Flannery O'Connor, the VIFF, and the left

SFU professor Samir Gandesha has been posting on FB about the perils of cancel culture. While himself apparently a man of the left, he is more than a bit perplexed by certain forms of censorship, writing on a post from August 5th that the "argument in a nutshell" is that:

if literature, art and music is ultimately unintelligible without historically grounded criticism and if such criticism is displaced by increasing demands for works to be withdrawn from the public sphere, or even destroyed, rather than interpreted or criticized, then the very possibility of art is called seriously into question. All that will remain is propaganda, which is to say, cultural forms with the correct "message."

In a slightly later post, he writes about the decision by Loyola University Maryland  to re-name a building previously named for the writer Flannery O'Connor, asking, "is it not the role of criticism to unearth the complexities of writers such as this?"

There have been other discussions on my Facebook feed lately - longtime Vancouver musician and Sex Bombs bassist Bob Petterson got some lively responses to a post about someone re-writing "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down" so as to be an anti-South anthem ("Tonight, Let's Drive Ol' Dixie Down" - he links this Rolling Stone piece on the revising of the song.) While my initial reaction was to disagree with the idea that the original song by the Band was in any way problematic - as people observe in the comments, it's a "character piece," a piece of fiction, though an admittedly somewhat odd one - in fact I have no real objection to the young fella in that article (no idea who he is) rewriting the song. Making new art based on old art isn't a problem, and it's a fairly inspired, of-the-moment bit of propagandizing. If the Dixie Chicks are going to drop the "Dixie" from their name, if we're gonna stop with the Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben's, if the US seems to be sliding into essentially re-fighting the Civil War (albeit in a small, shabby, and crass way) in the upcoming election, why the hell NOT turn the Band's song into an anti-South, anti-racist anthem? (Maybe we can do something, while we're at it, to address "Sweet Home Alabama," a much more problematic "redneck pride" anthem if ever there was one, what with its only slightly veiled threat of violence against Neil Young...?). There's nothing so sacred about any song that it can't be re-purposed in provocative ways - make new art based on old art; go ahead.  

But why the hell would people turn on Flannery O'Connor, like having a building named after her is somehow something to be ashamed of, a testament to racism? She's an extremely complex writer, and a bloody disturbing one at that - someone who is fascinated by spiritual innocence, but whose own writing seems at times deeply perverse. 

Take "Everything That Rises Must Converge," one of the stories of hers that has most stayed with me: in it, a young liberal man hectors his mother on a bus ride through the South on matters of race. The mother is an old-fashioned Southern Christian biddy with all sorts of problematic attitudes, which the son revels in pointing out; while she's portrayed - in typical Flannery O'Connor style - as sweet and sincere and spiritually pure, despite her problematic views - her son, despite his progressive attitudes, is portrayed as self-righteous, preening, and in love with his own voice, his progressive politic actually serving as a cudgel, a tool of his will to power. When the argument gets heated, the mother dies of a heart attack, leaving the son in a state of guilt and loss, unable to reconcile his good intentions with the fact that he's basically responsible for his mother's death (and left without her, to boot). It's among the most disturbing things I've read, because - fine psychologist that she was - O'Connor goes right to the reader's jugular: O'Connor KNOWS that the reader will find him-or-herself more in the son than the mother, but makes his righteous, preening wrath as ugly as possible, while making the  mother a sort of icon of purity and innocence. You find yourself in the story - I do - and are left feeling unclean and provoked (and a bit stunned by that ending). There's a literary analysis of the story's themes here; probably the story itself can be found online, these days. It's a highly memorable and rich experience, perverse, unsettling, and valuable. If I don't read O'Connor every day, she's up there in the shortlist of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, by me, so it saddens me to see that the left is apparently turning on her. By all means, folks, knock down those Confederate statues, and get over the glamourization of the South, but can we have a little room for nuance when it comes to literature?

I guess no one is burning her books yet, so there's that... 

Anyhow, this is all apropos the fact that the Vancity Theatre is streaming a current documentary about Flannery O'Connor. It looks like it can ONLY be seen from home, at present (and do read their disclaimers; it may not be Chrome-castable, or viewable over a HDMI hookup, so depending on your connection it might be viewable from your computer alone). Interestingly, there is a "content advisory" over, I gather, the uncensored use of the N-word in the doc:

This film contains offensive language, including an ethnic slur that—in an effort to retain the integrity of the literary works examined therein—has not been muted or otherwise distorted in the presentation of the documentary. Racist language was wrong during Flannery O'Connor's lifetime and is wrong today. This film, the filmmakers and those presenting the film do not condone, support or promote the use of racist language in any way.

It actually seems odd to me that that sort of advisory might be deemed necessary. I mean, we are all adults, and it's not like there are content advisories when the same word appears on pretty much every hip hop album ever recorded.... but, uh, better safe than sorry, I guess. Should be an interesting film!