I know we purposely avoided the topic of Occupy Wall Street in class today, so as not to derail our conversation about "Gingerbread" and The Turn of the Screw, but the Gov minor in me can’t resist, and this is my blog post, so here it goes. I apologize in advance if anyone finds this uninteresting or irrelevant. I promise it won’t turn into (too) political a rant.
“Gingerbread” is by far my favorite of the episodes we have watched so far. (Sidenote: I am seriously a Buffy fan now. I had a 15 minute conversation with my boss about it the other day. We usually don’t talk. All I can say is, thank god Amtrak finally got wi-fi. I have some serious catching up to do over break. ) The images of the police officers raiding lockers and taking away students were scarier to me than any of the “Big Bads” we have thus far encountered. The episode incorporated the cultural fear of the other that contributed to both the Salem Witch trials and the Nazi movement. By doing so, Buffy once again proves it is much more than a typical “teen drama”- it is a legitimate gothic text in its own right.
But I want to talk about “Gingerbread” and Occupy Wall Street. Not about the mob-mentality evident in both, or whether that mentality is positive. I want to talk about books. Specifically, what happens when we don’t have them? When the police took away Giles’ books, I could feel that now-proverbial screw being turned against me. What do we do without books? From books, we get knowledge. We get to try on the world-views of people totally unlike ourselves or those we associate with. Books show us that the world is as messy as we think it is, but that others see it that way too, and there is a beauty in that. Even Buffy, completely action-oriented Buffy, acknowledges the importance of books when she says to her mother, “and maybe next time that the world is getting sucked into Hell, I won't be able to stop it because the Anti-Hell-Sucking Book isn't on the approved reading list!”
Yesterday, protesters saw the 5,554 books from the Occupy Wall Street library being destroyed by NYPD officers as they were loaded onto dump trucks. However, soon after the Mayor’s Office tweeted (yes they have a twitter) a picture of the books at a Sanitation Department garage. Sadly, not all of the books are accounted for today. Over 2,000 (and possibly as many as 4,000) books are still missing.
In today’s episode, Giles pointed out that sometimes it’s not some “Big Bad” we have to be afraid of; we are perfectly capable of destroying each other. It doesn’t matter if you think Wall Street is responsible for all our problems or you think that the Occupiers need to get a hobby. What matters is that, if we have reached the point of disagreement where we are destroying books that parents were bringing their children from all over the city to read (public libraries are seriously underfunded these days) then we may on the verge of destroying each other, just as Giles warned.
Check out the Occupy Wall Street library’s website. Some of the things in their catalogue will surprise you.
http://peopleslibrary.wordpress.com/
Claire, absolutely excellent points! I loved how you tie in the "Occupy Wallstreet" Movement and I appreciate your specific concentration on the integral relationship that "book knowledge" provides in the life of Buffy, Giles, and the rest of the Scooby Gang. Without amassing the empirical evidence to fight the "big bad," Buffy would truly be "fruitless." Though, of course, there is some mob mentality to those protestors taking part in the Occupy Wallstreet movement, I think that it would not have created such a stir or gained so many followers and media attention without the intellectual knowledge that the protestors have gained towards furthering their cause from books.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with everything you say here. I really enjoyed "Gingerbread", which up until today was the only episode of Buffy I'd not seen the end of. I've done a fair amount of research on censorship, particularly at the high school level. People don't realize it comes from all sides, liberal and conservative, teachers and parents, etc. It is scary to think that what we learn is decided by others, not by us or even by the people teaching us. I don't know a lot about Occupy Wall Street, but you have certainly intrigued me.
ReplyDeleteThere is definitely mob mentality in Occupy Wall Street. But I don't think group action is inherently bad. If someone makes an educated choice to effect change by joining movement that they believe will improve society, then more power to them. Free speech, whether in books or in public squares, is incredibily important. However, as evidenced in "Gingerbread" mobs can, and often do, go the other way.
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