# Maus, by Art Spiegelman, banned by McMinn County (TN) school board **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comic-books-manga\ **Created:** [January 28, 2022, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557 "2022-01-28T10:33:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/61 "2022-01-28T19:04:20Z")
Along with other stuff going on, it’s a general move towards banning stuff like teaching the existence of slavery. That’s about 5 years away, tops. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/62 "2022-01-28T19:55:18Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Of course. But that shows that the objection isn’t to children seeing nipples, no matter what the context; the objection is only to children seeing nipples in specific contexts. This is entirely correct, but I don’t see that it demonstrates anything important. The operant idea I’m stating is that there are certain “bright-line” things that parents don’t want their children seeing outside of a parentally approved context (which might imply censoring it entirely). That the school should emphatically _not_ be permitted to set the context for such things because only the parents should have that right. And I’m not arguing that they’re right or that they have a point… just that what they’re exercised about is the perceived usurpation of their parental authority. They are absolutely unconcerned about their children noting comparisons between them and Nazis. They’re too shameless and stupid for that. Beau has it exactly wrong there. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/63 "2022-01-28T20:05:29Z")
I think removing it from the curriculum for the cited reason is ridiculous, but I can actually understand some objections. It’s a great book and I highly recommend it, but there are graphic descriptions of life in the death camps which are horribly disturbing, despite the fact that the victims are cartoon mice. I think it would be fine for high school students, and there are many younger students who could also appreciate it, but I can see not _requiring_ students below high school age to read it. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/64 "2022-01-28T20:27:10Z")
Except that they don’t get all up in arms when the school is teaching them something that they want their children to learn. So yes, the content that they are objecting to matters. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/65 "2022-01-28T20:38:57Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Along with other stuff going on, it’s a general move towards banning stuff like teaching the existence of slavery. That’s about 5 years away, tops. Yup. I’m sure the real objection is that a book about the Holocaust is disturbing. And it is. So are books about slavery. And :gasp: critical race theory might make your white kid feel bad about things white people did. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/66 "2022-01-28T20:41:26Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > The operant idea I’m stating is that there are certain “bright-line” things that parents don’t want their children seeing outside of a parentally approved context (which might imply censoring it entirely). That the school should emphatically _not_ be permitted to set the context for such things because only the parents should have that right. > > And I’m not arguing that they’re right or that they have a point… just that what they’re exercised about is the perceived usurpation of their parental authority. They are absolutely unconcerned about their children noting comparisons between them and Nazis. I’m not in their heads. But I find it implausible that they’re this worked up about that particular nipple if they’re allowing their kids any sort of access to modern media at all. (Ditto the language.) I think they’re worked about about that particular nipple because of the rest of the context which it’s in – which is very much a context about prejudice in general and what it can, and has, lead to. > [@Thing.Fish](#): > > It’s a great book and I highly recommend it, but there are graphic descriptions of life in the death camps which are horribly disturbing, despite the fact that the victims are cartoon mice. I think it would be fine for high school students, and there are many younger students who could also appreciate it, but I can see not _requiring_ students below high school age to read it. I can readily see an argument that it ought to be, say, taught in 10th grade instead of in 8th. But the argument appears to be that it shouldn’t be taught at any level of high school, either. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/67 "2022-01-28T21:03:28Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I’m sure the real objection is that a book about the Holocaust is disturbing. And it is. If you believe their statement, that’s not the real objection. > [@](#): > > nor do we dispute the importance of teaching our children the historical and moral lessons and realities of the Holocaust. To the contrary, we have asked our administrators to find other works that accomplish the same educational goals in a more age-appropriate fashion. The atrocities of the Holocaust were shameful beyond description, and we all have an obligation to ensure that younger generations learn of its horrors to ensure that such an event is never repeated. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/68 "2022-01-28T21:04:05Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > For anyone who has read _Maus_ , is the charge of being “too adult-oriented” fair? It’s about the goddamned Holocaust - it makes the average R-rated horror movie gorefest look like a sanitized Disney cartoon. OK, maybe you can talk about it without nudity or profanity but it is a profoundly and inherently violent topic. If the justification is “too violent” then there’s no way to talk about WWII in general, or genocide, or even a lot of history outside of WWII. Yes, it’s a very adult topic. I can see where you might not want to talk about this in detail to a bunch of Kindergartners. But somewhere around the middle school years and up this SHOULD be discussed as a historical event. Og knows how these yahoos bowdlerize texts on, say, the US Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, or other violent parts of history. Probably try to ban them, too. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/69 "2022-01-28T21:10:38Z")
You know people already ban the teaching of slavery, talk to anyone about European slavery in their African colonies on the SDMB and people will get PISSED. Even mods will deny it’s existence, we got users here who will claim that “it wasn’t that bad” or “I’d rather be a slave in Africa than a free black man in America”. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/70 "2022-01-28T21:17:13Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > It’s about the goddamned Holocaust - it makes the average R-rated horror movie gorefest look like a sanitized Disney cartoon. Do you mean the Holocaust in general or the novel Maus? Because I’ve seen plenty of R-rated stuff much worse than what’s in Maus. Stuff in Maus is disturbing but it’s disturbing in a real “Humans can be terrible” was rather than gore and shock images. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/71 "2022-01-28T21:18:50Z")
> [@Thudlow Boink (quoting the book banners)](#): > > The atrocities of the Holocaust were shameful beyond description… Well, the book **Maus** does a pretty good job describing them. ---
**Author:** ![Esprise\_Me](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprise_me/32/2947_2.png) [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/72 "2022-01-28T21:21:30Z")
I don’t believe that the disturbing content would’ve been equally disturbing to those in charge if they felt more aligned with the victims and less with the perpetrators. During the lockdown, I managed to find a scanned copy of my eighth grade US history book online, and spent some time poring over the chapter on the Civil War. This was a book chosen by a school district in California, not the South, and it’s apparently still in use today (I found it on a middle school teacher’s website with then-current assignments for her students.) Unsurprisingly, they entirely glossed over the suffering of slaves, but they didn’t shy away from suffering in general. There were grisly details about how the blockaded Southerners were forced to eat horses, dogs, and rats. There was a photo of dead Confederate soldiers sprawled on the ground after the Battle of Antietam. (I’ll upload it if I can figure out how.) Why were those things not deemed too disturbing for children, assuming that was the rationale for not including one word or image of the suffering endured by those they held captive? I wonder if any Jewish person would’ve voted to remove _Maus_ from the curriculum. (I feel pretty confident in assuming none were actually given a vote.) I wonder if this school board would’ve had similar concerns about grade-school kids reading _Johnny Tremain,_ in which young American revolutionaries are mutilated and killed, or about high school kids reading _All Quiet on the Western Front,_ which contains vivid descriptions of Allied soldiers being gas-bombed in WWI. Actually, I don’t wonder at all. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/73 "2022-01-28T21:22:54Z")
That’s an illustration of the problem. Yes, there was slavery in Africa. We all know and acknowledge that. But almost always, when it’s brought up, the reason to bring it up is to minimize the very real harm of American slavery. So the people you’re talking about, who “object to the teaching of slavery”, aren’t actually objecting to the teaching of slavery; they’re objecting to the lack of such teaching. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/74 "2022-01-28T21:35:29Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > OK, maybe you can talk about it without nudity The nudity was deliberate dehumanization. (Not by Spiegelman, of course. By the Nazis.) It needs not to be sexualized; but it also needs not to be left out. It is not possible to teach the Holocaust in a fashion that won’t upset anybody, while actually teaching it. You can’t teach children, or adults, about horrors without horrifying them. This is true of an uncomfortable lot of human history, of course. And it’s all too often considered appropriate to teach even quite small children about human history in fashions considered not to be upsetting to them; with the result that they grow up unlikely to avoid horrors, because they never learned that they’re horrifying. Are these people who are upset about teaching the Holocaust to 8th graders careful not to teach their grade school children that European settlers killed off Native Americans? Or do they just say it’s fine to tell six year olds about that, as long as you do it in a sufficiently sanitized and passionless fashion that they’ll grow up thinking it didn’t, and doesn’t, really matter? ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/75 "2022-01-28T21:52:58Z")
I knew about the Holocaust, but I didn’t really _get it_ until our 8th grade Social Studies teacher shared with the class pictures from the concentration camps. There was nudity, but certainly not anything to be aroused by, even as a 13 year old boy. It showed horror, the horror that can only come from the deliberate choice of humans to inflict that horror on others. I don’t know that I would have really gotten that through sanitized descriptions in textbooks. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/76 "2022-01-28T22:17:31Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Do you mean the Holocaust in general or the novel Maus? I mean the Holocaust in general. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/77 "2022-01-28T22:21:32Z")
There’s a difference between showing and telling—between _telling_ children that something happened and _depicting_ it. “Teach about” could mean either, or both. (And either can be done in a way that’s honest and fair, or that’s sanitized and warped.) If you just tell kids what happened, they may not really understand; they may not _get it_, as @k9bfriender said. But when you show, then you get into issues of what’s possibly too intense for younger children. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/78 "2022-01-28T22:30:33Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > But when you show, then you get into issues of what’s possibly too intense for younger children. This is true but I don’t think it applies here to Maus. And, again, I’m only one guy but I do have the experience of actually deciding whether or not to let my 8th grader read the book. The reasons the board gave for banning the book revolved around a few words and a non-sexual image of nudity. It wasn’t because it was “too intense” in its depiction of the Holocaust. Maybe there’s an argument to be made that some of the themes are too advanced for kids that age (I would largely disagree) but we’re not talking about a work of shock horror or graphic gore. Personally, I’d say that the depictions of atrocity in the book are right about a level for that age bracket. Enough to realize that it’s something fucked up but not graphically detailed or gruesome (and happening to mouse-people so some level of detachment from human faces). ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/79 "2022-01-28T22:33:17Z")
In 1980 I sat watching _Apocalypse Now_. On the screen was a hanged man above the river at Kurtz’ camp, in long-shot. As he swung around, his little button penis was revealed. At that moment, not the brutality of hanging, a woman behind me went “hmph!” Nice people don’t like it when penises are shown. There are no penises in Disney-verse (and when they’re snuck in, all the VHS boxes are recalled). Nice Americans want America to be like the Disney-verse. Nasty things like penises, and gas vans, and children injected with phenol, and people strung up with piano wire are things only nasty, nasty people want to rub our noses in. ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557/80 "2022-01-28T22:36:10Z")
I must say I find it odd that _one_ county in Tennessee banning _one_ book has made national news in this manner. Their motivations for doing so may be dubious, but it’s not as if this one graphic novel is going to make or break the students’ ability to learn about the Holocaust in a meaningful way. I guess I just don’t see this particular incident as some sort of noteworthy battle in an ongoing cultural war. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maus-by-art-spiegelman-banned-by-mcminn-county-tn-school-board/958557.md?page=5)