“Eight swear words and the image of a woman” naked. This is what motivated the choice of a school in Tennessee, in the United States, to blacklist the comic strip Maus, a major work by Art Spiegelman on the Holocaust. After a unanimous vote in mid-January, the ten members of the board of directors of McMinn County Schools thus banned from their school curriculum a book considered a monument to historical comics, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. .
“There is gross and objectionable vocabulary in this book”, explained the director of the school, Lee Parkinson, opening the meeting intended to discuss the use of the book for students at the end of college. specifying to have “consulted the lawyer” of the school, the principal announces that “The best way to correct or master the vocabulary in this book is to modify it so as to remove the eight swear words and the image of the woman” which has been reported by some council members.
A position immediately supported, according to the minutes of the meetingby one of them, Tony Allman, who denounces a content “vulgar and inappropriate”. “In schools, as educators, we don’t need to allow or even promote this sort of thing”, he believes, pointing out that the book “shows people hanged, others killing children”.
The book in question tells the story of Art Spiegelman’s father, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz. Its content ? Black and white drawings where mice represent the Jews, and cats, the Nazis, to tell the hell of the extermination camps during the Second World War. The comic strip has earned its author worldwide fame and has established itself in several countries, such as France, as a classic of the “duty of memory”, to the point of appearing in school curricula.
The Mcminn County School board in Tennessee just voted to ban a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holo… https://t.co/kbPcTc0ojf
After a long debate on the deletion of the words deemed reprehensible by the members of the council, the latter finally acted that an outright ban on the comic strip was preferable, in particular because of the problems linked to the copyrights posed by a modification of text.
Plea for the pedagogical interest of the book
Two pedagogical managers from the school, consulted by the board of directors, nevertheless tried to convince the assembly of the pedagogical interest of the work of Art Spiegelman for the students. “There is nothing pretty about the Holocaust. To me, [ce livre] is a good way to tell a horrifying moment in history”insists for example Julie Goodin, former professor of history. “I would hate to deprive our children of the opportunity this book represents”she pleads, considering it necessary to specify:
“Are these big words going to be taught as vocabulary words outside of this book? Of course not. »
She is supported by her colleague Melasawn Knight. For the latter, the use of a sometimes harsh vocabulary was a way for the author to portray the horror of the situation and to convey the message more implicitly. “We think it’s a valuable book, and most of the officials here have read it”notes Mr. Knight.
The arguments, however, remained inaudible to the members of the council. Mr. Allman replies that he does not “don’t deny that it was [évoquant le génocide des juifs] horrible, brutal and cruel” but that the book, according to him, needs neither swear words nor “nudity scene” to serve his purpose. Before claiming that Art Spiegelman “was illustrating Playboy ». “And we let him do illustrations in books for children in primary school”he wonders, while the discussion focuses on the use of comics in the program for students corresponding to the 4and.
“I hear that children see worse on television, and maybe at home, but we are talking about words which, if they had been uttered by a pupil in the halls, would have earned him a punishment, and rightlyargues Mr. Allman. And we would continue to use this book in our teaching even if it means going against our rules? »
“Indoctrinate Children”
Another council member, Mike Cochran, agrees. “We talk about teaching ethics to our children, and this book starts with the father and the son talking about when the father lost his virginity. It wasn’t explicit but it’s there”, he assures. ” We can teach history to students (…)we can tell them exactly what happened, but we don’t need nudity and all that other stuff”, he continues. Mr. Cochran makes particular reference, in his indictment against the book, to the drawings – the only ones featuring human characters – representing the razor blade used by the author’s mother to cut her veins, and the half-scarred body. naked of the latter, lying in a bathtub after his suicide.
Mr. Cochran goes further, lambasting the school’s entire curriculum, which he believes is designed to “normalize sexuality, nudity and normalize vulgar language”. “If I was trying to indoctrinate someone’s children, I wouldn’t do it any other way”he concludes.
As pointed out the british daily Tea Guardian, the sentence finds a particular echo in a context where conservative groups are stepping up campaigns in the United States to purge school libraries of books they deem unsuitable – even dangerous – for children. These books, denounced as being “of a sexual nature” Where “propagate radical ideologies”, mostly deal with racism, the LGBT+ cause (or quite simply sexual orientation) or minorities in general.
Tennessee has ‘obviously gone crazy’
The author of Maus, Art Spiegelmann, reacted on the American channel CNBCsaying to himself “quite confused” by decision of McMinn County Schools. “I was dumbfounded and said, ‘What? »details the 73-year-old author, who called the school’s board of directors a“Orwellian”.
” I’ve met so many young people who… learned things from my book », regretted Mr. Spiegelman, for whom the State of Tennessee is “obviously gone mad”. According to him, “Things are getting really, really bad over there.”
The state of Tennessee, CNBC recalls, has, since 2000, always been won by Republican candidates for the presidency of the United States. In 2020, Donald Trump won McMinn County with nearly 80% of the votes cast.
Other comic book writers, such as the British Neil Gaiman, author of the series Sandmanreacted strongly on Twitter. “There is only one type of person who would vote to ban Mauswhatever they call themselves these days., did he write on the social network.