Currently being pulled from libraries, schools and bookshops
The Guardian has more details on the banning of Philip Dawe’s book Into the River.
Ted Dawe’s Into the River has been banned from sale or supply by the Film and Literature Board of Review (FLBR) after a complaint from conservative lobby group Family First.
It is currently being pulled from libraries, schools and bookshops around the country.
Family First objected to sexually explicit content, drug use and the use of a slang term for female genitalia.
Pussy? Cunt? Probably not twat, in New Zealand. Minge?
Whatever – using slang words for the genitalia is just that. There’s nothing wrong with it. Using them as epithets is another matter (a distinction that is lost on surprisingly many people), but it’s still not a reason to ban a book.
And it’s not just banned from sale, it’s being pulled from libraries and schools – which is a whole other level of shocking. What’s the matter with them?
Into the River won the New Zealand Post Children’s Book award in 2013 and is aimed at a teenage, largely male audience. Dawe said this audience was hard to reach.
“I have taught in secondary schools for the past forty years. Much of this time has been spent encouraging boys to read. Part of the challenge was to find books that ‘spoke’ to them. This meant books about issues that were relevant to them and written in a style that was authentic,” he said.
“There are many issues that young adults can not take to other people. They want to do their own thinking about them. There is no better, no more private medium for this than the novel.
“In this relatively safe context the teenager can navigate through issues such as race, sexual orientation, body issues, class discrimination and bullying and harassment. They can test their responses against the main characters and calibrate the differences without the need to discuss.”
But Family First doesn’t want them to think about those things. I guess FF wants them to think about family, and nothing else.
FF is 255 in hex, the last number before rollover to zero in two byte format. *
So, FF is the final sign of End of Time?
Appropriate Newspeak, anyway.
* Nevermind the carry.
The ban is temporary and the final decision is to be taken in October. Evidently, there was a controversy earlier. From one source:
For more on New Zealand’s classification system, see here.
I read also that the Christian group Family First didn’t apply for banning the book permanently but for a re-classifying it for older audiences.
So here is the most charitable reading I can think of: the board was simply unable to decide how to classify the book and the temporary ban serves as the means of buying them more time.
Classifying the book as (say) R18 would probably also mean its removal from school libraries. Actually, it is the banning from sale and all libraries that is (from my point of view) “a whole other level of shocking”. It’s very drastic even as a temporary measure – even if we see it (as I optimistically suggested) not so much as a decision, as an expression of the board’s inability to decide.
Anyway, I would be interested in reading the book!
Ophelia, almost certainly cunt. Minge wouldn’t even twitch an eyebrow and pussy would only twitch Family First’s eyebrow’s.
Rrr, you are giving Family First far too much credit.
Ariel, part of the problem here is that giving a book designed to be read by teens an R18 classification is a de facto ban. Having spent far too much time on the comments section of one of our main newspaper publishers yesterday I can conform that the overwhelming reaction to the ban has been that it is a bad thing, driven by conservative Christians out of step with modern NZ society. The commonality from the few commentators supporting the ban seemed to be “think of the 10 year olds” and “the author is old, writing about teen sex and therefore a pervert” and “these comments all confirm Christians are persecuted”.
Frankly I was shocked when I saw the headline yesterday. I couldn’t have told you when the last time a book was banned in NZ was. The last time I remember any significant debate about it I was in my teens, which makes it well over 30 mumble years. The last time I remember any real debate about the purpose of even having censors in this day and age there was actually quite a good bit of journalism where they interviewed the then chief censor. He explained how the work was carried out, the standards of assessment and how the censors work. They also showed a brief clip from a hard core porno while the censor explained the rational for banning the dvd. In that case there was no overarching narrative, no examination of motives or consequences, absolutely nothing that might be regarded as art or social commentary. It was a fuck movie in which a girl of indeterminate age (but almost certainly too young) was coerced into doing something she did not want to do. The atmosphere was threatening, unsafe and the girl was either the best actress I have ever seen or she was clearly scared out of her wits. In short it was abusive and degrading. Quite different from the run of the mill ‘reluctance’ of much commercial porn. To the NZ censors sexual violence in the absence of some kind of meaningful social commentary or narrative that justifies its use is a no no.
In the authors words, the book is really about bullying. the sex and drugs is simply window dressing to try and get the teen (boy) audience to read the book to expose them to the bigger message. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t comment on how well integrated the theme is, but given that it has won a reasonable award it is probably fairly well done.
My real problem in all this is the role of the classification board. These people are not professionals like the censors. they are private citizens. Some are nominated by interest groups. Some nominate themselves. They are appointed by a Government Minister. In this case the professional censor(s) and the lay board are clearly at odds and the head of the board has used his power to enact the temporary ban. In my view it is an abuse of power, but one that was always likely given the structure of the system. This is certainly a view shared by others, see more here. Don Mathieson QC is apparently known to have conservative social values.
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Of course, what will happen is that teenagers can download the book and lend it to their friends. These people have now made the book even more interesting to teens.
@Karmacat:
Not easily, unless there’s a DRM-free version. I haven’t come across one yet.
You can still get to the checkout stage if you try to buy the tree version from the author’s site if you happen to be spoofing in such a way that it looks like you’re in New Zealand. Not that I’d know anything about that, of course. I’ve no idea whether the transaction would go through if you actually tried to buy it in NZ with a NZ form of payment.
My boss is from NZ and is if anything a stronger advocate of books for young people saying whatever the fuck it is they say than even I am. She might turn up to the meeting this morning. If she does, I’ll ask her about it. If the sun goes out around 1104 GMT, this could easily be the reason.
I’d be really interested to hear her feedback. Even the Attorney General has made mutterings about reviewing the legislation, although being part of the conservative government we currently have I imagine that will come to nothing once the current fuss dies away.
Rob, #3:
“Rrr, you are giving Family First far too much credit.”
You are right, I hope.