Decades Apart, Strikingly Similar: Book Bans, Problematic Authors & Moral Panic
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Books are simultaneously considered too dangerous to read and the industry is in a perpetual freefall because no one reads anymore. A tiny subsection of the adolescent population is viewed with suspicion (at the least) or as criminal (in the extreme). In the background of these events, people are struggling to reconcile their adoration for a popular series of children’s books with an author whose views are distressing.
Welcome to the ‘80s my friends.
Wait, which time period did you think I was talking about?
The decade of decadence was one of extremes. I wrote about the fun and irreverence found in the ‘80s music scene, now let’s explore the whiplash effect of decadence, a hyperinflation of dangers faced by society.
Panic, Panic Everywhere
I split the 1980s between grade school and high school. Being both a news junkie at a young age, which meant reading the paper every day, even as a child and a pop culture addict, see again – child of the ‘80s; my very existence was the nexus of this insanity.
Canada was responsible for exporting more than just Michael J. Fox and Bryan Adams in the decade’s early years. We were the source of a wild and dangerous conspiracy theory, disguised in a pseudoscience wrapper, that consumed the United States and even informed changes to congressional budgets.
As a Canadian, it is my sworn duty to profusely apologize for all of this. Sorry!
Lawrence Pazder & Michelle Smith, whose book Michelle Remembers, was the basis of the Satanic Panic hoax.
The Satanic Panic, as it is now known, is a fascinating example of how an entire nation got swept away by a hoax which ballooned to the point that otherwise rational people testified in Congress that they had witnessed bizarre, ritualistic behaviours, targeted specifically at indoctrinating children. Of course, they witnessed no such thing. But the sheer insanity of what ensued did cause lasting harm and demonized two unlikely groups of adolescents.
And sent me to the principal’s office.
If politics makes for strange bedfellows, try guessing who gets lumped together by a hyperbole-induced parental backlash.
Somehow both pimple-faced, squeaky-voiced barely teenage boys who spent their time playing board games and taller, though still pimple-faced, young men who listened to hard rock were suddenly seen as the perpetrators of a nationwide cult that operated in even the most remote towns.
I knew boys who played Dungeons & Dragons, and I knew the guys who listened to Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. The overlapping slice of that Venn diagram (at the time) was tiny. But the fear was real as I found out.
One recess, I was goofing around with a classmate. I think we were in grade 5, and my classmate was expressing frustration with someone who was being a jerk. I nonchalantly said we should cast a spell on them so they weren’t a jerk anymore. We joked about creating this concoction and what it would do. The bell rang and back to class we went.
The next day, the class was interrupted by the P.A. “Could Glendalynn Dixon please come to the office”.
Well, this was new.
Having never been in the kind of trouble that gets kids sent to the principal’s office, I recall being genuinely perplexed. Even more so when I got there and was ushered into a different office, it was Mme Beauchamp’s office, our school counsellor who also served as one of our French teachers. She was very stern and wanted to discuss my involvement in witchcraft.
Please, take a moment to re-read those last four words.
Seeing how serious she was I immediately attempted to clear the air. It was just two kids playing make-believe. I mean, the ingredients we listed in our pretend concoction included Crest toothpaste.
I’m no expert in Wiccan practice, but I feel confident there isn’t a spell that includes two parts eye-of-newt and one part cavity protection.
She was not having it. To this day I can see her concerned face as she relayed the perceived dangers. That it was not something to be messing around with. My only way out of the conversation was to play along, pretending I was contrite and grateful for this course-correcting discussion. I never bothered to ask how she came to learn of our make-believe moment, it didn’t really matter.
What I learned, as an adolescent, was that adults are not always very smart.
Who’s Afraid of a Big, Bad Book?
Popular discourse in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s was dominated by two books. One that was published, to great controversy and threatened bans; and one that had not yet been published, to great controversy and threatened bans.
I don’t wish to slip into hyperbole myself here, but it is near impossible to overstate the impact two fictitious tomes had on our news cycle. Fearmongering and discussions of censorship could be found in print, on the nightly news programs and, since it was also a pop culture phenomenon, the entertainment shows.
Covers for The Satanic Verses and American Psycho
And so, this is how I, along with almost everyone else, learned about The Satanic Verses and American Psycho. You couldn’t escape them. The former was decried as blasphemous by Khomeini, while the latter was decried as misogynistic and ultra-violent by Gloria Steinem. Strange bedfellows indeed! I must reiterate, American Psycho wasn’t even to be released until 1991, but censoring it was discussed before we even knew what was in it that was so bad that it needed to be censored.
Fun fact, the best way to ensure teenagers read something you don’t want them to read, is to declare it dangerous.
I could not get my hands on those books fast enough. There we were, high schoolers, still learning about existentialism via The French Lieutenant’s Woman in English class, passing around Salman Rushdie’s novel and dissecting it like we had any clue what we were talking about. None of us had even heard of him before. We had heard of Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho because Less Than Zero (his first book) was turned into a movie starring Robert Downey Jr.
Despite the supposed dangers posed to society, both books came and went. Your mileage with either novel may vary, but society didn’t collapse, at least, not due to those publications.
No One Reads Anymore
During this same time period, there was a growing concern in the publishing industry: people weren’t reading. It was actually presented, as fact, that this was the End. Of. Books. The entire industry was on the precipice of collapse. The handwringing was due in part, by statistics indicating that young adults and children simply weren’t reading as much as they used to.
Considering I had my nose in a book and was always asking for more books, this came as a bit of a surprise. My bibliophile friends and I passed books around and recommended titles and authors that we found compelling. We were teenagers, so it was a lot more Koontz, King and Andrews and a lot less Atwood, Carver and Walker. But we were reading. And learning more about the people who wrote.
Which resulted in some frank discussions, believe it or not, about a certain beloved children’s author with a questionable past. Okay, make that several beloved children’s authors with questionable pasts. Discovery is part of reading, and as teens, everyone wants to be the first person to tell someone else a new thing. A tidbit of knowledge that makes their eyes widen. And so it was with Dr. Suess and Lewis Carroll, that we traded in rumours, half-truths and over time, learned that even the creators behind our treasured childhood stories were messy creatures who said and did things we vehemently disagreed with.
I doubt I knew what ‘compartmentalization’ was at that age, but it didn’t stop me from coming to terms with the fact that I could learn about the misdeeds of the authors without it disrupting the positive memories formed while reading their books. Even today, I still find delight and wonderment in re-reading Through the Looking Glass. It is simply a bonkers, bonkers text.
On reflection, what happens next is so obvious it screams lazy writing. Except it is true.
Having survived the moral panic of the early ‘80s (and personally, having not turned into a witch), the new moral panic presented by the existence of two books was the final blow to an industry whose death was all but certain.
Until it was saved.
By a beloved children’s author.
Whose views I vehemently disagree with.
And whose stories feature a young witch attending school.
