4
votes
How to save the novel - self-censorship and problematic language in modern fiction
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- Title
- How to save fiction
- Authors
- Niamh Mulvey
- Published
- Jun 20 2021
- Word count
- 1288 words
I feel like I have a very different idea of what sensitivity reading does - I'm not surprised that they "missed" the joke. Sensitivity reading is usually more focused on stereotypes and inaccurate representation. When employed by authors, it's not self-censorship- it's just another stage of research, informed by personal experiences that they don't have themselves.
For example, I recently read a book set partially 1,000 years from now, and the author asked two sensitivity readers to look over her work when disability turned up. Why? Because she wanted to be accurate when describing certain disabilities, and because she was creating a utopia of sorts - so she found it helpful for her accidental biases to be pointed out because they don't exist in her imagined future.
Is this... Bad? If someone wrote a book that portrayed my illness, I would hope it would be accurate and not perpetuate harmful stereotypes. A character saying that my illness is fake would be realistic - an author validating that opinion in their narration or plot would be extremely harmful. And I don't mean that I would be offended. I mean that it would reinforce a belief that affects patients' ability to access healthcare, find sympathetic friends, and get medical research funded - in real life. I already have to deal with people thinking I'm not really sick because of opinion articles written by psychologists. I'd hate to have to deal with it because a popular book had a character like me that was exposed as "faking it."
This is a really good point. A lot of people pretend that media doesn't influence cultural attitudes that, in turn, influence actions and even policy!
CW reference to suicide
Yeah - and it's also a matter of what percentage of representation is bad/inaccurate. This is true for a lot of identities, but I can speak on disability - it's is rarely seen in media, and often when it is it's portrayed as a tragedy or an obstacle to be overcome (or fake). There's a reason strangers are comfortable telling wheelchair users that'd they'd kill themselves if they ended up in a wheelchair, or think nothing of yelling at a wheelchair user because they stood up briefly. These stereotypes are ingrained and constantly reinforced, and they affect how disabled folks are treated.
Yeah, one of my best friends is an ambulatory wheelchair user and we've had no end of trouble with their building supervisor, who basically seems to think the wheelchair is, like, a cosplay prop or something and doesn't put much effort into things like, you know, keeping the elevators running. It's extremely aggravating.
This is an unnecessarily grandiose title for a ridiculously narrow viewpoint. Sure, I (an ethnic Jew) don't think it makes a lot of sense to care that much about an off-color Holocaust joke. On the other hand, I don't think it's reasonable to criticize a publisher for making a decision they think will help them sell novels - that's not a new phenomenon. If you want to criticize that, you need to consider all such decisions, like the decades of publishers being unwilling to publish queer literature. Or, even better, criticize the system that forces authors to pander to the masses - or publishers - in order to make their art a living.
What I think makes this interesting is that it's retroactive censorship by the authors themselves, independent of publishing houses that have always been terrible.
There's a broad (and true!) idea that the Western world as a whole has been getting better at avoiding censorship and self-censorship. Regressions like these, though, however small they are compared to censorship in the past, I still think are concerning.