The ABCs of Book Banning

If you want your kids to be weak, small minded, full of fear, full of hate for the "others" that are "not like them", you ban books. If you want your kids to repeat the most heinous atrocities in history, you ban the books that can teach them the lessons that need to be learned and understood. If you don't want your children to be more intelligent, more empathetic or more intuitive than you, you ban books.

This short documentary is merely putting voice to the children who are being deprived of history, biography, fantasy, imagination, other points of view, understanding your neighbor, understanding themselves. SO SCARY!!

I watched this to see if they had anything new to say about the subject, my skepticism wasn't disappointed. The idea that books are banned is a modern progressive piety when the boomer "banned books" reading list is required syllabus reading, and even that has under their influenced waned to the point where it is more likely a kid has read Harry Potter than 1984, never mind anything harder like Solzhenitsyn.

The books in the documentary are all found in big box stores, "my 2 gay penguin dads", they are so not banned they are corporate approved, we are long past the point where Tipper Gore was putting warnings on rap music in Walmarts. It boils down to this, they are not afraid that children won't be exposed to the distilled thoughts of great thinkers through the ages, they are afraid they won't be exposed to what is little more than dumbed down coomer self affirmation ideology, selfie culture grade affirmation literature of crass self obsession and nothing higher.

None of this is about teaching kids how to think, but its the idea of the kid who reads, the kid who repeats the correct opinions for the pleasure of their librarians or teachers.

It was too much to hope this would have some critical examination, at 26 minutes it just flips from quote to quote from their book selection like a chain of tiktoks no depth at all, a low bar for agitprop in 2023.

What an amazing short film!!! I am just enthralled and amazed by Grace Linn, who was 100 years (young) when she stood up and shared her feelings and opinion about book banning. I was equally impressed with the children that were interviewed. Knowledge is power; there never should be a ban on a book. Doing so allows the word to have power over you.

I almost want to start a book club that has one primary goal - to read and review banned books and then make them available to anyone, but especially children, who want to read them.

We must learn from our past. The only way to do that is to read. I was very impressed with this short documentary and it deserved the Oscar nomination.

It's yet again one of these shamelessly partisan movies that only care about out-agreeing each other. I am not an American, not even a Westerner for that matter, but I strongly agree that any access to knowledge should never be banned. And while I might find myself on the same side as those who made this movie, I can't ignore it when you make such a hackish movie that serves as nothing more than a cheer piece for your own people. It's not going to change minds if the approach taken is as shallow as this.

I knew nothing about the 'book banning' in America prior to watching this documentary and was surprised that such a thing can even take place in a country where freedom of expression is such a cherished right. Imagine then looking into it and finding out that the 'book banning' they were screaming about is not actually 'book banning' in the traditional sense of the word, but just not including it as part of the curriculum for children. Not saying this makes it right, but there is CLEARLY a difference between that and actual book banning, and the willingness to conflate the two just speaks to the dishonesty of the film.

If I am to watch a movie that champions my side, I would want it to be as honest and sincere about its goals and offer convincing arguments to change the minds of those opposed. And that takes a lot of integrity and introspection. Imagine if the side in favor of all the book banning made a similar documentary using kids to talk about how they wouldn't want to read such and such books and therefore should be banned? Or take a single horrible sentence from each book as an example that these books deserve to not be anywhere near children? Yes, that is the exact level of simple-minded dishonesty going on here. What a shamelessly partisan movie.

I don't understand why this is even nominated by the Oscars. Disappointing. It was a highly politicized topic that is poorly introduced, partially represented, with unartful execution. A shallow, senseless propagandistic piece of self-entertainment.

Without holistically introducing the problem of "book banning" and providing scientific arguments to both sides of the problem, the film cut straight into getting some well-rounded children on footage to sway the emotionally inclined public. Nothing substantial there, barely even representational. Same with the slide-by-slide enumeration of "banned" books with some superficial quotes. It was like watching a PowerPoint. Seriously. A YouTuber can do better than this.

I sensed no scientific nor artistic spirit in this piece of slideshow of a film. The biggest failure about it as a documentary- it's neither provocative nor informative.