"Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca..."It's becoming increasingly clear that Ray Bradbury's dystopia is the social justice bully's end game. But I have to believe that most Americans don't want this future. I have to believe that most of us don't want our entertainment sanitized to the point of absolutely uniformity. I have to believe most of us want to keep Blazing Saddles, Tropic Thunder, Gone with the Wind and other older, potentially uncomfortable products of our popular culture available and free of fussy edits.
So what do we do? Honestly, I think we might have to consider being as obnoxious as the Control Left. We need to start actively punishing these media corporations every time they bend the knee to whiners who apparently don't understand the "don't like, don't consume" principle. What should this punishment look like? I don't know. I'm not sure what will be effective. But we may need to become as unyielding and as intolerant as our censorious opponents in order to get our way.
Whatever we do, we must make these people understand that they have no right to decide for the rest of us what we're allowed to watch or read. No. Right. Adults handle things that offend them by discussing the offense and/or walking away -- not by trying to coerce everyone around them to conform to their moral sensibilities. This was true back in the 80's and 90's when it was religious fundamentalists trying to censor our crap, and it's just as true now that the other side is wielding the ban-hammer.
Fahrenheit 451 was a warning, not an instruction manual. We must be militant in defending the freedom of the artist from political persecution of all types. If we fail in this endeavor, we will lose everything in our art that is sincere and genuinely creative.
Recently I was offered a choice between two brands of an item. One's web site had their commitment to "Black Lives Matter" up front, the other, no such statement. Guess which brand I chose?
ReplyDeleteI've started making heavy use of the "unsubscribe" and "report spam" buttons every time I received a corporate political statement on any topic.
ReplyDeleteIt's more like Bradbury and Orwell had a love child. The elements of Farenheit 451 are blended with a heady mix of 1984 and a soupçon of Animal Farm.
ReplyDelete