Rob looks at how the big gamble on Peacemaker, the most daring and rewarding risk DC Entertainment has taken in years, provides a blueprint for their struggling publishing arm. Plus, with the censorship of acclaimed works such as MAUS in the news, Rob is fired up and makes his position on the matter abundantly clear!
4 comments on “War & Peace(Maker)”
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Maus has not been censored. Like many books it’s simply not being used in the curriculum / being required reading in the classroom. It’s still widely available in public school libraries. This distortion and attempt to label it as censored is a concocted story by corporate media to spin the narrative about censorship from tech platforms and the government.
Fair and accurate point. The book was removed from the teaching curriculum by one school board in a small Tennessee town (population roughly 50,000). Yes, it is still widely available in many public and school libraries. “Banned” as all manner of news outlets have reported is extreme phrasing.
The broader points that should be focused on, is that it was not simply removed, and why it was removed: Not because it is no longer relevant, or because educators thought it was not good material to teach about the difficult subject matter (the opposite happened, several educators and principals argued before the school board to keep it in the curriculum) . It was removed because of “offensive” elements that a handful of parents complained about to the school board. It’s a graphic novel about the Holocaust, there are going to be a lot of offensive elements in it. Specifically, the board cited hangings, death of children, curse words (the word “damn” is printed about a dozen times) and one instance of nudity (of a mouse….a dead cartoon mouse). This is an extremely dangerous (and/or maybe extremely ignorant) thought process being applied to remove award winning and powerful literature from an educational curriculum. What goes next, the Iliad and the Odyssey? Shakespearean plays? All manner of “offensive” elements are found in those classic works of literature. Where do we draw that line?
I’m certain that the timing of this, as other award winning books are being removed from some small-town public school libraries after parental complaints as of late, definitely helped propel this into a national spotlight. Otherwise, hardly anyone would care about what is going on in some small town in Tennessee.
I’m an admirer of Maus, it was the first “comic book” I remember seeing in a library. That is likely the only reason I initially picked it up to read. Extremely powerful stuff that has an ability to connect well with young minds.
If anything the section, that is a comic within the comic, about his mothers suicide, that uses human depictions not animals, the naked mom with slit wrists in the tub, I’m pretty sure that would be the sticking point. I’m not saying I agree, but I can also understand at least an argument that it’s not the best book to use an intro to the Holocaust for 8th graders. To kill a mockingbird was taken off many curriculums cuz of problematic racist language, but its not “Banned”. By this definition, Any book that isn’t Mandatory reading would be considered banned. I’m concerned that we are a living in amahe where nuance and truth don’t matter, and people just repeat hyperbolic headlines that run thru social media while never knowing the reality of what’s actually goin on.
You are absolutely correct. I did not recall the suicide being in the “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” comic-within-a-comic section. The absurd part about the “nudity” is it took me three passes through my own copy of “Maus” before I found it, while knowing exactly what I was looking for. It is almost a thumbnail shot where the mother is off to the side of the border. It is nudity by the strictest definition possible. I could seriously be looking at elbows or a shoulder. I did not recall this, in my 25 year old memory of this part of the story, I recalled the suicide depiction as being anthropomorphic.
Your points about “To Kill a Mockingbird” are dead on, that is another literary classic that was removed from some teaching curriculum because of offensive (in that case, racist) language, used to describe certain characters in the book. I would argue that the insensitive language used in a few places, lends to the powerful narrative that the book conveys about race and race relations. Yet, the entire book was remove from curriculum in some school districts because of this. This is another example of why this is a dangerous path to start traversing.
I share your concern. People, especially in today’s world (where everyone spends 2 seconds looking at a headline on their phone before they continue to scroll though other mindless schlock), tend to regurgitate what is presented to them on their devices without doing hardly any independent thinking or research on their own. Maybe the majority of people have always been this way, it is just so much more prevalent now that we all have news and information at our fingertips 24/7.
Happy reading, Barrett, and take care.
P.S. Rob, great podcast! Did not know the bit about Peacemaker being tied to Watchmen at one point!