So there has been a lot of outcry on
social media about the relevance of
classics, and do they have a place in our
modern literary landscape? Twitter users,
some of which terrifyingly
librarians, have taken to Twitter to
express the distaste of classic and why they will be destroying these books to make
way for more diverse content. So here is
a tweet where someone has said, "The lit
canon is white supremacy. Can't fix that
by protecting it and advocating we add
other voices. White man asks me 'who are
we going to cut? Faulkner? Sophocles? I'm
like, hell yes! Start with Sophocles! Out
with him. I just erased a lot of boredom
from your Lit class." To which someone
replied, "This week dumpsters were filled
with books that should have left decades
ago and replaced with engaging relevant
culturally diverse literature." This tweet
is particularly ignorant and feeds into
America's divisive culture that exploded
after the 2016 election, but what really
baffles me about these tweets are the
level of ignorance and narrow mindedness.
This person has stated that the lip
canon is white supremacist, which is
such a narrow view. Like many issues that
arise on social media, these people are
only looking at their own bubble within
the United States and they refuse to see
anything beyond their own backyard
classics are diverse Europeans didn't
create the format of a book which was
created by the Chinese by the way. If you
wanted a diverse classic you could read
Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji) which
is a Japanese book written over a
thousand years ago. Or you could read
Bushido, which explores the Creed of the
samurai similarly you have Romance of
the Three Kingdoms which is Chinese book
written in the 14th century. In terms of
modern classics you have authors like
Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison,
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I mean just to name a few.
These ignorant people seem to believe
that it can only be one or the other;
that we can have classics which are
apparently only white even though that's
not true, or we can have modern novels.
This notion is ridiculous and incredibly
narrow-minded. I mean, diversity is
defined as a range of different things.
So when the Twitterati
get on their high horse and go full
kylo Ren.
Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.
It flies in the face of
everything that diversity stands for.
Diversity should be about exposing us to
new ideas it should never be about
suppressing the old ones. But one classic
that these twitter users need to read is
Fahrenheit 451. Granted a classic by a
white man, but still it is no less
relevant to the alarming trend of cyber
and sometimes literal book burning
that's going on on social media.
So for those of you don't know Fahrenheit 451 is a book by Ray Bradbury which follows
the story of Guy Montag: a fireman living
in the Midwest. But in this world firemen
don't put out fires; they start them.
Books of any kind are banned in this
world, and if someone has found exposing
themselves to the ideas within the books
and their homes are burnt (hence the
title because 451 degrees Fahrenheit is
the temperature that paper burns) but
despite this Montag is fascinated with
books and has been keeping a collection
of them in his own home; a situation that
will get him into a lot of trouble down
the line. Like Orwellian classics such as
1984 and Animal Farm, this book has some
alarming parallels to the current
literary landscape.
Cold War connections
To understand the importance of this
book and how it relates to today you
need to understand the political
landscape at the time. Fahrenheit 451 was
originally published on October the 19th
1953 this was, at the height of the Cold
War, and everybody was on edge about THE COMMUNISTS!
Hollywood fed the panic machine with a
series of anti-communist propaganda
films denouncing anybody who believed in
the communist ideals.
you won't have to worry about next year. The state will do your planning from now.
On everything is fine everything is fine everything is
fine. It was a time of fear and paranoia,
with the government monitoring people
they believed to be communist sympathizers.
"In a series of dawn raids FBI agents
swooped down on communists indicted on
charges of advocating the violent
overthrow of the government." Which makes
you wonder if silencing a bunch of
loudmouth trolls is really worth giving
up our freedom of speech? And works of
fiction. Works of fiction such as Robin
Hood, Henry David Thoreau's Civil
Disobedience and John Steinbeck The
Grapes of Wrath were banned for the
ideas that they preach. This bares a
shocking resemblance to the exact
behavior that we see on Twitter with
people suggesting that anybody who
enjoys classics are something to be
feared while people who read YA, which
almost exclusively preaches one side of
the political spectrum, are enlightened
and considerate. Some even suggest that
those who enjoy Catcher in the Rye are
misogynists which stems from the notion
that you have to identify with a
character rather than empathize with
them, or simply be intrigued by the
premise and theme. I mean, I think the
Sopranos is brilliant, but I'm hardly
gonna go out and become a mobster.
The book community on Twitter has seen this with the rise of canceled culture and
mobs that dictate which books people
should read titles like Veronica Roth's
Carve the Mark and Rainbow Rowell's
Eleanor and Park were branded as racist
and people demanded their immediate
cancellation with little regard to the
context of the story or the greater
statements it was making about the time
periods that they are set. Fahrenheit 451
even serves as a time capsule itself
that preserved the paranoia and hysteria
of the Cold War, but at the same time it
serves as a reminder to not let this
happen to our own Society; advice that,
sadly, wasn't taken. Censorship and Media
Monopoly. Books are a major symbol in
Fahrenheit 451 they stand for ideas and
independent thought looking at a book
such as Eleanor & Park could be seen as
racist because of the way that the
characters react to the half-korean Park
and his family, but the book is set in
1986 and obviously that comes with a
whole different set of beliefs.
These ideas are antiquated but they are
worth pointing out in contrast against
our current beliefs of what constitutes
racism, but context and intention are
thrown out the window; instead people
will respond with, 'this idea offends my
sensibilities, therefore nobody should
read it!' but a YA audience in 2020
would never have experienced that kind
of racism so. If a book is going to delve
into racism, it could give them a
snapshot of race relations in the late
80s; a time in which they weren't even
alive to experience it themselves.
To that end, books should be free to
explore themes and highlight humanity in
all its facets and also demonstrate how
we as a species are evolving. Books can
do this, and while movies and video games
and comic books can all explore this,
books have a unique power in exploring
these themes, and that is why they stand
as a symbol for independent thought in
this book. To quote the great Dolly
Parton, "If you can read you can find
books on anything you want you can self
educate. Even if you can't afford to go
to school." And in schools we are so often
taught what to think rather than how and
universities have proven to be the worst at this.
I'd like to endow a department of  nuclear plant management.
Wonderful, of course we
can't do nuclear.
Our students are highly entitled wusses.
You'd be creating a
space for violence to happen.
Only those who pursue reading independently and outside of their own comfort zone can
allow themselves the time and
information to critique and form their
own opinions rather than spewing
rhetoric, but within this story that's
the way the government likes it. These
firemen the go around burning books are
not just destroying the ideas within.
They are also suppressing independent
thought they want their people dumb and
malleable, and they will set out to take
down anybody who stands in their way.
Sound familiar? Technology and the Real
Housewives of Fahrenheit 451. Technology
has made our lives so much easier. Simple
tasks like cooking and cleaning are
immensely improved from 100 years ago,
but in Fahrenheit 451, technology is seen
as a tool of oppression and a means of
dumbing down the greater populace.
In the book, Montag is coming home and
he is bombarded with loud advertising in
an attempt to drown out his thoughts and
beat him into submission in this
material world. This is clearly evident
in some real-world marketing campaigns
to so many advertisers now gives the
impression that they care about serious
issues only to give generic statements
that improve the image of their brand.
Take Apple for example who released a
series of commercials for their latest
iPhone they stated that the information
on your phone was private and should
only be for you. The problem is that they
can believe all those things while still
mining your data, but the problem here is
that so many people would just see that
and say, "Oh, so it's okay because Apple
doesn't mine our data." But they never
said that, and this is what happens. This
is the trickle-down effect of when you
have a society of people who are not
encouraged for critical thinking they're
not encouraged to think outside of the
box. And Apple in the 2000s is a prime
example of what Bradbury is talking
about with commercialism. While it might
have died down somewhat everybody was
crazy about the iPhone in the 2000s and
and we all had to get them even though
they had features that the previous
phones had several generations ago but
hey it's an iPhone! People would line up
for days to be the first person to buy
them all the while the real issues going
on in the world were completely
forgotten. Now obviously I'm not
suggesting that people need to be
constantly worried about the real issues
in life 24/7 because that would just be
exhausting and nobody wants to be around
that person. But this does highlight how
people concern themselves with trivial
things and avoid the bigger issues again
the book community on social media is
guilty of this too. It spent days talking
about whether a monthly subscription box
should have include penis shaped soaps,
even though it really doesn't matter. But
that's why people latch on to a drama
that's so easy to break down because
generally you don't have to pick a side,
so much someone will say something and
you'll say, "That's terrible." But the other
thing is if you make it in black and
white terms, your answer of how to fix it
is going to be super easy. You can say,
"Well we just won't do this," but there
will be more to an issue than that maybe
not the dicksoapgate but with real
issues. Yes. We also see the dramas fade
and people don't seem to care about them
once they stop being trending like take:
for example we see the drama surrounding
Rainbow Rowell the author of Eleanor and
park that completely disappeared when
she had a new release that was a sequel
to one of her most popular books.
Now, obviously I'm happy that the drama went away because it was unfounded, but it
just demonstrates that these drums don't
mean anything to people because they
don't continue on with it and then they
just turn around and throw it away once
it's not popular once it's not what
everyone else is talking about, which
brings me to another character in the
story which is Guy's wife Mildred.
She is a representation of this kind of
personality she spends her entire life
consuming entertainment in the power a
room which is made of three walls that
are filled with screens and in one scene.
Mildred actually asks guy if they can
get a fourth. Now this could easily be
equated to something like reality
television in the dumbing down of
society we are given series like The
Real Housewives which have treated us to
these brilliant kernels of wisdom
You better preach now right.
Fabulous. Gone with the Wind fabulous.
Okay, I thought about it. Get f*cked!
And if Fahrenheit 451 was set in 2020 Mildred
would totally be watching The Real
Housewives, or like Keeping Up with the
Kardashians or something, but there is a
new introduction into the parlor within
the book Mildred is given a script and
all of a sudden it has become
interactive and on that level it
represents people's addiction to drama
on social media. This is the problem with
social justice as a pastime, people are
fixated on trending topics but once
they're not trending very few people are
left to talk about it and so you end up
with a platform that becomes about the
drama rather than about making any kind
of actual change, which in and of itself
seems like a form of diversion. And I
think also an important thing to mention
would be the fact that when Mildred is
participating in this interactive parlor.
She is given a script of what to say and
I think that's indicative of social
media too because you are given a script
you... You need to repeat what everyone
else is saying which is kind of like the
sheep in Animal Farm but that's a whole
other video! And if you go off script
then it doesn't work and then people
will people will not be happy with you
because you're expressing a new idea and
so if you're not actually discussing
anything... You're not actually making any
kind of change. Then it seems like it is
really only a form of diversion to take
away from more serious issues or at
least the process of fixing the serious
issues that you're talking about. The
Removal of Reality. The big problem that
this creates in a social media vacuum is
the kind of rewriting of history. Every
story regardless of the time and place
it was written or sets should have the
sensibilities of the current year. We
said there's a lot in young adult
fiction, which kind of makes sense
because grounding a book in modern
sensibilities does make it more
accessible to a younger reader, but at
the same time the world hasn't always
been this way within living memory there
have been many shifts in our evolving
society. And so if the books are going to
be set in a different time period it
should demonstrate the beliefs of that
time period while having a modern
analysis of them. But this has also
created an alarming trend on social
media where people will use these
fictional stories to discuss real world
issues as if they are real stories and
while art can and should imitate life it
should be noted that novels are
primarily for entertainment, which
means that even if it is based in fact
some things will change to make the
story more interesting and sometimes
they will change the story completely.
Now I'm obviously not beyond the irony
that I am using a fictional book to
highlight issues within our society but
the difference is I use this book as a
reference for real-world issues but then
I also back it up with examples from
real life. So if you only take one thing
from this analysis let it be this when
we approach a book movie video game or
even a singular tweet we should always
be considering what is the endgame here.
What does the racism in the book achieve
does it push negative stereotypes to
belittle one race? Or is it a commentary
on a different time or culture? Does that
gay character represent a gay person
from a different area or a different
time period? Take for example this scene
with Betty White from Bringing Down the
House. On the surface it would seem like
an edgy joke about racism that is making
a lot of a very serious problem in the
United States but if you scratch beyond
the surface people are laughing at her
not the minorities so while social media
could easily find reasons to banish this
from history due to its racist
depictions, there is no evidence to
suggest that the film itself has racist
motives. The story as a whole doesn't
view black people as inferior; only that
character does. When you consider this a
lot of the dramas that happen on social
media fade away and the real issues
become far more pronounced. So these are
just a few of the ways that our society
is resembling the world of Fahrenheit
451. If you have not read this book I
would absolutely recommend that you read
it it is great book. It's not very long
either.
So hopefully you like this video if you
would like to see more deep dives, give
it a like, share, subscribe, do all those
amazing things, and as always I will see
you guys in the next video.
