We’re Gonna Build a Fourth Wall, and Make the Brechtians Pay for It

fourth-wall

By now, you undoubt­ed­ly know what hap­pened when Mike Pence went to see Hamil­ton on Fri­day night. And the brouha­ha that unfold­ed from there, par­tic­u­lar­ly on Twit­ter.

Tweets came and went through­out the week­end. But, if you’re keep­ing score at home, none out­fun­nied this tweet from Jere­my Noel-Tod. We’re suck­ers around here for Brecht­ian humor.

Find us on Twit­ter at @openculture.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Them Watch Us: A His­to­ry of Break­ing the “Fourth Wall” in Film

The Cast of Hamil­ton Sends a Strong Mes­sage to Mike Pence (After the Crowd Jeers Him)

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The Cast of Hamilton Sends a Strong Message to Mike Pence (After the Crowd Jeers Him)

When Mike Pence entered the Richard Rodgers The­atre to see Hamil­ton Fri­day night, the crowd booed him.

When the play end­ed, the cast sent Pence off with a spe­cial mes­sage. Speak­ing for the cast, Bran­don Vic­tor Dixon, the actor who plays Aaron Burr, said this:

You know we have a guest in the audi­ence this evening. Vice Pres­i­dent-elect Pence I see you walk­ing out but I hope you will hear us just a few more moments.

There is noth­ing to boo here ladies and gen­tle­men, we are all shar­ing a sto­ry of love. We have a mes­sage for you sir, and we hope you will hear us out…

Vice Pres­i­dent-elect Mike Pence we wel­come you and we tru­ly thank you for join­ing us here at Hamil­ton, an Amer­i­can Musi­cal.

We, sir, we are the diverse Amer­i­ca who are alarmed and anx­ious that your new admin­is­tra­tion will not pro­tect us, our plan­et, our chil­dren, our par­ents or defend us or uphold our inalien­able rights, sir. But we tru­ly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our Amer­i­can val­ues and to work on behalf of all of us.

We tru­ly thank you for shar­ing this show, this won­der­ful Amer­i­can sto­ry told by a diverse group of men and women of dif­fer­ent col­ors, creeds and ori­en­ta­tions.

Trump and Pence came to office exploit­ing racial, nation­al and eth­nic resent­ments across Amer­i­ca. They’re now putting fig­ures like Steve Ban­non and Jeff Ses­sions (both tar­nished by alle­ga­tions of racism) in posi­tions of pow­er. And we’re seeing hate crimes on the rise. (701  report­ed cas­es since the elec­tion.) It’s no sur­prise that the new gov­ern­ment is get­ting tak­en to task. It’s free speech in action, democ­ra­cy being the some­times rau­cous, in your face thing it can be.

For­tu­nate­ly Pence seems to have a fin­er appre­ci­a­tion of the role dis­sent plays in our coun­try: He has since told The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, “I did hear what was said from the stage, and I can tell you, I was­n’t offend­ed by what was said.” “It was a real joy to be there. When we arrived, we heard a few boos and a few cheers, and I nudged my kids and remind­ed them, ‘That’s what free­dom sounds like.” Kudos to him.

In oth­er culture/education news, Don­ald Trump has agreed to pay $25 mil­lion to set­tle his Trump Uni­ver­si­ty fraud case.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alexan­der Hamil­ton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poet­ry Evening

“Alexan­der Hamil­ton” Per­formed with Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage

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1950 Superman Poster Urged Kids to Defend All Americans, Regardless of Their Race, Religion or National Origin

superman-all-american

It makes sense that Super­man would take a tol­er­ant view of immi­grants and oth­er minori­ties, giv­en that he him­self arrived on Earth as a refugee from the plan­et Kryp­ton.

The Man of Steel may strike you as an unlike­ly mouth­piece for pro­gres­sive ideals, but 1950 found him on a book cov­er, above, engaged in con­ver­sa­tion with a small crowd of most­ly white boys:

“…and remem­ber, boys and girls, your school – like our coun­try – is made up of Amer­i­cans of many dif­fer­ent races, reli­gions and nation­al ori­gins, so … If YOU hear any­body talk against a school­mate or any­one else because of his reli­gion, race or nation­al ori­gin – don’t wait: tell him THAT KIND OF TALK IS UN-AMERICAN. HELP KEEP YOUR SCHOOL ALL-AMERICAN!”

In oth­er words, cit­i­zens must steel them­selves to take action, because you can’t always count on a super­hero to show up and make things right.

The cheap paper jack­et, above, was dis­trib­uted to school chil­dren by the Insti­tute For Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy, an off­shoot of the New York-based Anti-Defama­tion League.

(Per­haps Pres­i­dent Elect was too young to receive a copy. The back of the cov­er includes a grid for fill­ing in one’s class sched­ule and he was but four years old at the time.)

Super­man could not sur­vive Dooms­day, but the Anti-Defama­tion League, plan­et Krp­ty­on to the illus­tra­tion’s orig­i­nal dis­trib­uter, con­tin­ues to uphold the val­ues he pro­motes above.

Jonathan Green­blatt, the ADL’s CEO issued a post-Elec­tion state­ment that reads in part:

Already there have been trou­bling signs of a spike in hate crimes in the days after the elec­tion. As we look ahead, ADL will be vig­i­lant against extrem­ism and relent­less­ly hold the new admin­is­tra­tion account­able. You can expect ADL to be unwa­ver­ing in its com­mit­ment to fight­ing anti-Semi­tism, racism and big­otry.  We will mon­i­tor devel­op­ments and speak out.

And wher­ev­er and when­ev­er Jews, minor­i­ty groups, immi­grants, and oth­ers are mar­gin­al­ized or our civ­il lib­er­ties are threat­ened, ADL vig­or­ous­ly will defend those rights … We will not shrink from the fight ahead regard­less of where it takes us.

In addi­tion to main­tain­ing a data­base of hate sym­bols and a form where cit­i­zens can report Anti-Semit­ic, racist, or big­ot­ed encoun­ters, the ADL has a robust list of edu­ca­tion­al resources for par­ents, teach­ers and youth.

Mean­while, a full col­or ver­sion of the 66-year-old illus­tra­tion has been mak­ing the rounds on social media. Let us con­sid­er it a place­hold­er. Even­tu­al­ly some­one will sure­ly take it back to the draw­ing board to add more girls, chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties, and chil­dren of col­or.

superman-all-american-color

Relat­ed Con­tent:

High School Teacher & Holo­caust Expert Sus­pend­ed for Draw­ing Par­al­lels Between Trump & Hitler’s Rhetoric

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Bat­man Stars in an Unusu­al Car­toon Adap­ta­tion of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

The Orig­i­nal 1940s Super­man Car­toon: Watch 17 Clas­sic Episodes Free Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Watch Dave Chappelle’s Saturday Night Live Monologue: “We’ve Elected an Internet Troll as Our President”

Dave Chap­pelle host­ed SNL last night and gave us the com­ic relief we need­ed. And also a few heart­felt thoughts about what a Trump pres­i­den­cy means for our imper­iled nation. The most poignant part comes at the very end:

You know, before I go, I do want to say one thing, and this is not a joke. But I think it’s impor­tant that I say this, ’cause they’re march­ing up the street right now as we speak.

A few weeks ago I went to the White House for a par­ty. It was the first time I’ve been there in many years and it was very excit­ing. And BET spon­sored the par­ty, so every­one there was black. And it was beau­ti­ful. I walked through the gates — you know, I’m from Wash­ing­ton, so I saw the bus stop, or the cor­ner where the bus stop used to be, where I used to catch the bus to school and dream about nights like tonight.

It was a real­ly, real­ly beau­ti­ful night. At the end of the night every­one went into the West Wing of the White House and it was a huge par­ty. And every­body in there was black — except for Bradley Coop­er, for some rea­son.

And on the walls were pic­tures of all the pres­i­dents, of the past. Now, I’m not sure if this is true, but to my knowl­edge the first black per­son that was offi­cial­ly invit­ed to the White House was Fred­er­ick Dou­glass. They stopped him at the gates. Abra­ham Lin­coln had to walk out him­self and escort Fred­er­ick Dou­glass into the White House, and it didn’t hap­pen again, as far as I know, until Roo­sevelt was pres­i­dent. Roo­sevelt was pres­i­dent, he had a black guy over and got so much flack from the media that he lit­er­al­ly said, “I will nev­er have a n—-r in this house again.”

I thought about that, and I looked at that black room, and saw all those black faces, and Bradley, and I saw how hap­py every­body was. These peo­ple who had been his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised. It made me feel hope­ful and it made me feel proud to be an Amer­i­can and it made me very hap­py about the prospects of our coun­try.

So, in that spir­it, I’m wish­ing Don­ald Trump luck. And I’m going to give him a chance, and we, the his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised, demand that he give us one too. Thank you very much.

You also should­n’t miss Kate McK­in­non’s two-for-one trib­ute to Hillary Clin­ton and Leonard Cohen. What a tal­ent she is.

And for any edu­cat­ed white lib­er­al, this skit will sure­ly hit home:

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chris Rock Reads James Baldwin’s Still Time­ly Let­ter on Race in Amer­i­ca: “We Can Make What Amer­i­ca Must Become”

Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2016 Stand-Up Com­e­dy Rou­tine

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Alec Bald­win Does a Per­fect Don­ald Trump: Watch SNL’s Spoof of the Trump-Clin­ton Debate

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Patti Smith Reads from Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, the Love Letter He Wrote From Prison (1897)

Just last month, the U.K. announced the so-called “Tur­ing Law,” a pol­i­cy U.K.’s jus­tice min­is­ter Sam Gyimah describes as par­don­ing “peo­ple con­vict­ed of his­tor­i­cal sex­u­al offens­es who would be inno­cent of any crime today.” The law is named for Alan Tur­ing, the bril­liant gay com­put­er sci­en­tist whose work on A.I. gave the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence test its name.

Tur­ing was also instru­men­tal in break­ing the Nazi Enig­ma code, and the Min­istry of Justice’s press release iden­ti­fies Tur­ing only as an “Enig­ma code­break­er,” sug­gest­ing that his patri­ot­ic duty may have made him some­thing of an offi­cial mar­tyr; Tur­ing was one thou­sands of men unjust­ly con­vict­ed over many decades. But “does par­don­ing those men unlucky enough to get caught,” asks Jonathan Coop­er, “actu­al­ly address the trau­ma to which the British state sub­ject­ed LGBT peo­ple?”

I couldn’t pos­si­bly say. But the “unlucky ones” who were arrest­ed, con­vict­ed, and impris­oned for crimes of “gross inde­cen­cy” have left often poignant records of their mis­treat­ment, and of the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll it took on them. Tur­ing wrote a very pained let­ter to a friend, Nor­man Rut­ledge, after his con­vic­tion (hear Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch read it here).

Around six­ty years ear­li­er, an even more well-known con­vict, one of the first to be con­vict­ed of “gross inde­cen­cy” laws, Oscar Wilde, left an even more pro­found expres­sion of his emo­tion­al tur­moil. Called De Pro­fundis (from the depths) and addressed to his lover Lord Alfred Dou­glas, the hun­dred-page doc­u­ment, with its lengthy digres­sions and rumi­na­tions, can­not sole­ly be read as a let­ter, although it con­tains a wealth of ten­der and angry expres­sions for Dou­glas.

De Pro­fundis, writes Colm Tóibín, “can­not be read for its accu­rate account of their rela­tion­ship, nor tak­en at its word.” This is in part because Wilde had no oth­er choice but to write a let­ter, or write noth­ing at all. The suc­ces­sion of pris­ons in which he was held between 1895 and 1897 allowed no writ­ing of plays, nov­els, or essays.

Over the last four months of Wilde’s incar­cer­a­tion, he and the gov­er­nor of Read­ing prison came up with a scheme. Since “reg­u­la­tions did not spec­i­fy how long a let­ter should be,” Wilde would be giv­en pen and ink each day and be allowed com­pose cor­re­spon­dence as long as he liked. The let­ter would then be his per­son­al prop­er­ty when he left. Despite its lit­er­ary den­si­ty, the let­ter remains, writes Tóibín, “one of the great­est love let­ters ever writ­ten.”

Read­ing prison has just been opened to the pub­lic for the first time this year. Since July, artists, writ­ers, and per­form­ers have gath­ered with audi­ences inside the prison to cel­e­brate and com­mune with the spir­it of Wilde. Among the events have been read­ings of De Pro­fundis by Tóibín, who read the let­ter in its entire­ly last month, as did Pat­ti Smith.

At the top of the post, you can see an excerpt of Smith’s read­ing. “The edit­ed ver­sion of De Pro­fundis” from which she reads “was the first one to be pub­lished in 1905, in a lim­it­ed edi­tion of 200, five years after Wilde’s death.” In-between clips of her read­ing, there are inter­views with a Read­ing prison care­tak­er and oth­ers, and voice-over nar­ra­tion telling us Wilde’s trag­ic sto­ry of impris­on­ment, as well as the gen­er­al out­lines of those who left no record of their per­se­cu­tion.

Once released, Wilde went right back to writ­ing lit­er­a­ture, begin­ning with the long, vio­lent poem, “The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol.” The video up top comes from The Guardian.

via Vin­tage Anchor

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Oscar Wilde Recite a Sec­tion of The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol (1897)

Oscar Wilde Offers Prac­ti­cal Advice on the Writ­ing Life in a New­ly-Dis­cov­ered Let­ter from 1890

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When Vladimir Nabokov Taught Ruth Bader Ginsburg, His Most Famous Student, To Care Deeply About Writing

There are a few ways to get a glimpse of Vladimir Nabokov as a teacher, a role he occu­pied for almost twen­ty years at Welles­ley and Cor­nell. We can take the “good read­er” quiz he gave to his stu­dents. We can lis­ten to his inter­views on life and lit­er­a­ture, though they won’t give us any sense of spon­tane­ity. The Russ­ian-émi­gré writer insist­ed on care­ful­ly script­ed ques­tions and answers “to ensure a dig­ni­fied beat of the mandarin’s fan.”

We can see also see Nabokov, as played by Christo­pher Plum­mer, teach his sec­ond favorite nov­el, Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis, at a Cor­nell lec­ture above. Plum­mer, who intro­duces him­self in the role, tells us, “this urbane, world­ly Russ­ian aris­to­crat spent a large part of his pro­duc­tive life in Itha­ca, New York.” And the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, if not a like­ness, is a con­vinc­ing dra­mat­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of a very urbane, and wit­ty, Pro­fes­sor, not a man who “speak[s] like a child,” as the real Nabokov once wrote of him­self in 1973.

What of his stu­dents? What can they tell us about Nabokov as a teacher? One of his most famous, Thomas Pyn­chon, won’t say much. But per­haps his best known pupil, Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg, has paid him trib­ute many times, telling The Scribes Jour­nal of Legal Writ­ing in 2011, “I attribute my car­ing about writ­ing” to Nabokov, who “was a man in love with the sound of words. He taught me the impor­tance of choos­ing the right word and pre­sent­ing it in the right word order.”

Gins­burg, who stud­ied under Nabokov as an under­grad­u­ate in the ear­ly fifties, still sings his prais­es over six­ty years lat­er. “He was mag­net­i­cal­ly engag­ing,” she told The Cul­ture Trip this week. “He stood alone, not com­pa­ra­ble to any oth­er lec­tur­er.” And last month, the Supreme Court Jus­tice wrote a New York Times Op-Ed titled “Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s Advice for Liv­ing.” Sec­ond on the list, “teach­ers who influ­enced or encour­aged me in my grow­ing-up years.” Her first exam­ple, Nabokov, who “changed the way I read and the way I write.”

If Nabokov so pro­found­ly influ­enced Ginsburg’s read­ing and writ­ing, and made such a dra­mat­ic impres­sion on her as a pro­fes­sor, would we find any traces of that influ­ence in her jurispru­dence? Per­haps. As Jen­nifer Wil­son notes in the Los Ange­les Review of Books, Nabokov pro­nounced him­self “res­olute­ly ‘anti-seg­re­ga­tion­ist.’” This was among the “few issues he spoke out against strong­ly and unambiguously—Marxism, fas­cism, anti-Semi­tism, and racism.”

You may or may not see some influ­ence of Nabokov—of his repug­nance for legal­ized dis­crim­i­na­tion or of his metic­u­lous wording—in Ginsburg’s pas­sion­ate dis­sent to the 2013 gut­ting of the Vot­ing Rights Act, for exam­ple. There, Gins­burg called vot­er sup­pres­sion “the most con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly invid­i­ous form of dis­crim­i­na­tion” and wrote “giv­en a record replete with exam­ples of denial or abridge­ment of a para­mount fed­er­al right, the Court should have left the mat­ter where it belongs: in Con­gress’ baili­wick.” With­in their con­straints of legal writ­ing, I’d argue Ginsburg’s best sen­tences con­tain the cut­ting pre­ci­sion and wit of Nabokov’s scathing, deeply con­sid­ered obser­va­tions.

via The Cul­ture Trip/Vin­tage Anchor

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take Vladimir Nabokov’s Quiz to See If You’re a Good Reader–The Same One He Gave to His Stu­dents

Vladimir Nabokov Names the Great­est (and Most Over­rat­ed) Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Vladimir Nabokov Talks About Life, Lit­er­a­ture & Love in a Metic­u­lous­ly Pre­pared Inter­view, 1969

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

Sal Khan & the Muppets’ Grover Explain the Electoral College

Grover, the more intel­lec­tu­al­ly-aspi­rant of Sesame Street’s two blue mon­sters, is a self-appoint­ed expert on anato­my (“the head is cov­ered with this long stringy stuff”), hygiene, and Span­ish, but the work­ings of the Unit­ed States Elec­toral Col­lege elud­ed him, until Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Acad­e­my wan­dered into the frame.

The pairing’s not as odd as you might think. The Khan Academy’s mis­sion is in many ways quite sim­i­lar to that of Sesame Street—free edu­ca­tion for the peo­ple, dis­trib­uted on a glob­al scale. Both are non-prof­it. The Khan Acad­e­my uses white­board screen­cast­ing where Sesame Street uses Mup­pets, but the goal is the same.

The ener­getic and high­ly dis­tractible Grover would be a chal­leng­ing pupil in any set­ting. Khan, whose teacher-stu­dent inter­ac­tions are rarely so face-to-face, han­dles him like a pro, wise­ly par­ing down a stan­dard issue Khan Acad­e­my les­son on the Elec­toral Col­lege to an eas­i­ly digestible three-and-a-half min­utes.

The take­away?

The Unit­ed States is an indi­rect democ­ra­cy.

Each state awards its elec­toral votes to the can­di­date who wins the pop­u­lar vote in that state.

The num­ber of elec­toral votes in any giv­en state is equal to its num­ber of con­gress­peo­ple plus its two Sen­a­tors.

There are a total of 538 elec­toral votes. In order to win the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, a can­di­date must win at least 270 of those votes.

Sim­ple enough, but this mea­sured expla­na­tion does not com­pute with Grover.

So Khan employs an edu­ca­tion­al Nin­ja tech­nique. “How can I explain it in a way that you might under­stand?” he asks.

It turns out Grover is some­thing of a visu­al learn­er, who’s not at all shy about the work­ings of his own per­son­al brain. He’s prob­a­bly not ready for 8th grade alge­bra, but the Khan Acad­e­my sub­sti­tu­tion method pro­vides a water­shed moment, when Khan replaces elec­toral votes with chick­ens.

(If your frag­ile grasp of the Elec­toral Col­lege process would be mud­dled by the intro­duc­tion of chick­ens, stop watch­ing at the two minute mark. As the pro­lif­er­at­ing com­ments on the Khan Academy’s fifth Amer­i­can Civics les­son prove, some­times the sim­ple approach cre­ates more ques­tions than it answers.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Cours­es 

Mor­gan Free­man Teach­es Kids to Read in Vin­tage Elec­tric Com­pa­ny Footage from 1971

Elec­tion 2012: Your Free Tick­et to a Pop­u­lar Stan­ford Course

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Father Writes a Great Letter About Censorship When Son Brings Home Permission Slip to Read Ray Bradbury’s Censored Book, Fahrenheit 451

book permission slip.jpg Ironic permission slip request https://twitter.com/i/moments/790703810427494400

How does cen­sor­ship come about in advanced, osten­si­bly demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties? In some cas­es, through insti­tu­tions col­lud­ing in ways that go unno­ticed by the gen­er­al pub­lic. As Noam Chom­sky has argued for decades, state agen­cies often col­lude with the press to spread cer­tain nar­ra­tives and sup­press oth­ers. And as we see dur­ing Banned Books Week, leg­is­la­tures, courts, and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions often col­lude with pub­lish­ers, teach­ers, and par­ents to sup­press lit­er­a­ture they view as threat­en­ing. One such case remains par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic giv­en the book in ques­tion: Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451, the sto­ry of a dystopi­an soci­ety in which all books are banned, and fire depart­ments burn con­tra­band copies.

Between the years 1967 and 1979, Bal­lan­tine pub­lished an expur­gat­ed ver­sion of the nov­el for use in high schools, remov­ing con­tent deemed objec­tion­able. Brad­bury was com­plete­ly unaware. For six of those years, the bowd­ler­ized ver­sion was the only one sold by the pub­lish­er. We can remem­ber this case when we read the response of writer Daniel Radosh to a per­mis­sion slip his son Milo brought home from his 8th grade teacher for a book club read­ing of Fahren­heit 451. Writ­ten in Milo’s own hand, the ini­tial note, at the top, informs Mr. Radosh that the nov­el “was chal­lenged because of it’s [sic] theme of the ille­gal­i­ty and cen­sor­ship of books. One book peo­ple got most angry about was the burn­ing of the bible. Sec­ond­ly, there is a large amount of curs­ing and pro­fan­i­ty in the book.”

After this con­fes­sion, Milo’s note asks for a parental sig­na­ture in a post­script. Address­ing the let­ter’s true writer, Milo’s teacher, Daniel Radosh respond­ed thus, in the typed note attached to his son’s let­ter.

I love this let­ter! What a won­der­ful way to intro­duce stu­dents to the theme of Fahren­heit 451 that books are so dan­ger­ous that the insti­tu­tions of soci­ety – schools and par­ents – might be will­ing to team up against chil­dren to pre­vent them from read­ing one.

It’s easy enough to read the book and say, ‘This is crazy. It could nev­er real­ly hap­pen,’ but pre­tend­ing to present stu­dents at the start with what seems like a total­ly rea­son­able ‘first step’ is a real­ly immer­sive way to teach them how insid­i­ous cen­sor­ship can be.

I’m sure that when the book club is over and the stu­dents realise the true intent of this let­ter they’ll be shocked at how many of them accept­ed it as an actu­al per­mis­sion slip.

In addi­tion, Milo’s con­cern that allow­ing me to add to this note will make him stand out as a trou­ble­mak­er real­ly brings home why most of the char­ac­ters find it eas­i­er to accept the world they live in rather than chal­lenge it.

I assured him that his teacher would have his back.

Radosh’s insin­u­a­tion that the let­ter his son was induced to write is not an “actu­al per­mis­sion slip” under­scores his claim that the exer­cise is real­ly a means of con­trol­ling chil­dren by means of col­lu­sion, even though, he jests, such a thing must be part of the les­son itself. Should he be allowed to read the nov­el, the sign­ing and deliv­ery of the per­mis­sion slip, Radosh dev­as­tat­ing­ly sug­gests, com­pletes Milo’s humil­i­a­tion, bring­ing home to him “why most of the char­ac­ters” in the book remain pas­sive, and “find it eas­i­er to accept the world they live in rather than chal­lenge it.”

In short, Radosh’s response, for all its pithy irony, digs deeply into the mech­a­nisms that sup­press speech deemed so “dan­ger­ous that the insti­tu­tions of society—schools and parents—might be will­ing to team up against chil­dren to pre­vent them” from read­ing it.

See Metro UK for a com­plete tran­scrip­tion of both let­ters.

via Vin­tage Anchor

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Ray Bradbury’s Clas­sic Sci-Fi Sto­ry Fahren­heit 451 as a Radio Dra­ma

The Cov­er of George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes Less Cen­sored with Wear and Tear

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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