Art and Culture #66
Chuck Palahniuk, Maus, and the Continuing Problem of Modern Day Censorship
-For the Uncensored!
I, as a writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, am against censorship of all kinds. I have defended everyone. I believe in the right to publish, write music, or whatever you have to offer to the world. If you think Censorship can’t happen, you’re deluded or you’re eating too much soy. I did think about my opinions on Neil Young, and I never wanted him to be censored.[i] I always argued that debate would have been easier between Neil and Joe Rogan. But Joe Rogan, every single time, will not talk about it.
Maybe that’s because he doesn’t need to. Everyone else is, including myself. But considering that censoring Neil Young is a farce, because he made an ultimatum. Unfortunately, that was not his decision to make. If he had sent them a private letter and not published it in the Rolling Stones, it would have been a different argument.
I found it funny that Spotify removed him, only in the sense that he didn’t seem to bother to contact Spotify first. I felt that was completely unprofessional, and Neil Young, got it coming. So, the question is, that was self-censorship, not censorship made by a corporation. An ultimatum was made.
But censorship from a higher up, when that author or artists is not being given an ultimatum, for a paycheck is censorship. It’s not right at all. This is a tiring subject but if discussing censorship is what drives me to write articles, so be it. We both win, I guess.
But the discussion of censorship boils my blood. I was angry when Milo Yiannopoulos’s book deal was scrubbed from Simon and Schuster, because of…reasons. Basically he was alleged to have incited an online hate mob against Leslie Jones, a horrible actress in the 2016 Ghostbusters film. That was part of the problem, but also his pro-pedophilia comments, which was easily a tasteless joke at its worst. Artists like Martina Markota’s, a New York based artist, life was destroyed for being a Trump supporter, and wearing a black MAGA hat, and thus her bank account was closed, depriving her of making a living at her comic book, Lady Alchemy. So, censorship isn’t just dedicated to one side of the political spectrum. Don Bongino, for allegedly posting COVID misinformation.[ii]
Censorship is an ancient problem, as well, which has still lingered throughout humanity’s time on earth.
To bring it back to the present: A writer, Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, Survivor, Diary, Haunted, Invisible Monsters, and Lullaby[iv], has weighed in on the way China has edited over David Fincher’s adaptation of Palahniuk’s seminal cult classic Fight Club. Published on August 17th, 1996, The long and short version, a mild mannered office guy realizes there’s a club where men can be men headed by Tyler Durden, but ultimately it turns from fighting in streets, as men across America join, but also want to play pranks in order to create chaos. Resulting in the main character, is the anti-hero Tyler Durden, is the main character all along, ends up blowing up buildings as he’s too late to stop it. This doesn’t happen in the book.
What is not funny about this story is that China, a sworn enemy of the free people, edited the end of David Fincher’s film, based on Chuck Palahniuk’s book, in order to have a happy ending. It’s not only insane but the story doesn’t make any sense. As to the changes made, the main character doesn’t blow up the building, and Marla, his lover stops him, and they live happily ever after. That’s not only a bad ending but it’s worse when a flu slinging bat shit tyrannical country like China can do that. But that’s nothing new. I have covered this extensively.
Chuck Palahniuk, whose life has been strange as his fiction, stated in a TMZ interview, according to the Hollywood Reporter, on 01/26/2022, that “the Texas prison system refuses to carry my books in their libraries. A lot of public schools and most private schools refuse to carry my books. But it’s only an issue once China changes the end of a movie? I’ve been putting up with book banning for a long time.” Also, upon reaching out to the Ted Cruz website, I was redirected to an automated response of “you should contact your own representative”, so suffice to say, Mr. Cruz didn’t respond to my question regarding banned books at all.
In the TMZ interview, they state, “this reflects poorly on the [Chinese] government and it seems to me people in China know that, because it can’t be a shock to them, when they see things censored like this. So, to me, by trying to change it, they’re not doing themselves any favors.” Palahniuk argues that the Chinese government changed it to the “ending of the book, not David Fincher’s movie” but he glibs, “I don’t think that was their intention.” But he goes so far to say that the “book has been edited in order to fit how the movie ends.”[vi] Personally the book’s ending was rather anticlimactic and wouldn’t have had the same impact that film did. He still sees Tyler, in the hospital, so his illness is never fixed.
But here’s another way to think about it.
It’s not strange that Texas would ban books that they deem offensive. Do I agree with it? Fuck no, and no one else should either. As a functioning thinker, I do get that other people do. It’s still wrong. To ban Chuck Palahniuk’s books in prison is wrong, too. But if self-censorship is put upon by a writer, like Chuck Palahniuk, as if it describes in his book, to make money is that any better?
A book, if censored, altered, or even prohibited makes the book far more inviting. Authors would never invite books to be banned unless it was for marketing a book no one would care about. What any sane person would say is, a publicity stunt.[vii]
Sometimes when authors get banned from libraries, it’s for profit to boost their sales. Daddy Bruno is not going to lie to you that that doesn’t happen. It does for subpar books elevated in the publishing industry by high standards that rarely meet the quality the publishers are profusely bolstering on the back of a book. “Scary as hell” reads Stephen King quote on the back of an unnamable author you could pick out of a phone book saying he’s the next Thomas Pynchon or Joyce Carol Oates[viii]. And anything that Stephen King endorses is probably not that scary. And Ira Levin isn’t either. All legacy woke fiction writers are puppets on the end of my keyboard.
Hell, a boring book belongs in certain literary conversations. No erection, no readership, right? No book today wants to illicit a strong emotional reaction either which is why the publishing industry is dying, and no one wants to read. Self-Censorship is also why books are rarely bought either. Just ask DC and Marvel comics and see what happened when they went the Social Justice route. But that’s just an aside.
So, the thing is, Chuck Palahniuk is not wrong when he has faced censorship.
It’s not odd that nobody remembers Chuck Palahniuk anymore, because they won’t publish writers like him anymore in mainstream publishing corporations. To be honest, I’m not disappointed in Palahniuk because I don’t feel a great writer has even disappointed me.
It’s just one more drop in the bucket for another old writer who had his day pretending he’s relevant again. Otherwise, can’t wait to read your next post on Substack, and still wouldn’t want Chuck Palahniuk banned. I can still disagree and call him out just like the lamestream legacy media censoring people I know and/or respect.
But my final question to Chuck Palahniuk is simple: do you have to side with the one country who have enslaved Uighur Muslims, killed gays and lesbians, imprisoned its own people under Democratic Socialist policies, all for the sake of a paycheck? If you think so lowly of your work, then why even try and speak up for it?
Just stay silent, take the blood covered Yen, and give up whatever strength you have to defend your art from cannibalizing governments that create air born viruses to change David Fincher’s interpretation.
The second part of this now has something that relates far more to the censorship of history rather than art. Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club was meant to be a salacious thrill ride, but Maus, on the other hand, the controversy surrounding the book is based on facts through a fictional lens. Like Schindler’s List, only with mice and cats. As I question and ponder Chuck Palahniuk’s decision and criticize him too, I do the same with this next story, too.
Maus, is a graphic novel depicting the life of the authors family as mice during in the Holocaust, as the cats are German Nazi’s. It won the Eisner Award for This is another censorious act that’s totally deaf dumb and blind to history. According to the New York Post January 26th’s Evan Simko-Bednarksi reports, a Tennessee school removed it for graphic material. “The book, completed in 1991, tells the story of the author’s father and his experiences as a Holocaust survivor in comic book form. The school board cited its graphic scenes and profanity as among its objections to the reading. ‘I am not denying it was horrible, brutal and cruel,” school board member Tony Allman said of the Nazi genocide that killed 6 million Jews.”
He argued that the book should be censored to make it more palatable. “It’s like when you’re watching TV and a cuss word or nude scene comes on — it would be the same movie without it,” he said. Again this is untrue when you look at the Fight Club scenario. Clearly.
As we learned about the ending of Fight Club, where the movie is altered to fit a “happy medium” this opens the door for something more insidious. Instead of the Chinese government doing this, a school board is doing this. Just for the sake of protecting people’s feelings. Ultimately, I can say that nothing here is good about this. The Tennessee’s school board’s ultimatum, “It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids,” Allman said. “Why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy.’
Board member Mike Cochran agreed. “This idea that we have to have this kind of material in the class in order to teach history, I don’t buy it,” he said.”
So you don’t buy the Holocaust wasn’t as bad you thought it was, or you can’t look directly at the Holocaust and say, “this is bad and we need to remember this in order to teach history but not the parts that make us feel bad.” Let’s just agree on one simple issue: by covering up any work of art, to redact or change is still wrong. No matter if it comes out of Communist China or the Tennessee school system.
While Chuck Palahniuk denies the ending of David Fincher’s version to appease the Chinese government, Americans will do the same in order not to hurt people’s feelings. Because the original ending of Fight Club was anti-climactic, and also, rubbing out Art Spiegal’s work to fit a palatable subject just because you don’t like it, is also doing the same thing. In the name of good taste. Which both the Chinese government and the Tennessee school system are doing.
I find it horrible and disgusting, but Art Spiegal at least speaks out against it. Through the New York Post Article, and through CNN, Spiegal explained ““It’s leaving me with my jaw open, like, ‘What?’” he told the network [CNN], adding that its removal of the book was “Orwellian.”[ix]
So between the two authors, Chuck Palahniuk and Art Spiegal, two are very different but Spiegal defends the work. To erase history or fiction to meet any censorious need is awful, and it happens in America and in China, sadly.
And it’s still fucking wrong. At least Art Spiegal has a sense of duty to his work. As should Chuck Palahniuk, and freedom of expression. And freedom of expression can mean two different things. As seen by these two writers.
But to fight censorship takes courage. Not bowing down to censorious Communist dictatorships to grasp a huge reading market. I would rather be banned and then passed around in the underground in order to have the official view of my work. Unedited and Uncensored.
But to summarize it perfectly: Censorship is only good when it’s happening to your enemy, and not to you. And to censor someone else, is censoring yourself. So, dig two graves. For yourself, and your wallet.
. I cover this extensively here.
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[iii] No lefty has ever showed me evidence of Martina Markota’s wrong doing, other than being a Republican, and a cool person, to me. Also, the New York post does cover this here. https://nypost.com/2019/05/25/jpmorgan-chase-accused-of-purging-accounts-of-conservative-activists/.
[iv] These are my personal favorite and have yet to find any books of his catalogue that peak my interest and would definitely recommend any newbie to read first, and in no particular order.
[v] Besides if you aren’t familiar with Fight Club, the film starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter, or at least the book, that was it. If not, thanks for taking a trip down memory.
[vi] https://tmz.app.box.com/s/3px397s7dj3paegro9sipn4dffcyz3eg.
[vii] A horrible writer, like Dan Brown, can write the Da Vinci Code, an awful book, that tops the best seller list, but the Catholic Church doesn’t have that type of outreach. As far as I’m concerned the book was ass and it died because the Catholic Church wanted people to discuss the book, not banning it.
[viii] Ultimately, if anyone has read all his work other than me, congratulations, we are both in a very exclusive club.
[ix] https://nypost.com/2022/01/27/holocaust-book-maus-banned-by-tennessee-school-district/.