#watched a reel about how up has always changed governments regularly

[theabstruseone]

I think there are three different discussions going on here.

Discussion One: Should art that has problematic content be allowed to exist?

This is a silly stance to take. I mean, are you saying that no story is allowed to have villains anymore? Because the villainous things that villains do in stories are problematic. Otherwise they wouldn't be villainous. So I'm not really sure what the end goal would be for someone who sincerely advocates for this.

Discussion Two: Should art that has problematic content be censored?

This one has a big more of a grey area that you might thing because of the flexibility of the word "censored". On the one side going all the way to a ridiculous extreme, this means that all art should be accessible by anyone at any time including showing hardcore pornography to small children and instructions on how to create nuclear weapons to convicted terrorists. Because to do otherwise would be censoring that art for those groups. The other extreme side is straight-up 1984/Fahrenheit 451 levels of book burning and information restriction where not only is art permanently destroyed but it's hunted down to be removed entirely from memory. I think we can agree that both of these two situations are not ideal.

Therefore, there's some middle ground where access to some art is restricted in some way so that some people do not have access to it. And there is a lot of discussion to be had as to where precisely that line should be drawn - For example, "Should it be parents deciding for their children or should some art always be accessible to them regardless of their parents' wishes?" That's a damn good discussion right there because there are benefits and drawbacks to each approach.

Discussion Three: Should art be condemned if it contains problematic content in a way that aggrandizes that content?

This one's even stickier because society and culture change. What's considered problematic today may not be problematic tomorrow (like showing an interracial couple or a same-gender couple on screen was scandalous a few decades ago but now is so benign that both show up regularly in commercials) and what is considered fine today may be problematic tomorrow (blackface, protagonists slapping women because they're "too loud", words that were common or even legal terms at the time becoming considered racial slurs).

That said, there are some pretty clear-cut cases of which I will talk about two, one of which was mentioned in the post above mine and one of which was alluded to: Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Wills.

Let me start off with a controversial statement that should not be controversial: Neither of these films are important to the history of film as a medium. I had a film professor who said we should watch Birth of a Nation because it is the first feature film ever made and thus has an important place in history. Except The Story of the Kelly Gang released in 1906 was over a decade earlier than the 1915 release of Birth of a Nation. Hell, there were TWO feature-length adaptations of Oliver Twist prior to that, one made in the UK and one in the US on top of at least a dozen other multi-reel feature-length films.

The same professor tried to say that Triumph of the Wills was important because of its innovative cinematography and editing. Which, again, bullshit. Also another claim used to justify continued study of Birth of a Nation. In both cases, neither film did anything "first". No camera angles, styles of shot, special effect, transition type, or anything else was new in either film and had been done many times before. The only difference was scale - Birth of a Nation was endorsed by pro-segregationist politicians in Washington DC and Triumph of the Wills was directly by the government of Nazi Germany. In both cases, this gave the films far greater stature than their quality warrants because they were used as propaganda for the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis.

Should these films be destroyed and removed from existence? No. That should be pretty clear from my point above. However, that does not mean they cannot be condemned nor that those who want to continue using the films in educational curricula should not be criticized. There is a distinct difference between attempting to destroy history and putting it in its proper context to be studied without promoting those works. Want to do a course on racism in film? Those are two great examples of films to teach. But if you're just doing a course on filmmaking techniques and try to pull the "Product of its time" bullshit with literal KKK and Nazi propaganda that were condemned by many at the time they were released, fuck that.

To cut my ranting about the state of film education short and get back to the point...

These are three separate discussions that are being conflated into one. This serves nobody except for those who are trying to dunk on others by "Well ackshually"ing them by jumping between discussions. Talking about the use of problematic material in a work of art is not the same thing as talking about art that serves as propaganda or otherwise promotes harmful beliefs and behavior like racism, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, ableism, and worse. Anyone arguing that any art should be permanently erased is not doing so in good faith unless they're the types that would be tossing books onto the bonfire themselves.

There are important discussions to be had when it comes to how we release and restrict access to art. Those discussions can't be had when we're not talking about the same thing.

Your personal triggers and squicks do not get to determine what kind of art other people make.

People make shit. It's what we do. We make shit to explore, to inspire, to explain, to understand, but also to cope, to process, to educate, to warn, to go, "hey, wouldn't that be fucked up? Wild, right?"

Yes, sure, there are things that should be handled with care if they are used at all. But plenty more things are subjective. Some things are just not going to be to your tastes. So go find something that is to your tastes and stop worrying so much about what other people are doing and trying to dictate universal moral precepts about art based on your personal triggers and squicks.

I find possession stories super fucking triggering if I encounter them without warning, especially if they function as a sexual abuse metaphor. I'm not over here campaigning for every horror artist to stop writing possession stories because they make me feel shaky and dissociated. I just check Does The Dog Die before watching certain genres, and I have my husband or roommate preview anything I think might upset me so they can give me more detail. And if I genuinely don't think I can't handle it, I don't watch it. It's that simple.