The Real problem with cancel culture

[Admiral Yi]

Why not?  Because Mormons are too white?

[Zoupa]

What did the story say about Mormonism?

[Admiral Yi]

Some Mormons were the bad guys.  (Foggy memory) something about a girl not wanting to marry Mormon Dude and her being hunted down in England.

[Sheilbh]

Why not?  Because Mormons are too white?

Because they're heretics

Of course I think it woud probably be advisable in a modern edition to provide plenty of explanations and context. On a reading list I could see you twinning it with The Moonstone and doing something about crime/detective fiction, scandal and religion/othering. And I'd respectfully trigger warn the content to any Mormons.

What did the story say about Mormonism?

From memory - kidnapping, forced marriage and murder.

It was written at a time when the Mormons still had polygamy and there was a lot of lurid reporting about what went on in Utah in the UK (and the US). Weirdly I've just read Under the Banner of Heaven to watch that TV show and the luridness at that point isn't entirely unfair (and neither's a story about forced marriage - or violence against "Gentiles").

[Eddie Teach]

Catholics are heretics. Mormons are cultists.

[Sheilbh]

Noted

[crazy canuck]

There are still some polygamist Mormons.

[grumbler]

Why not?  Because Mormons are too white?

No, because their history is so violent that ACD didn't need to make up much, just read their history and change a few names.

[The Brain]

Some Mormons were the bad guys.  (Foggy memory) something about a girl not wanting to marry Mormon Dude and her being hunted down in England.

Is that The Valley of Fear?

[Solmyr]

We already knew Agatha Cristie was a vile racist for using the n* word in her book title.

But it's now been discovered that she was a vicious anti-semite on top of that, and now, students are freed from this inapropriate content.

I think, Ontario aside, only Florida is as pro-active at canceling dangerous books.
Ontario school board removes Agatha Christie book due to anti-Semitic references

Next in line?  Wanna take a bet?

So, one book removed from the curriculum in Ontario equals cancellation? Wow, the criteria for what is a cancellation are really wide these days.

[viper37]

So, one book removed from the curriculum in Ontario equals cancellation? Wow, the criteria for what is a cancellation are really wide these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/book-burning-at-ontario-francophone-schools-as-gesture-of-reconciliation-denounced

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/an-ontario-school-board-undergoes-review-of-every-book-in-every-library-to-cull-those-harmful-to-students

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ontario-board-pulls-indigenous-authors-book-from-schools-and-he-doesnt-know-why

And the Handmaid's tale is also banned by many of Ontario's libraries.  As well as Book of Negroes, for offensive language.  Works that denounce mysoginy and racism get banned for offensive language...

[Duque de Bragança]

I remember studying Les dix petits nègres at school. Title may have been changed (seems so in 2020 to Ils étaient dix) but people like Césaire and Senghor reclaimed the word Nègre, not always derogatory, unlike négro (except for not so bright hip hoppers).

[Barrister]

Ran across an interesting episode of Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast over the weekend.

https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/the-judgment-of-helen-levitt

It is a fairly obvious, but sympathetic take on "cancel culture", but by looking at the 1950s Red Scare and Hollywood blacklist.

Subject was one Helen Levitt.  It starts out stating pretty plainly that while Mrs. Levitt didn't do anything wrong (she made sandwiches), she was a 100% unrepentant communist - full-fledged, card-carrying Communist.  It had audio of her saying if you weren't a communist you either were afraid or just weren't very smart.  Even 30 years later she refused to condemn Stalin or the party.  Gladwell recounts the millions killed by the USSR, even reveals himself at one point to have been a Reagan-admiring anti-communist at age 18.

But her and her husband were screenwriters in Hollywood in the 1950s, and soon enough were called to testify before HUAC.  They took the 5th and were blacklisted.  They couldn't work, they were shunned by their friends, for a number of years.  Really had trouble getting enough money to feed their kids.

Eventually the blacklist faded and they started working again by the 1960s and 1970s.

It doesn't take super long to become obvious Gladwell means this as a parable about cancel culture, but obviousness doesn't necessarily take away from the point.  When someone has even demonstrably "wrong" views, is a public shunning and shaming really the right response?



(and then, to my mind to make up for the sin of being anti-woke, he takes 3 episodes to analyze the sins of the Disney movie The Little Mermaid, up to the point of re-writing a new ending.  I fully take the point that the main character Ariel has like zero agency in her own story after the first act, but when the re-imagined ending has no climactic battle, the witch Ursula marrying King Triton, and the love interest Prince Eric marries his gay lover, this goes incredibly woke)

[Tonitrus]

I dunno if Woke is the right term...fan fiction has probably covered all those scenarios (and more you'd likely rather not know) already. 

[Eddie Teach]

Yeah, somebody even wrote furry Anne Frank fan fiction. Nothing is sacred.