Sunday, October 15, 2006

Censors Receive "DUH" Award


The book, The Duh Awards: In This Stupid World, We Take the Prize, has an award for censors. Read this with tongue planted firmly in cheek.






The Brotherhood of Censors Presents the _____Award For Brilliant Moments in Literary Redefinition.

Third Place: _____Theatre
In the 1990s, to keep the community safe from the onslaught of the indecent, a high school in Chehalis, Washington, canceled performances of two shocking school plays: the musical South Pacific and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Runner-up: _____Satire
Voltaire's satirical novel Candide ridiculed government authorities. In 1929 the book was declared obscene by U.S. Customs. At the same time the book was banned, it was also assigned reading at Harvard University.

And the Winner Is: _____Fantasy
Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland was banned in China in 1931 because in the story animals spoke human language.
Humans not getting the joke were declared perfectly legal by officials who didn't get it.

I wonder what China thought of Animal Farm, a much more dangerous book, in my opinion.

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