Should Consumers Be Allowed to View Edited Movies?

VidAngel is a company in the business of “renting” movies that have been filtered to remove objectionable content. I’ve used their service in the past, as I prefer not to watch movies with profanity, sex scenes, and sadistic violence. If you want to better understand my thinking about this, please read my previous article “Should a Novelist Write Characters Who Use Profanity?”

Anyhow, VidAngel is now navigating the expected lawsuit brought against them by some big media companies. As far as VidAngel’s fundamental legal arguments, this short video covers it pretty well:

 

ARK — 2 March 2017

 

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Why I Don’t Read Professional Book Reviews

That’s a provocative title, I know. The truth is that I don’t actually refuse to read professional book reviews. But I seldom do, and I’m about to explain why.

For one thing, I do have time to read books, and lots of them. But I don’t have time to read a lot of what is written about books.

I’m certain many readers of books don’t read book reviews for that same reason. But not having time in itself is a lame justification for not paying attention to professional book reviews. However, there are also two important reasons why I place limited value on professional book reviews:

1. First, professional book reviewers make their livings writing book reviews, and that fact colors their writing about the books they read. They have motivation to write what they are ‘supposed’ to write about the latest literary sensation. But also, they have to pan a certain portion of the books they read. If a reviewer likes all the books they read and that’s what they say in their reviews, what use are they? So they have to pooh-pooh a certain number of books to justify their existence.
2. My second reason won’t matter to many readers, but it explains my motivation for placing a low priority on professional book reviews: Most reviewers have to tow the line on current literary trends. That means they don’t comment on elements of books that I need to know about: Does the book contain explicit sex scenes, sadistic violence, or extensive profanity? (See “Should a Novelist Write Characters Who Use Profanity?“) I told you this point wouldn’t matter to many readers, but it does to me, and professional book reviewers have to ignore such considerations or risk the disdain of mainstream luminaries.

All that said, I will occasionally read a book review in a publication such as The New Yorker, or at least a portion of such a review — often such reviews are insufferably long. But more often I will pay the greatest attention to ratings and reviews on Amazon, where I can find out what I really want to know: Is this a terrible book, and does it contain a lot of swearing? Thanks for letting me know. I’ll find something else to read.

ARK — 18 August 2014

 

 

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Should a Novelist Write Characters Who Use Profanity?

I ran across the following passage from Kurt Vonnegut’s Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage (1999), a passage which in turn is from a letter Vonnegut wrote to someone who objected to one of his novels:

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

I see some good reasoning here. Recently, someone took offense because a racist character in one of my stories used a racial slur. I was puzzled as to what else I could have done, as the scene in question took place among a group of young white boys in the southern U.S. in the mid-1960s, and there is no doubt that a racist teenager would have used a racial slur, however reprehensible that might have been.

For me as a writer, though, the issue of profanity presents a dilemma — I mean profanity that relates to sex and other bodily functions. I want my stories to be believable, but I don’t use profanity in my daily life (well, ‘hardly ever,’ as the Captain of the Pinafore might say) and neither do my Christian friends or family members. I don’t wish to influence anyone else to use profanity and I don’t wish to be influenced to use profanity by the content I consume. So for the most part, I prefer to use strategies that allow me to write fictional accounts that don’t (or hardly ever) involve profanity.

As far as what I read, I have read Vonnegut in the past, as well as many other popular and literary authors. I read fiction every day and love it. I have frequently abandoned a novel because of the profanity of the narrator or a character. On the other hand, I have sometimes tolerated a certain level of coarse language in order to benefit from an otherwise excellent piece of fiction.

ARK — 22 September 2013

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