Week of September 25, 2008, Issue #675
COVER
Banned Books
Where does a liberal society draw the line on censoring literature?
CAROLYN NIKODYM / carolyn@vueweekly.com
Living in Canada, we might not think of ourselves as heavily censored. And true, when you hold the freedom-of-expression barometer up against some of the dictatorships or theocracies around the world, we come out smelling liberally minded. We can, without fear, go to our local public library and borrow a copy of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses or research Falun Gong. We can go to our local book shop and purchase a copy of Mein Kampf (unless, of course, the local shop happens to be Chapters or Indigo).
When it comes to crossing borders, however, printed material has been subject to state-sponsored censorship since 1847, before confederation. Canada Customs is in the business of checking all items coming into the country, in theory to protect Canadians from things it deems as harmful to the populace, but when it comes to books or magazines, things are not so cut and dry.
After all, who gets to decide what is deemed to be “obscene?” It’s a question that Vancouver’s Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium has asked time and time again in over 20 years of litigation.
The store, which carries LGBT literature and erotica, has been subjected to what can only be described as systemic harassment by the border agency. Not only were titles of gay and lesbian erotica seized, but so were other fiction and academic offerings on lesbian and gay issues, AIDS awareness and feminist thought, including titles that had been allowed through Customs when destined for mainstream retailers.
The first major shipment that was seized was a large Christmas order in 1986. It turned out to be the first of many that co-owners Jim Deva, Bruce Smyth and Barb Thomas came to defend. In those early years, the store might eventually get its stock, but sometimes it was handed over so badly damaged that it was rendered unsaleable, and even then, the process would take months.
In 2000, the store owners and its many supporters won what they thought was a victory for freedom of expression in Canada when the Supreme Court of Canada found that the store had been unfairly targeted. While the court did not strike down Canada’s obscenity laws, it did decide that the onus of proving obscenity was on Customs, not the importer. The court also proscribed a strict timeline to do so: 30 days.
The victory proved to be rather empty. Within three months of the Supreme Court ruling, Little Sisters was once again having shipments regularly seized by Customs. The owners set out to launch a challenge to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, feeling that case had broad public ramifications: this was unjust censorship, they argued. But such a battle would require an immense amount of money. As a Charter challenge, they applied to have the case financially backed by the government. Their lawyers argued that there was little point in having a Charter-challenging system if ordinary citizens couldn’t afford the legal fees.
In January 2007, Little Sisters lost its bid, government lawyers arguing that the case was not important enough for the Canadian government to pay for it.
The story of Little Sisters is instructive. One has to ask what Canada Customs thought it was protecting the populace from exactly? And why is systematic Customs censorship not a broader Canadian issue? It also isn’t difficult to see the similar mindset that had children’s books like And Tango Makes Three (a story based on two real male penguins at New York’s Central Park Zoo that, for a time, formed a couple and successfully raised a female chick) pulled from some school libraries.
While many of us would happily extol the virtues of intellectual freedom and tsk-tsk the narrowmindedness of these examples, many of us also find ourselves drawing a line at some point. We might even consider context and accessibility, such as age-restrictions.
School boards, for example, have a much different mandate.
“It’s a tricky area, but when you’re talking about schools, you’re talking about very small children, almost babies really, and also young adults, people who are in their teens,” says Franklin Carter, editor and researcher for the Book and Periodical Council’s Freedom of Expression Committee. “There is a difference between selection and censorship. We also understand that school boards and libraries have limited resources. They only have so much money to spend on books and magazines and other reading materials, so they have to make choices and some stuff will get left off the list. That’s just reality—there’s nothing you can do about that.”
Teachers may shy away from controversial material all together because somebody, sometime, challenged it. While it can be argued that there is plenty of fine literature out there to make such an avoidance no bother, it can also be argued that the safer choices diminish the chance for critical discussion, like pointing out the racial stereotypes in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn or the criticism of organized religion in Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass.
Pullman’s books were at the centre of much debate last year, with several Catholic school boards pulling them out of schools. After receiving a single complaint, the Halton (Ontario) Catholic District School Board banned the trilogy that included The Golden Compass, right down to forbidding principals from distributing Scholastic book flyers in which the book was available to order.
The Calgary Catholic School board also pulled Pullman’s books pending a review of the material, stating in an internal staff email that “since bans and censoring tend to draw increased attention to potentially inappropriate materials, a course of quiet non-participation is recommended.” Unlike Halton, however, the Calgary board opted to return the books to library shelves and classrooms, saying that while “the text is harsh in terms of its language about organized religion ... there are glimpses of light with opportunities for positive reflection.”
The reasoning for any kind of censorship is the “public good.” The problem is not only that this reasoning is used by liberal democracies and dictatorships alike, it is also that we are allowing others to make these decisions for us, others who could have very different beliefs.
“Something that I should say about censors in general—they tend to be very public-spirited people,” Carter explains. “When they move to censor a book or a magazine or a website, they genuinely believe that they are acting in the name of the public good. They believe that are acting as citizens; they believe that they are taking action to prevent harm. What they don’t seem to care very much about, though, is that they are short-circuiting the rights of other people to read and to evaluate those same words and ideas and images for themselves. That’s where the threat is.”
A little research shows that there are plenty of would-be censors out there both past and present, questioning materials by the likes of Alice Munro, Margaret Laurence, even Dr Seuss. It’s a trend that the Book and Periodical Council has been tracking since the ‘70s. The council formed what it thought would be a temporary committee to resist a group in Huron County (Ontario) that was trying to get novels by Laurence, John Steinbeck and JD Salinger off the Grade 12 curriculum, and the Freedom of Expression Committee hasn’t stopped since, even launching an awareness project called Freedom to Read Week (held in February every year) back in 1984—nearly 25 years ago.
One of the disturbing trends the committee has found is that often book challenges are raised by those who haven’t actually read the material. A high-profile example of this can be found in former Conservative MLA Victor Doerksen, who led a fight in the ‘90s to ban Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men from Alberta schools. He admitted that at the time he initiated the proposed banning, he hadn’t read the book.
This isn’t a trend that the Edmonton Public Library has found in its formal challenge process, however. Perhaps it is because the process requires the complainant to write answers to questions like “to what part of the material did you object?” and “was there anything good about the material?”
Although formal complaints are rare (none yet in 2008), the EPL has had formal complaints lodged against everything from Ziggy Piggy and the Three Little Pigs by Frank Asch to Rolling Stone to Mean Girls to Vue Weekly. The only material it has pulled, however, is that which is outdated or found to be, after time, factually incorrect.
“The cornerstone of public library is that we do support, promote intellectual freedom, that we represent a diverse point of view and we leave it up to the reader to decide for themselves what they want to read, to listen, to view,” says Pilar Martinez, executive director of public services. “Most times, I’ve found, when I’ve had discussions with customers and explained that we are there to represent all points of view and that ‘you, you’re the one who decides,’ they get it right away.”
That’s the inherent problem with censorship. Sure, maybe we all agree on the legal lines that Canada has drawn—banning child pornography and hate literature—but on the whole, censorship necessitates one party putting itself intellectually above another. It requires a you’re-too-fragile or you’re-too-dumb sentiment, and in Canada and around the world, there are plenty of examples where that has proven to be problematic. V
A short list of challenged books in this millennium, with the reasons given:
- Daddy’s Roommate by Micheal Willhiote: homosexual theme not suitable for children
- The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass all by Philip Pullman: undermine a belief in God; promote atheism
- The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling: wizardry and witchcraft not suitable for young readers
- The Little Black Book for Girlz: A Book on Healthy Sexuality by St Stephen’s Community House: encourages lesbianism
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: blasphemy
- Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak by Deborah Ellis: flawed historical intro to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Israeli soldiers portrayed as brutal; glorified suicide bombing
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