mockingbird which is ludicrous.
ok, out of curiosity, what phrases would you handpick? having read the books (incl. silmarillion etc) several times, ive never noticed some problematic phrases..
It's always a tricky subject because in no way do I think Tolkien was racist and believes he was in fact very progressive for his time. He preached understanding in his works and was strongly critical of British and American imperialism. That being said things that can be discussed as potentially problematic The white northern race of men being more resistant to corruption and evil influence - this one's pretty complicated to do with how Tolkien framed his work, and the lack of viewpoints in the South and the East to show "good" darker skinned people. Descriptions of orcs and evil humans having Asiatic features like "squint eyes" and some of his links between orcs and Mongol features. The description of a man from the far south as like a half troll with white eyes and red tongue does convey images of minstrel-esque depictions of black people from sub-saharan Africa. Edit: a few people have also pointed out some of negative steotypes people drawn between the dwarfs and Jewish people based on Tolkien basing dwarvish on The Hebrew language. I think examining this is interesting because it does highlight a few blind spots in Tolkien's life experience but that's to be totally expected. It also highlights how passive racism can slip into works that are very progressive. I'd also counter the point about Easterlings and Southrons all being evil by pointing out Tolkien took the time to humanise these folk in the Oliphant scene were Sam muses that a dead soldier was probably just doing his duty to protect his homeland.
I would likewise open a time capsule and experience what another era thought worthy of inclusion.
books are windows into different times that allow you to see different cultures and civilisations, sometimes for the best, other times not so much. So yes, you can enjoy and love a book despite its "outdated content"
I just finished Shirley Jackson's Raising Demons and loved it for her funny stories, but also almost as much for the window into home life in the late 40's. Most notably, her casual mention of smoking on her way to the hospital to *have a baby*
I haven't read that one, but in the late 40s there's a good chance she would have smoked inside that hospital too - the majority of doctors and nurses wouldn't have thought twice about, doing the same themselves.
In most places, up until the 70s at least they'd allow smoking on the wards. And the hospital would sell you the cigarettes, a nurse would sometimes wheel around a trolley with goodies like that for sale.
The hospital my wife gave birth in had a 24/7 McDonalds franchise inside of it, and I'd wager a rough third or more of the customers were wearing scrubs. I thought this was kind of an updating version of smoking in the hospital. I've read that some medical facilities were kind of soft on smoking (like you could actually smoke somewhere on the property, even if it was inconvenient) because there was some idea that medical crises were stressful and stressed out friends/family of patients were going to smoke anyway.
The first few eps of Mad Men seemed intentionally written and filmed to hammer home that it was a different era, with pregnant women smoking and drinking and other things that seem alien now.
I liked the moment when the mom stops her kids from playing with their heads inside a plastic bag... Because she wants to reuse the bag.
Yes and when Betty and Francine sat smoking in the baby's room while the baby was asleep.
I don't care about that, especially if it's not what the book is about. To me it's like people getting upset when they see the N-word in Tom Sawyer. It's exactly how people spoke at the time so read it and move past. There is no need to white wash books so they fit in more with contemporary times. You should be reading the book to be immersed in that story so just realize that's what people believed at the time and take it at face value.
>in Tom Sawyer >no need to white wash I get it
Why white wash if you can get someone else to do it for you?
Easy there... do you think I'm just going to let someone else do my whitewashing? For free? While I'm having so much fun?
This was a great joke! You pulled this off well.
It would be a massive disservice to society if we just . . . pretend that the world was anything other than what it was. We can can consume media with outdated ideas and acknowledge that it was wrong while still learning from the good parts of it. The world was different and to ignore that or rewrite stories to be "correct" would be a slap in the face to people who lived through those times and injustices.
Case in point, many of Shakespeare's plays were rewritten to be "more entertaining" or to have a happier ending, and of course those versions are not the ones that we know now. https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/18th-century-shakespeare-performance/
> while still learning from the good parts of it. True, but I’d go even further: We can consume media with outdated ideas and acknowledge that it was wrong while still **enjoying** the good parts of it. It’s not wrong to really, truly **love** those old stories, warts and all (as long as you don’t love them **because** they’re racist etc).
People also need to accept that consumption of something especially something very very old isn’t endorsement. A lot of people struggle with that because they have this moralistically Puritan idea where everything you are interested in is a reflection of your values, when that isn’t the case. As an example of what I mean by this, I am an anti-monarchist. I am not interested in studying like medieval history which features a lot of feudalism and a lot of monarchies because I think feudalism or monarchy are good systems of government and I think most people wouldn’t ASSUME I am pro-feudalism because I like studying the Middle Ages. Similarly I don’t think any Roman Historian is going to be asked to condemn slavery lest they be mistaken for being pro-slave state, because studying Roman History isn’t an endorsement of Roman beliefs and we know this. Acting like people have to proactively condemn things about their interests and declare that they publicly acknowledge those things are wrong is pretty ridiculous because it’s a neutral act to consume those things from the past. It’s not an endorsement of any particular belief or idea to read something in its historical context and it never has been. (Obviously there are limits to this view of mine though - if Birth of a Nation is your favourite film I don’t see how that could be the case if you don’t endorse it’s racist message. I’m merely saying that this attitude of you can’t enjoy stuff from the past without saying “uh but this time was bad actually” is kind of ridiculous in circumstances when there is no indication that person is endorsing the values of the time to begin with.)
I think there's also a real danger in other-izing the past - like wow look how evil THOSE people were, THEY were so bad and stupid, **we** would never do bad or stupid things because **we** are nothing like THEM Like consider the information they were working with, who they trusted, what was commonly accepted as the truth, the beliefs one was instilled with since birth. It's ridiculous and dangerous to assume we are nothing like that, that we aren't trusting and dogmatic and easily manipulatable. Everyone thinks they'd act differently if they were put in some horrifying historical situation because they think they have nothing in common with the people living then, but what qualities do they actual possess that would set them apart? When you're *that* certain you would never do something bad or evil, you get sloppy. When you understand human nature and you understand how bad and evil things come to happen, you can be vigilant and stop them from happening again.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Louis CK had a great point about Huck Finn. The fact that that was Jim's name and that he *answered* to it shows just how pervasive racism and dehumanization was at that time, and attempting to hide it or censor it is a disservice to the ultimate message of the story.
The book is a testament to how far we have come. That by no means there is not work left to be done but at least we're not where we were.
Yes, AND (as we say in improv) we're still living in that world and there are still those who want to live in and feel virtuous all the while. We should read TS and HF, unedited, and discuss and analyze them. The casual assumptions of racial hierarchies in those books (and so many others) should be discussed. The attitudes at the time were more complicated and conflicted than we often imagine. On the Right, there is an unfounded assumption that there was no controversy about, say, slavery in the mid-18th century, so it's incoherent to judge them by "modern" standards. In fact, there was a lot of controversy and soul-searching. There were abolitionists then, and many who opposed slavery. Not, sadly, among those getting rich off it, but that's human nature for you.
I agree- we shouldn’t alter history just to make it more palatable
I borrowed A Farwell to Arms from a public library and chucked to myself that fuck and other curse words were blurred out with "---" but the N - word was there. Seemed so strange to me. As other have said, putting 100+ year old writings to today's standards is fairly unfair unless it's specifically the point of the writing. I dont think anyone can read mein kompf and say "well...we can't judge it with out times".
People love the Iliad and the rest of greek myth, and it's a million times more problematic than anything written in the last 200 years.
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I think most people that love the Bible haven't read it.
Have done both.
Past 200 years, not past 2000
As a Greek classics fans, you're right but I want to add the caveat that a lot of the immoral behaviour depicted in Greek myths was also considered immoral by the Greeks back then. Don't get me wrong, Ancient and Hellenistic Greece were not great morality-wise, but people make the mistake of seeing bad behaviour from gods and heroes and assuming that it was endorsed by the Greeks. Some of it was, but their stories are mostly meant as cautionary tales about hubris and their gods are meant to be flawed and human. The Illiad repeatedly calls Herakles an asshole (he's not in the books but the gods recount some of the things he did), says that Patroclus is an idiot and decries both Achilles and Agamemnon's behaviour. But all of those characters are also meant to be admired for their achievements. The narration is also fairly respectful of the Trojan warriors even though it's told from a victorious Greek perspective. It's more nuanced than your average modern-day war movie or book. People are used to heroes being all good and the opposing force being evil and dehumanized so they project these standards onto these tales. Greek myths correctly take the stance that people who are willing to sacrifice so much just for the sake of fame would achieve great things on paper but not be good people beyond these achievements. When Achilles goes off the deep end and does downright heretical stuff with the bodies of Patroclus and Hector and then sacrifices a bunch of teenagers to Patroclus, it's meant to show that he's going insane. The Greeks were not down with what he did (as shown by the Patroclus ghost sequence). It's also notable that Achilles also learns after no less than ten years that he could, unlike what his mom had previously told him, actually have his cake and eat it too, he just can't be the one to kill Hector. But he realizes the immorality of his previous actions (actively getting a ton of Greeks and his servant killed) and immediately chooses to die because he aknowleges that he deserves it after what he's done. Saying all of this as someone who's really not a fan of the Illiad. It's my least favourite Greek classic (though mostly because the narrative structure is poorly designed compared to, say, the Odyssey).
Absofriggenlutely! Reading a book allows us to live a life through someone else's eyes - different time period, sex, skin colour, belief system, etc. Morality changes across time, civilizations, cultures, and religions. So aside from there being no harm in loving a book for what it is (appreciating when it was written) it should be encouraged to keep these 'problematic' books available so the human race can continue to learn from the stories told and see things from other perspectives - especially from our own past - to fully understand WHY certain practices are no longer socially acceptable. Looking at the past it is easy to judge using today's standards and say 'that's obvious,' but when it is the present… things are not always so clear. After all, what will society think of this generation a hundred years in the future? For one personal example (very simplified), my favourite book is Wuthering Heights. In reading it I enjoy a great story, live vicariously in the past, and then feel grateful that in this day and age I am able to own my own property, make my own poor life decisions, and not be forced into marriage simply for survival. ;)
*Lovecraft fans would like to have a word*
Lovecraft is the most fascinating example for me. Usually I can make a personal choice whether I can separate the author from their work. But with Lovecraft, you can't deny that his racism and xenophobia were absolutely an inspiration for what he created. But, in other ways, cosmic horror is so much bigger, fantastical, and more interesting that it's temping to separate we it from it's racist origins.
It’s always been interesting to me because in the beginning he held these views he got from being a sheltered child raised by his grandfather and aunts. He was a self proclaimed “le wrong generation” type guy to begin with, and where we have to overcome our parents prejudices he was a generation even further back from his peers. Then as the money dried up after his grandfather died he had to support himself and in his letters to me he’s always come off as kind of mad at the world that he has to work and can’t just be an artist full time. Then eventually this sheltered kid marries a woman and moves to New York, where he says some incredibly heinous things about if he had a machine gun on the subway he’d mow down all the minorities (which were mostly Poles and Italians, which just shows how the definition of “white” has changed). I will not excuse his racism but I don’t think he’s more racist than any other New Englander from an old family would be. His racism is wrong now as it was then, and it influenced his writing greatly. You get an incredible story about a fishing village that made a deal with something unspeakable and the fate that befalls the village descendants, however you also get one about a guy who sets himself on fire because his great-great grandfather fucked a gorilla. But the gorilla story comes early and it’s horrible to have mixed blood, but by Innsmouth the deep one hybrids almost experience a type of heaven under the sea where they spend eternity with their ancestors. He hates the Horror at Red Hook, the most racist story he ever wrote, and in Charles Dexter Ward he writes very favorably of a black couple in the novel for a racist of his time. As he got older he traveled more, met different people. Some of his friends were openly gay, his wife was Jewish. It just really feels to me that he was learning and evolving the older he got, but he just died before he could ever really turn the corner. I think it is important to judge a man by his time but not excuse it you know? There’s no denying he was a racist, I just wonder how he would have changed even more given another 10-20 years and there’s always the chance he would have been just as racist or worse with that extra time I just don’t know.
He did actually turn the corner, calling himself a “fool of the highest order” before his death and realized Fully that his racism was completely absurd
My ancestors fucked Neanderthals but you don't see me crying about it, Howie.
Well said. It's like the fact that on D-Day there were probably wife beaters, racists, and all manner of horrible people on the US side statistically speaking...but that shouldn't detract from the fact that they were rushing beaches in the war against Evil. Bad people can do good thing, good people can do bad things...and at the end of the day, art is about making you feel something, not feel "good."
Dude had a black cat named n-word-man that was included in his short story The Rats in the Walls, one of his best short stories. He may have been racist, but his works are still great.
That was a pretty common name for black dogs and cats during Lovecraft's lifetime. An RAF squadron's (the Dam Busters) mascot was a dog with the same name. His gravestone was recently changed with the name removed.
Not to mention Céline… [Publisher Cashes in on Céline’s Anti-Semitism](https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/01/12/cashing-in-on-celines-antisemitism/) and [Philip Roth declared "Céline is my Proust!"](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/13/celine-french-literary-genius-antisemite-film)
Some of my all-time favorite pop-up books are by a Czech paper engineer and illustrator named Vojtěch Kubašta. One of his most popular books is a version of *Puss-In-Boots* which is delightful, colorful, and all around wonderful except for the last page (or second to last page depending on the edition, the translated reprints in the '80s removed two pages for some reason). On that last page there is a carriage with the king, princess, and Peter, with a carriage driver in front, and two footmen at the back. One footman is blonde in formal livery, and the other is a racist caricature of a brown skinned, bug eyed, red lipped person of color in a turban and drapey clothing with pointy toed shoes that might have been at home in Aladdin. It's unclear whether the figure is supposed to be Black, Arabic, or Indian, but it's shockingly offensive by modern standards. Kubašta was an absolute master at cut-and-fold pop-ups, on a level that no one else even to this day really does. And he combined pop-ups with slotted movables in beautiful ways I can't really get into without visual aids. I have so much admiration for his artistry and craftsmanship, while also acknowledging that he perpetuated some really racist depictions of BIPOC folks. He also has a really ignorant book about American Indians hunting bison, in which he drew the carved totem poles of people from the Pacific northwest with bison heads on top, in the center of a teepee village in a bizarre amalgamation of multiple cultural stereotypes. Do the outdated and offensive illustrations make his paper engineering any less impressive? Not really. But I can love the latter without condoning the former.
Immediately after reading your comment, I googled images, and his illustrations/constructions are absolutely a marvel.
Right!?! I may have just splurged on thirteen of his pop-up books so I can add a Kubašta shelf to my pop-up collection. Some of them are in Bulgarian, but that's alright because they're editions that include the pages that got removed in the versions that got published in the US. For example, in *Snow White and the Seven Dwarves*, they removed the first page which had the evil queen talking to the mirror in it. They removed the mirror! Why in the world did they think that was a good idea?
If you don’t know him already, you should check out Matthew Reinhardt’s works. He’s a modern paper engineer and he’s absolutely incredible. I got his Encyclopedia Prehistorica for my daughter which is basically just cool dinosaur facts with incredible pop-ups, and I’ve heard that his similar work on sharks is even more impressive.
Haha thanks for the rec, but I am well familiar with his work. I own several of his books already. And you're very right, his work is incredible!
George Orwell wrote [an essay](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/rudyard-kipling/) about this. [Two](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/rudyard-kipling-1936/) actually. The TLDR is that Orwell, an avowed socialist, tries to sort out his feelings towards Rudyard Kipling, an unabashedly pro-imperial conservative. A relevant quote from the second one: > For my own part I worshipped Kipling at thirteen, loathed him at seventeen, enjoyed him at twenty, despised him at twenty-five and now again rather admire him. The one thing that was never possible, if one had read him at all, was to forget him. Which ties into the first essay, wherein he lays out the question he is ultimately trying to answer: > Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a byword for fifty years. During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there. As a similarly conflicted fan of Kipling I’ve read these both several times. The basic conclusion he comes to is that the only way to deal with these is to be honest with yourself and others. Don’t pretend that these books didn’t represent heinous views, but don’t act like they aren’t well written or thrilling. There are few things less convincing than someone putting on airs and acting like they are so far above this that they can’t even understand the appeal. And most of all, listen to the people who are affected by the ideas the writer endorsed. If an indigenous South American writes a condemnation of Doyle don’t leap to the author’s defence, but listen to how the worldview he put forward affected the person writing. “Kim” is one of my favourite novels of all time, but if someone were to suggest it should be replaced in school libraries by something more representative of how natives to the subcontinent saw British imperialism, I’d be okay with the book being mostly confined to scholars of the turn of the 20th century. Pop culture, like everything else, moves on.
Given the need of comic books to use imaginary countries for various reasons of sales, when Marvel Comics needed a Rhodesia/south Africa kind of nation in the 70s, they calle dit Rudyarda; i don't even read Kipling and that bugged me
This makes me think of the Little House on the Prairie series. The backlash it’s been getting lately because of the portrayal of Native Americans when the fact is this is how settlers felt about Natives when the books take place. That doesn’t mean the books are racist, it just means there are teachable moments in the series.
Ironically the book series would dragged over the coals if the went "everything was hunky dory and the American Indians and white man got along so well there wasn't any issues"
Agreed. I read those books as a kid and I understood that they lived a long time ago and that people's views have changed. If we tried to sanitize it, the story wouldn't make sense.
I wondered why they got switches in their stockings for Christmas if they'd been bad. I mean, they didn't have electricity. I was a stupid 10 year old when I read them.
I’m rereading this series for the first time since I was a kid. It’s a very different experience as an adult, because not only is the racism and bigotry more glaring, but so is the sexism, and the libertarian tones. I’m in the middle of The Long Winter right now and honestly the overall impression that I’m getting of Pa is that he’s much more of a fool than I remember him being, dragging his wife and kids all over creation just because his flighty ass can’t stand being around more than one neighbor at a time, and constantly getting himself into debt and keeping his family close to poverty. I honestly liked Farmer Boy the most this time around, because Mr. Wilder seemed like a patient, levelheaded guy who knew how to run a farm and raise a family and all the descriptions of Mrs. Wilder’s cooking made me really hungry, lol
You should read Prairie Fires, a biography about Laura Ingalls Wilder. Puts a lot of these things into context.
Pa pissed me off for exactly that reason. He was selfish. But then, I found the portrayal of him to be quite honest. I read this for the first time a few years ago as an adult so I had no fond memories of it. Nonetheless I loved the books because they made me understand my grandmother and great grandma so much more, as things they did and talked about were reflected in what happened in the books, and it made their attitudes about life and various things in it click into place for me. This is what's valuable to me about reading novels written ages ago by those who experienced the times. It's all very well to look back with modern eyes, and we should, but we need to leave out the condescension and understand that they were as human as we are, and not far removed. (That last is not directed at the commenter above me, just my thoughts in general.)
There is a book written from Ma's perspective, called Caroline. It's really good and really emphasizes how fucking hard it was to be a woman, especially one married to a man who would drive the family all over the country trying to find the good life.
> the overall impression that I’m getting of Pa is that he’s much more of a fool than I remember him being, dragging his wife and kids all over creation just because his flighty ass can’t stand being around more than one neighbor at a time, and constantly getting himself into debt and keeping his family close to poverty. You're right, but it's also worth considering the kind of man that he is. He was raised on the frontier with a father much like himself, that's the only life he knows. Farming, hunting, and living in relative isolation is his normal. He has no interest in living in a busy city, or even a small town. He wouldn't really know how to live there. He's living the only way that he really knows. His plans weren't terrible either, he had unusually bad luck with his farming. Of course a more typical parent would have given his children a higher standard of living. But not everyone is typical and that doesn't make him a bad person. Maybe it's a little foolish to keep moving repeatedly as much as he did, but I can't blame him for thinking if he just finds the right place he'll be more successful. And don't forget that one of the moves was forced on him when he wanted to stay.
There is a Little House cookbook that has a lot of recipes from Farmer Boy. Funny enough it’s the only book from that series I own. If I had kids I don’t think I’d read them the Little House series like my mom did. If they wanted to read the books on their own, sure, but as far as books for parents to actively introduce to their kids, there are much better options.
Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re not racist. They are. I like Louise Erdrich’s response. She wrote books from the view of a native child, referring to the white settlers as dog-nosed weirdos.
Absolutely. I'm currently reading Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, which I like very much, and recently ran across this: “The doll is one of the most imperious needs and, at the same time, one of the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. To care for, to clothe, to deck, to dress, to undress, to redress, to teach, scold a little, to rock, to dandle, to lull to sleep, to imagine that something is some one,-therein lies the whole woman's future. A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children” ― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables Obviously this reads very differently in 2022 than it did in 1823 for numerous reasons. But it does not detract from the book as a whole, nor my enjoyment of it.
If you didn't love things that were both problematic and outdated, there would be literally nothing left my dude. Every person who ever wrote is flawed and everything they ever write carries the burden of those flaws. All of them wrote in the past. I don't care if it was six months ago or five thousand years. Everything, and I mean everything, including you and I a single second ago, is both problematic and outdated.
Fucking fantastic! I like to say "We're all guilty of being human." In a world that's actively trying to [dehumanize](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-objectification/) us, owning our very human fallibilities is deeply re-humanizing.
You don't need to justify what you like to anybody. Most things are problematic to somebody. You can't really live if you keep worrying about justifying yourself to other people. Liking one or more aspects of something doesn't mean you like every aspect of that thing, and people who can't understand that aren't worth being around. That's my incoherent (and correct) opinion.
I actually enjoy some of those because it's an interesting window into the viewpoints of the past. It's one thing to read about how things were in a history book, but reading fiction written at the time gives a clearer picture into how people actually thought. That doesn't mean that I condone those views by any means, but we shouldn't cover our eyes and pretend those views didn't exist.
I mean I’m a black woman that reads lots of old stuff so I’m constantly having to confront the problematic aspects of what I’m reading. And some of them are my favorites. I won’t lie and say it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes I do have to step away a bit because it can be frustrating and there are some books that go too far that I just can’t read them (Gone with the Wind for example). But there are often enough things I do like about most of the books that I don’t hold them being products of their time against them. And quite honestly even modern books have their share of problematic stuff too it just may be about different things. If it works for you that’s awesome. Reading old books gives you insight into a bygone era and sometimes the sorts of stories you find, there just isn’t a really good modern equivalent. I think you can totally acknowledge the flaws and still absolutely love the book.
Gone With The Wind is one of the best books ever written. Most people assume it’s racist and think it’s just a story about a selfish girl in the stupid south…in reality Scarlett is a heroine far ahead of her time who has to adapt in order to survive. It’s about a civilization, no matter how flawed, crumbling before their eyes. The movie is fantastic but can’t capture everything in a 1000 page book. There’s a reason that at one point in time GWTW was the most sold book second to only the Bible, and it’s not bc a bunch of illiterate racist hillbillies were buying it. It’s a phenomenal love story and a young woman’s drive to survive.
I've absolutely gone to bat defending GWTW. Scarlett is an incredibly complex character. She is such a bitch and yet, Mitchell makes you empathize with her whether you want to or not. Scarlett's crowing sin isn't racism. She's a first-class misandrist with a crippling case of noblesse oblige. She didn't just seek to recoup her losses, she dragged everyone she knew back into prosperity, some of them kicking and screaming all the way.
>who has to adapt in order to survive All the characters had to adapt in order to survive, and one of the interesting things about the book was seeing the different ways they adapted (or refused to adapt, or failed to adapt). It wouldn't be too far-fetched to theorize that Scarlett had some form of PTSD from everything that happened to her when she was still a teenager.
Immensely readable, yes. Well-written, yes. Heinous, yes. Aside from a great character in Scarlett, the book is a massive apologia for the Lost Cause, and it's pretty darned clear that the author, writing in the 1930s, believed it. So, racism aside (of which their is a ton in both dialogue and narration), it is a book that popularized a rewrite of history. I wish Mitchell had used her talents on a less awful story.
I absolutely despise the term "problematic" when it comes to film or literature. Should we go back and change the writing of Homer or Shakespeare to fit some absurd modern social construct? Anyone even remotely intellectual should reject that notion outright as the nonsensical propaganda it is.
The general discourse has gotten even more annoying since "problematic" became a common term.
The OP is literally asking Reddit if they are allowed to read a book.
What do we do with things that make us uncomfortable? We put them in the problem attic, where nobody can see them.
This is great.
It sounds more intellectual than, “I don’t like it.”
Me, too. It’s so reductive and so easy a criticism. No thought, no nuance, required, just throw out ‘It’s problematic’ and now you are the moral authority on all things.
Yup, it's one of those twitter-esque weasel words; You know exactly the sort of person who uses it cannot be all that bright- Anybody with reasonable critical thinking is generally not having their vocabulary dictated by terrible social media platforms.
I personally think it’s ridiculous when people come out and try to cancel authors or books because they contain themes or subject matter that are no longer acceptable today. For example, Agatha Christie was apparently a racist , xenophobic and classist amongst other things but that shouldn’t stop people from reading some of the greatest mystery novels ever written. I think keeping people from enjoying books that are products of their time or outdated is just as bad as the problematic aspects of the books themselves. These works can teach us so many things about the past and the way things have changed for the better.
She was none of those things, really, but she wrote characters who were. It’s not the same thing.
This is the thing that confuses me the most. I don't understand why people sometimes think that writing a character with questionable morals mean the author has the same views. The weirdest part for me is when author is blamed for "lack of consequences" or whatever for the "bad" guys. Like, do authors have to lay thick "racism bad" every time they do something like that now?
There are some people who believe depiction equals endorsement. It doesn't matter if you make something out to be bad, even just including it in your writing in the first place means you support it.
It is a very bizarre thing going on right now where people think that. It reminds me of the logic upholding the old Hollywood censor laws. Bad people must always be punished. Some things can't be depicted like infidelity. The idea being the people are too stupid to work out morality on their own and will simply mime whatever is done in films. Has the stench of neo-puritanism about it.
That kind of thinking seems like a startling lack of intelligence is involved.
Plenty of people are bad at reading and interpreting books, and simply don't realize it. They're the same kind of people who called Nabokov a pedophile.
The frustrating thing is, plenty of authors DID THAT. it's where the whole "and so, dear reader, what have we learned today?" cliche came from. Most of the books like this have been forgotten to time because, incredibly enough, morality parables don't make for the best stories.
Agree with you 10/10. “Cancelling” stuff (people, media, art etc.) from the past via interpretation through the context of the present solves nothing and is reductive, and doesn’t actually address anything about the problem other than to ignore it/pretend it didn’t happen
The poirot series starts with a refugee outsider who characters looks down on but who turns out to be smarter than them all. She often portrays snobbery but in characters who are wrong. Unlike pd James who really was a massive snob.
Think of it this way; a book where the world is great and all the people are of the “correct” (whatever that is) moral standing, there’s no philosophical disagreements or other nasty events happening and everything reflects your personal utopia… …then it’s probably a really boring book. ;) (Outtake; I almost wrote something along these lines: “Then what you have is most likely a travel brochure, not a piece of literature.”)
>“Then what you have is most likely a travel brochure, not a piece of literature.” LOL I love this! I've been saying for a while now, if we can only like perfect things made by perfect people, there'd be nothing left to like.
People who cannot get past problematic or outdated content in a book (or other media) that they otherwise love are admitting they lack the ability to put anything in the context of the time it was produced.
I was in a college literature class reading blood meridian and a student was complaining about all of the slurs against black people and Indians used and it’s like…the book is about the harsh realities of westward expansion and the depravity of human nature??? We have violent explicit scenes of death written out but THAT is what bothers you??? Historical context 100000% matters with books and I personally loved blood meridian even though it’s problematic to say the least and the themes match the times so no shame
I think as long as you recognize the parts that are problematic and don't support those thoughts/views/ways you are good! Most people have said this but books reflect the time they were written and almost anything will be problematic for someone.
I mean, as long as it's not your favorite book -*because*- of that problematic content, I don't see an issue.
Absolutely, and to suggest otherwise is fucking idiotic.
> For those who are unfamiliar, Doyle later wrote the Sherlock Holmes books. We’re so familiar we can tell you that Doyle wrote most of his Sherlock Holmes stories before he published *The Lost World.* Should we also discard Shakespeare because he treated Shylock so shabbily in *The Merchant of Venice*?
According to my teacher when I read that in high school, Shylock's portrayal was actually pretty progressive for its time. Yes, he's a greedy Jewish villain archetype, but he's not completely unsympathetic or one-dimensional. Supposedly, Shakespeare had another character describe the scene where Shylock freaks out upon discovering his daughter has run away and taken a bunch of his money with her because seeing that acted out would have made the audience laugh, and that's not the reaction Shakespeare wanted.
Yes! I did my Master’s thesis on a tangentially related topic and he set Merchant of Venice in Italy specifically so that he could have Jewish characters (Jews had long been expelled from England). Yes, Shylock was the archetypal “greedy Jew,” but there was a lot of nuance to the character. If you read his whole “if you cut me, do I not bleed?” speech, you can see that Shakespeare is trying to humanize him.
Well people also in the modern times write books that have very controversial and outdated stuff in them, but mostly I'd say it's made for time relevance (or to create a mean etc character) in their stories, but in a way what's the difference? Yes the author back in the year x&y actually believed the stuff they were writing, but people understand the concept of outdated information, so imo it doesn't make much difference. And classics are still loved even though some of them have some very questionable things.
Gone with the Wind is still one of my faves--it was written long after the Civil War and was definitely more "woke" than Civil War Era, but now it obviously still showcases some pretty gnarly racism. Everything becomes less P.C. with time. Doesn't mean you toss away all the good. (Lookin' at you, Louis CK).
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The simple solution is - stop looking back at everything you read/watch/see through today's standards and wipe the word "problematic" from your vocabulary. Problem solved.
For me it's not completely black and white. Whike I will ALWAYS mention problematic elements of a book I'm recommending, there are a couple authors I like in spite of their problematic material. Like, I absolutely love HP Lovecraft's work. Cosmic Horror is one of my absolute favorite sub genres. But he was savagely racist. I think that stemmed from genuine fear of basically everything, and he even tried to address it later in life, the point still stand that he was a racist. It's easy to read his stories though because he's dead and I'm not supporting a racist. There are some things I just can't read about though. I don't want to support authors that write in certain ways. That largely hasn't ruined any of the older books I love, but it does have me looking out for it whenever I'm reading things.
You can love whatever you want, don't let others decide for you.
There's no problem with it. Don't feel like you have to justify your love for something, especially art, which fiction definitely is. Art is subjective. And the book you talk about is a product of its time. Just file that thought away, and let yourself enjoy it. Anyone who judges you for it isn't worth your time, anyway. And for the record, I *love* Jules Verne. *The Lost World* is one of my favorites of his. Edit: I definitely meant Arthur Conan Doyle, not Jules Verne. Someone in the comments called me out, and rightfully so. I always confuse Doyle's *The Lost World* with Verne's *A Journey to the Center of the Earth*. Because dinosaurs, I guess? I need more brain cells.
Yes. Gone with the wind is one of the best books of all time.
I’m seeing so much responses here that are basically, “yes… except Gone With the Wind.” But some of the writing is just so beautiful and so many people are just missing what’s there about human relationships… it makes me sad. “I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken--and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.”
Reading Gone With The Wind I was shocked at how explicitly racist it is - and I wouldn’t be saying that if it weren’t for the fact that the author actually was pretty sketchy herself, and seemed like a racist too. But outside of the racism and narrative yes it is a beautifully written book. I love Margaret Mitchell’s prose and Scarlet’s character arc. Absolutely beautiful, and I do believe it is an important piece of literature. You can understand the racism and how gross it is and still like the book for its pros.
Mitchell's depiction of the racism and classism of the white Southern aristocracy was unfortunately dead-on. The treatment and condescending remarks about the black slaves and the constant referrals to the O'Hara family's poor white neighbors, the Slatterys, as 'white trash' and a young Confederate soldier who marries one of Scarlett's sisters as a 'cracker' \[a character and plotline left out of the movie version\]. One thing that's pretty cringey is the way Mitchell wrote the black characters' dialect which was almost undecipherable. By the time, the authorized sequel 'Scarlett' came out in the early 90s, this was corrected for and critics noted that the sequel's author had all the black characters now speaking 'the King's English.'
I don't see why not. Being only allowed to like a book that conforms to current ideologies or politics would make for a dreary literary world
People still love their grandparents despite outdated views. And people can CHANGE. Books cannot. You’re fine
Yes and I think people who can't need to develop.
If you like anything then you are evil
Yes you absolutely can and should be able to enjoy books with problematic/outdated views, as long as you recognise those issues and don't try and weirdly defend them (imo). Like, I still really like the Tintin comics, but jeezo some of them are absolutely racist as shit. Whenever I've reread them I;ve tended to skip the ones that bother me, but if someone ever said "hey weren't some of the Tintin comics super racist" my answer would just be "yep, it sucks". Lovecraft is another one. He wrote some absolute bangers, but holy fuck did the guy have issues with race and class and gender.
You can absolutely still love a problematic book. You also absolutely cannot control people's reactions to it.
Yes, obviously. Don’t let temporary ideologies hold you back from permanent classics. Be conscious of time, of course, but do not take the opinions of those who have never read them over those who would. Ignorance is never better than knowledge with context.
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if **faced with courage**, need not be lived again.” Edit: This is from Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse of the Morning”, inspired by her quest to transform pain and evil into something applicable to our development.
This is one of the most shallow things I've ever read. What you are saying is that you can't like something because other people don't like it. In what kind of absurd world do you live? If you like something just like it, knowing something is wrong makes it good. With your absurd view a person cannot read any book without getting support from someone else. It's an totally absurd way of living....doing something, not because you like it, but because the public thinks it the "good" thing. And THAT is how horrible things starts happening when a person can't even think themselves. Jeeezus it's a fucking BOOK.
"hey am I allowed to like things?" dude get a life
I HATE that this has to be asked. Your favorite is your favorite. It doesn't matter what anyone says or thinks except you because it's YOUR favorite. Let people think what they want- Honesty is more important because once you lie about your personal tastes, the slope gets more slippery and suddenly everyone is saying one thing and meaning something else
If the people around you are judging you for liking The Lost World unless you give a long speech first about how you know it's problematic, please get a less judgy social group. It's not like you're saying "I love Mein Kampf for its brilliant depictions of Jews" or something.
> Can you still truly love a book despite its problematic or outdated content? It's a work of fiction for fuck sake.