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“I don’t want to read this” is totally valid.
“This is disgusting to me” is totally valid.
“I don’t want to read this because it is disgusting to me” is totally valid.
“I don’t think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me” is authoritarian.
Unless it’s like… Illegal or immoral. You can read that fae kinky story for all I care but if you bring a child, an animal or a dead body into this then it’s not going to end well for you.
“I don’t think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me” is authoritarian.
Necrophilia, pedophilia and zoophilia are illegal in most countries. I do not think that it is so far fetched to say that no one should read and/or write about a theme that is illegal.
And I am talking about this three subjects being the main ‘appeal’ of the book. Reading and/or writing a book about a child getting abused like in the book Lolita from Vladimir Nabokov is okay, i’m not saying otherwise, since it’s clearly meant to show that this is not something that is okay, it is to criticizing the abuser.
A book in which a human being is having intercourse with a dead body (not a vampire or a zombie, an actual dead body) and it is portrayed as “sexy” or “appealing” in another way than to criticize it should not be okay. Romancizing necrophilia is not only disgusting, but clearly immoral. Same for pedophilia and zoophilia.
I’m not saying that you are wrong in the OG post, I just wanted to put a limit to the last sentence. Yes anyone and everyone is free to read and/or write about the themes they like, but again I don’t think that it is far-fetched to say that this kind of illegal content is not valid to be written about in a positive light.
actually here, let me share another one of my posts with you.
🖤 Whether or not a taboo, unpleasant, or illegal subject in a piece of fiction has been ‘romanticized’ or ‘glorified’ is an entirely subjective opinion based on a personal reading of the text.
🖤 You cannot assume that an author is trying to make a taboo, unpleasant, or illegal subject seem appealing just because their writing made you feel like it was appealing.
🖤 ‘Glorifying’ or ‘romanticizing’ a subject is not a good reason to say that a piece of fiction should be censored, or that the author or people who enjoy it should be harmed or punished.
🖤 Your personal interpretation of a piece of fiction does not reflect on the morality or psychology of the author of the fiction.
🖤 It is authoritarian to want to censor fiction based on your interpretation that the fiction is ‘romanticizing’ or ‘glorifying’ an unpleasant or illegal topic.
🖤 An author has no moral obligation to explicitly condemn taboo, unpleasant or illegal actions by characters in their fiction.
🖤 It is perfectly fine for an author to present terrible actions and events without holding the audience’s hand to make sure they know they’re wrong.
🖤 There is nothing wrong with writing a protagonist who does evil, immoral and illegal things without the author taking pains to make certain that the audience knows that they’re wrong.
🖤 If you read a book and see taboo, criminal, or immoral actions as romantic, glorious, or something to aspire to, that is a you problem, not the author’s problem.
🖤 An author is under no obligation to be their audience’s morality teacher.
I understand your point, of course the reader’s interpretation has much to do with it. I’m not trying to start any online trial about readers and writers, so let me put more nuance in what I previously said.
First of all, here is an example that confirms your opinion : Vladimir Nabokov’s book called Lolita. Like I said it’s about the abuse of a child, but the author chose to write his book from the point of view of the abuser. He made his intentions clear during interviews, his point was to critcise, to write a tragedy. Yet the readers did not understand that at all, and thought the child called Lolita was some kind of a femme fatale, it even became a popular femme fatale figure of cinema at the time.
Is it the author’s fault that it happened ? No. Should he had been clearer about his intentions ? He was already clear enough. The fault is into the reader’s interpretation, he isn’t responsible for that.
But here is where I want to make my point : the author still has a mind of their own. I’m not saying that I am all knowing about an author’s opinion just by reading their books. What I am saying is that some authors have written about romancized taboo subjects and openly confirmed that they did believe this taboo subject was a good thing.
My example here is Gabriel Matzneff, a french author who published books with clear pedophilia in it. He openly said that those books were autobiographics, even the pedophilia parts. Here I am condemning it because he is openly saying that he commited a crime.
What I’m condemning is that there are people who back in the days were clearly defending him, even if he himself did not hide what he had done, nor did he showed any regrets for what he had done.
I am not asking for anyone to play the moral compass for me, I am saying that nothing gives any validation to how he felt so comfortable talking about his crimes in public instead of surrending himself to the justice, I am saying that nothing justifies why he was given a prize on some of those books, even if everyone was aware of what he had done.
Yes I do find what he had done to be disgusting, but also at the time it was illegal, he recognized multiple times that he ahd that kind of opinion and that he commited those acts and some people were still happily reading him after knowing all of that, they were fiercely defending him.
Do I want to censor his books ? Not entirely, because they are the proof that he ‘got away’ with that kind of mindset. Should he be punished for his crimes ? Yes. Should France be more fierce about this particular law (that pedophilia is illegal), at least enough for that kind of situation to never happen again ? Absolutely.
I totally agree with your point of view for the vast majority of the authors out there. But for cases like Gabriel Matzneff, we should put a limit. For cases like Gabriel Matzneff, we should not give them any opportunity to excuse their behaviors.
Okay, so, I’m talking about people who write fiction.
And it looks like you’re talking about people who publish written confessions of actual crimes they committed.
So, it looks like we’re not actually having the same discussion.
Unless you’re suggesting that we should for some reason investigate fiction writers because we suspect they committed the crimes in their books.
In which case we’re going to have to open some murder investigations on Stephen King and Agatha Christie.
Okay, thank you for the clarification. I thought you meant any kind of writing in general, not just the fictional ones. Since that’s what you were talking about, I whole heartedly take back what I said.
I am totally not suggesting to investigate fiction writers (with the only exception of if they publicly said that they did some of the illegal actions of their books). That is not the case for Agatha Christie, that is not the case for Stephen King, so nothing should happen to them and I do not believe anything should happen to them.
Nonetheless, after a bit more researches the example of Vladimir Nabokov seems to be quite appropriate with your statements, because the book Lolita is in fact a fiction from the author, he never said otherwise, but people decided that if he wrote that, it meant that he thought that. So in between the movies who sexualized the little girl (like the movie Lolita from 1962), his book got also censored from 1956 to 1958.
It is in fact a big example of what would happen if you take your interpretations too seriously, and believe that an author has to be your moral compass. I hope that this example will help you in any kind of debate you might have in the future. This was still very nice to talk with you <3
PS : I think I said Vladimir Nabokov was french, if that’s the case then I was totally mistaken. He is from Russia and has lived a good part of his life in the US, and Lolita was written in american english, so I think it’s safe to say that he is american
I’m glad we could clear up the misunderstanding with regard to my post.
Hope you have a lovely day!
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