Or, as Primo Levi put it:
“It happened, therefore it can happen again.”
And yet . . . it’s often easy to think that everyone has moved forward apace, when the ideas of what feels subversive and what doesn’t can vary wildly household to household, and might have very little to do with any objectively subversive elements of a work of art.
Just recently, a friend (we’re in our 40s) was having a conversation with his mother about the passing of Meat Loaf, and it turns out she had never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show, probably because it felt like too off-color and counter-culture for her. They’re going to watch it together sometime soon, and he’s mildly concerned/bemused about the prospect of what that viewing is going to be like for her.
Now, that film is almost 50 years old, and as far as explicit content is wildly tame compared to any content made for adults on non-broadcast television these days. However, there are still people out there who find anything that pushes against whatever feels same and “normal” to be subversive and challenging.
I know that was a long tangent, but the point being that anything discomforting can be subversive- in fact, maybe that’s part of what it means to be subversive. And, it’s hard to know what that might be for other people.
I haven’t either, but not because it’s off-color and counter-culture, but because it looks stupid.
If it could give me a new and useful perspective on a historical subject like the Holocaust, I may feel differently, but I don’t know that this is a great example, as it really is just a pretty dumb movie that people made into a cult classic because of how dumb it was.
My only point here was in response to the comment that Maus is about as “subversive as a The Who album.” Different people find different things subversive, and just because it’s 2022 doesn’t mean that everything that was subversive in the past is now universally mainstream.
(For the record, Rocky Horror on stage — its original medium — is not frozen in time like the film, and its productions are free to be as subversive and dangerous as they like. And I have seen a couple of very edgy stagings that successfully challenge and provoke, and that would scare the skin off a normie.)
Nothing is ever universal and I believe you can find individuals out there who clutch their pearls about RHPS. But if I was to hear that an entire 2022 middle-class community suddenly banded together in outrage over RHPS and drove the film/show out of town because of its content, that would seem rather anachronistic and surprising. Likewise, suggesting that McMinn County removed this book because 2022 middle-class America is scared of pretty tame “underground comics” from the early 1980s seems… unlikely. Yes, I’m sure there are people out there legitimately and sincerely shaking their canes at any comic book that isn’t Al Hartley Christian-era Archie but I don’t think that they represent a significant factor in what’s going on around Maus.
The subject isn’t history, it’s alternative sexual identity and expression. And while i don’t think you’ll find anything shocking (today) in the film, i did find the perspective useful.
…can’t…unsee…
That’s just wrong…
Brilliant!
I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard enough about it (and I have watched the “Everything Wrong With” video on it), seems it involved cloning and aliens as well.
As an FYI, that comic is where @Steve_MB’s link in post 207 took us.
Beau says “a naked mouse” instead of a naked woman. He didn’t read the book before offering criticism.
I thought he was pretty good until that; he commented about something he knew nothing about. How many other things does he comment on that he does not know about?
There actually ARE naked “mice” in Maus… naked male mice. Apparently tiny cartoon dicks are OK but OH NO TITTIES!
(During the scene where his dad is talking about Selektion and handing out clothes a lot of the mice are dudes without any clothes on. There may be more, but that’s the one I recall seeing.)
If this were a movie, that scene would be more problematic than the one that shows a bit of boob above the water. But i gather the complaint is about the nipples, not the dicks.
Yeah, it’s about a depiction of female nudity, not just plain old anyone’s nudity.
I think the stated reasons are just dancing around the real reasons these parents wanted the book removed from the school.
… Still, the current controversy has also neatly illustrated one of the foundational principles of the publishing industry: nothing drives up interest in a book faster than a misguided prohibition. Maus is topping bestsellers lists across the country, as readers everywhere clamor to see what the fuss is about.