On Censorship, Then and Now
A look at horror in the 70's, and a question for my readers
Good evening.
If you’re new here, welcome. This is Book Burn, the section of Kindling where I discuss books, media, and censorship. Typically I pick a work from the most banned books list, but occasionally I’ll write more broadly about the subject.
Today’s post is one of those times.
On New Year’s Eve I was tired. My intentions of making it until midnight faded with each passing hour, and by around eight, I had resigned myself to a decent bedtime. My children were not on board. They’re finally old enough to want to participate in the midnight countdown. So I did what all American mothers west of Eastern Standard Time do. I turned on the countdown in Times Square.
I missed it by a minute. Such is life when you’re me. But we talked about the ball drop (something they had never seen or heard about) and we watched a few minutes as some young, close shaven gentlemen announced 2024 with enough manufactured glee to make me feel like I’d eaten a bucket of sugar. It was sponsored by Planet Fitness apparently. What exactly was being sponsored I’ll never understand. (They don’t, like, own 2024). It reminded me of last summer, when we went to see the local minor league soccer team play, and were reminded with each yellow card and penalty kick that it was brought to you by _____ (insert alcohol brand or law firm). Sigh.
But Times Square was not always the tourist thirst trap, known for its bright lights and commercial aesthetic. I learned that last week, when I watched a documentary on Netflix about a serial killer I had never heard of. He committed his spree of crimes during the 70’s, murdering prostitutes in Times Square. A large portion of the docuseries focused on painting the picture of what Time’s Square represented then.
It was a dangerous place with a burgeoning porn and peep show industry. Pimps and Johns ran the streets, and mob money funded the clubs. There were girls, girls, girls. It was an electric time to be in the city. There was a grit to it, a feeling of reality in contrast to the sugar coated advertisements you might see on billboards now. And it was also crime ridden, a dark place where you might be robbed or assaulted, raped or murdered.
The 70’s was also a time when horror was breaking boundaries, popping up in the mainstream cultural conversation through icons like Stephen King, and on-screen smash hits like The Exorcist and Jaws. When I read King’s early works, like Carrie or The Shining, it’s evident that there was room for experimentation, a kind of daring look at the darker threads that make up our human ambitions and tendencies. It’s something that I have to admit seems to be missing from modern horror novels.
It was a different time.
That’s something I’ve heard from the people who lived through it many times. The Vietnam War was still fresh. Inflation was high and optimism was low. The horror written then reflected, as it always does, the simmering discontent and fears of the society at large. The breakdown of the nuclear family, rising divorce rates, and the abandonment of religion as the center of American culture resulted in stories of demon possession, the creation of the first slasher movie, Black Christmas, where people behaving badly (if you know slashers, you know this means sex), are always punished.
I’ve heard horror described as the most moralistic of genres, something that might come as a shock for those of you who aren’t familiar with the stories. Is it any surprise that at a time when society was in flux, establishing new boundaries and exploring forbidden territories, horror arose to meet that curiosity with a wagging finger.
What about the devil? Isn’t he still real?
The nightly news bore horror stories of its own. Some of the most horrific and notorious serial killers also arose during that time. Was it media attention? The rise of Quantico’s psychological profiling in police forces across the country? Or some type of reaction, a symptom of a societal sickness making its way through rural highways, quiet suburbia and crowded cities alike?
I’ll be honest with you. I’ve pined for the days when writers and artists could write in a way that I consider more bold, when publishers seemed more daring, more willing to take on an edgy story. The world around us can feel quite padded, baby-proofed and sanitized, something that doesn’t lend itself to good art, and certainly not good horror stories (or any stories really).
But I have to say, when I look back and see where that came from, the reaction to the new and dangerous world that emerged from the America of the 50’s, I wonder at myself. Do I want that world, the gritty Gotham-like existence of those days? It seems the people benefitting most were the porn producers and the men selling women on the streets of Time’s Square. (This is not a knock against sex workers. It’s an observation that the time for those women was terrible.)
In this day’s cultural conversation, where freedom and safety seem at odds with one another (and maybe those two always are at opposite poles), where does the artist land? What boundaries are being pushed? Have you read that book lately, the one that confronts us and pushes back against our hypocritical beliefs? Was The Exorcist asking, are you sure you don’t believe in God? Who then will fight the devil? Was Jaws daring us to see what happens if we venture too far into open ocean? Don’t King’s early novels make us look twice at quiet towns with their hidden evils?
And if those films, those stories were asking society to pause and think about where it was going, what do we pose to the culture now? If I had to ask the question myself, in the midst of one of the most insular and self-righteous moments in history (at least online), it would be this: when was the last time you looked in the mirror? Did you only see good shining back in those eyes?
What do you think the stories of our time are asking now? Is the modern demand for a type of ideological purity (i.e. believe as I do or else) limiting the expression we see in books, film and media today?
Talk to me people. I always love to hear from you.
I've been wondering how much of the concept of "safe literature" that I've subconsciously accepted and has made its way into my work. As a result, as I work on new stories, I'm consciously looking for places to push boundaries.
I don't try to disturb peoples' sensitive natures, but I can't write a story if I have to restrict myself to the norms and principles of today's ethics and morals. It just doesn't sit right with me. I write stories about the past and I don't hold back. I'm a white man who has lived a 'Tom Sawyer' life, as far as my wife is concerned. (Hers? Not so great.) I had no adversity of any sort. I grew up innocent and naive. But that's not what I remember about growing up. I remember watching Kennedy's funeral; I remember Eisenhower's funeral when Omar Bradley stood in front of his coffin and saluted. I remember the Civil Rights Movement; Martin Luther King; water cannons and dogs set on innocent Black marchers. And I remember watching the Vietnam War on television. I remember a Monk sitting in the middle of the street and setting himself on fire. I write about the hatred I witnessed. I remember every story my mother told me about growing up as a kid in Holland and the Germans invading. She would have been 100 this coming February. The lives we lived back then are the basis for the horror tales we live today.
Don't expect me to write anything modern.
I'm not stuck back there, but I don't want the world 'now', to forget what it was like back then. Sure, there was hatred and war and civil strife and political strife, unrest and uprisings -- life hasn't changed that much as far as hating each other goes. And because of that, there will always be stories. But we told the truth. We didn't hold back because it was going to hurt your feelings. We were a generation that was raised by "The Greatest Generation." They used to name Generational Epochs with titles. The Lost Generation; The Greatest Generation; The Silent Generation; the Baby Boom Generation; Generation X.
The Greatest Generation survived the Great Depression and fought in the Second World War, and Korea. They had honour and believed in Causes with a capital C. They went to the moon. They were born between 1901-1927. They were my parents' generation.
What do the people today, of the later generations, think of the older generations? Generation X; Millennials; Generation Z; and now the Alphas? These are the ones denying the past my parent's generation fought and died for. They believe the Holocaust was a myth? They deny the very history I witnessed. The generations of today will cancel someone because he says something offensive, or sexist. The world today is all censorship. They tell you what books you can or can not read; what you can and can not say. That history didn't happen the way we say it did. They give us shows like "Bridgerton", and "Dodger," with a racially diverse cast, not because that's how it was, but because someone said it should be fair representation.
I'll keep writing what I like.