General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Does Anybody Else Have A Bad Taste In Their Mouths, Over Objections To Sexually Explicit Books ??? [View all]Chan790
(20,176 posts)I generally believe that people should not voice their opinions in which they object to books they haven't read. Their opinions are generally invalid and poorly-informed. They do little other than make the critic look like an idiot, a histrionic or both.
Through the selective use of quotes and synopsis I can make an equally-strong (or weak as the case may be) argument as the ones being made against 50 Shades in criticism of the works of Catharine MacKinnon, bell hooks, Mary Daly, Erika Jong, Audre Lorde, Monique Wittig and Kate Bornstein. One sufficient to backstop an equivalent argument that they belong on nobody's bookshelves or in the public library on the basis of their exploitative content.
I can also make them against the works of Dr. Seuss, Ernest Hemingway, Chuck Palahniuk, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, Denis Diderot, Emily Bronte, Dan Brown, Umberto Eco, and Joan Walsh.
All of those criticisms would be of equal (negligible) merit...and I've read most of those authors extensively. Literary criticism, media criticism in general, tends to be the realm of sophistry. Selective quotation and slanted synopsis allows one to use nearly anything to justify nearly anything; make any argument, no matter how absurd.
It's very easy to have strong and ill-informed opinions of media-content when you don't experience them yourself. It's easy to be led astray. How do I know that Mein Kampf sickens me? Because I read it. Not because I know who wrote it, what their opinion was on Judaism, or because someone Cliff-noted it with quotes and citations. Because I read it. Someone else didn't read it and tell me what to think of it.
Because I read. Because humanities and critical-thinking are important first-hand experiences. Because the world is full of charlatans and people seeking to advance their agendas over the low-informed--why think when you can be told what to think? Usually by malevolent individuals and entities looking to subvert your autonomy and agency by telling you how to think and telling you that you shouldn't think for yourself or have first-hand experiences to uncomfortable materials and facts when they're more than happy to tell you how you should feel. This isn't even a new tactic...it underlies a full millennium of Catholic domination of Europe from the Council of Trent to the Protestant Reformation...the Church believed that the rabble should never read the Bible because they might draw the wrong conclusions. They were scandalized by the printing press, the availability of the Bible directly led to the collapse of their religious monoculture. Because people read and realized how corrupt and astray the church had become. Information is power. Even vile and disgusting information, shitty trash-novels and purple prose about grey rape.
I'm not saying E.L James 50 Shades series isn't utter dreck and offensive to women...I'm saying that's a commentary one is only entitled to first-hand. Any other position is to parrot your own oppression. I make lots of decisions to not read things...but I generally avoid taking strong positions on things I've never read based on someone's interpretations and biases.