Another Mark Runs Afoul of the Censors

Censorship is not a thing that died out with the fading of the Victorian Age or even the Hays Commission (that stifled American film content for decades). It is still alive and well in this modern age. The only change is that different stuff is getting censored.

In a recent article about the composer/performer Mark Knopfler , I closed with the news that the Canadian authorities had banned the original of the Dire Straits' song, "Money for Nothing" because it contained an offensive term for homosexuals. The only reason I agreed with their action was that they banned it from broadcast, not from album content. At that, I only agreed because, absent the ban, impressionable children would be subjected to the word's use on a haphazard basis.

No doubt, the term in question is offensive and can reasonably be considered politically incorrect, as much as that notion has been abused by our modern thought police. The same could be said of another word that appears multiple times in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That is, of course, the infamous "N-word." For any of you who have not read the book or read it recently and live in a locale where it might not be available at your public library (for that very reason), the unexpurgated tale is available on Project Gutenberg .

For a number of years, schools and libraries have banned this Mark Twain novel, even though a good many distinguished literary figures, such as Ernest Hemingway and T.S. Elliot, have hailed it as one of the greatest novels in American literature. They have banned the book, not for any radical ideas (Although who is to say that may not have been a hidden agenda, here and there.), but for the liberal use of the main racial epithet.

And, while the book has gained a little more public acceptance since the height of the censorship hysteria, it is still under somewhat of a cloud. Now it faces a different challenge. Auburn professor and Twain scholar, Alan Gribben, wants to re-publish the book, substituting the term "slave" for the far more derogatory word. After all, the main target of that expression, and maybe the true hero of the story, is Huck's friend, Jim, who starts off as the domestic slave of the prim Miss Watson. All other arguments aside, that approach will not work for the entirety of the book, since, at one point, Huck's pap denounces a free Negro-except he doesn't say "Negro."

It is not difficult to understand Professor Gribben's point. After all, the term is, if anything, more offensive today than it was at the time in which Twain's novel was set. Remember, even the likes of Abraham Lincoln-a fierce opponent of slavery-used the term informally, just because that was part of accepted English slang at the time. It most certainly is not today.

On the other hand, the professor's attempt to pervert the English of Mark Twain is every bit as ludicrous as the infamous Thomas Bowdler, who had the effrontery to publish "cleaned-up" versions of Shakespeare. Of Shakespeare! That is where we got the term "bowdlerize," and that is precisely what Professor Gribben is trying to do in his crusade, no matter how he and his followers may wish to spin it. In fact, Gribben's re-writing of the text goes so far as to substitute the word "Indian" for "Injun," when the latter is the very same word, spoken in 19^th Century white, southern dialect.

When we attempt to change the literature of our past, we are also stifling the truth about our history, not just in the case of the N-word, but anything a squeamish reader might consider offensive. To a frightened Irish boy trying to hurry through an unfriendly neighborhood in John Dos Passos' The 42^ndParallel, the danger is not being set upon by Polish-American youths, but by the Polacks. The people our side fought in the show South Pacific, were not the Sons of Nippon or even the Japanese: they were the Japs, plain and simple. Take away these words that we no longer use today, and you have significantly weakened the impact of the works they came from.

Unquestionably, it is not a good idea for a small child to be exposed to the language in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In my grade-school years, I knew the term and what it meant, but my parents had taught me it was a bad word. To have seen it legitimized in literature, at that age, would have sent a very confusing message. To those who want to ban the book from grade-schools or even middle-schools, I would be inclined to say, sure, no problem. To those who want to restrict its library access to borrowers over a certain age, I would say, that is perfectly legitimate. But to those who want to keep the book out of all but the bookstores or to change it into something it is not, I say, no, you are wrong.

Personally, I first read the book in the eleventh grade. I think, by that age, I and all my classmates were sufficiently mature, not only to deal with the racial term, but to understand the deeper messages of the story. Those who were or were not going to use that epithet in their speech were not going to be persuaded one way or another by Mark Twain.

I also found, in my stint as a substitute teacher, that the Montgomery County public schools had the students reading such excellent works as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird" and August Wilson's Fences, both of which made liberal use of the notorious N-word.

Granted, in the case of the latter work, it was black-on-black use of the word, but there it was, for all the students to read. Now the Montgomery County, Maryland, public school system-one of the best in the nation-did not put these books into the curriculum because they had a secret agenda to disrespect black people. They did so because they are great works of American Literature.

Along that same line, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Great White Hope, had the black protagonist's white enemies speaking of him in that same offensive way. Do you imagine a bunch of angry white people in 1909 were going to refer to the unwelcome new heavyweight champion as "that African-American?" Not in any play I'd want to see, and I do not care to include the N-word in my conversation at all. Even so, the play is one of the greatest indictments of racism in the history of the American stage.

This all goes back to the Canadian censors and their action on "Money for Nothing." You make the personal decision to buy a Dire Straits album, so they have left you free to do that. They only banned the song's uncontrolled use. The same thing applies to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Allowing for some action to keep the contents from very young, very impressionable children, people who take the decided steps to seek the book out and read it should be allowed to read it, and in precisely the way Twain wrote it.

It is entirely possible, even in this day and age, to believe in freedom of expression without being a racist, a homophobe or any other imagined incarnation of evil.

Sources

Online Reader - Project Gutenberg

Huck Finn, Censorship and the N-Word Controversy

Upcoming NewSouth 'Huck Finn' Eliminates the 'N' Word

The 42^nd Parallel, by John Dos Passos

South Pacific, by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II