Overshadowed by Controversy: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Fanny Hill]]'' is well known for having been a subject of obscenity tests and for having been banned in America from inception until a 1966 Supreme Court case ruled that the book has redeeming social value. When it was published in 1748, it got the author arrested on obscenity charges.

* ''[[Lolita]]'' is unfortunately more famous for the controversy that surrounds it than the actual content and quality of the novel: Vladimir Nabokov went through many publishers who refused to publish it, and after it was published, it was banned in many places for being "pornographic" or "an instruction manual for paedophilia" (which it is not). Even for people who aren't familiar with the history of the book, a lot of the covers/jackets make it look like erotica. It also gave rise to the term "loli" or "lolicon", which are taboo words in their own right (even though it has also been used in a legitimate, non-paedophilic context e.g. those so-called "Lolita fashions" popular with some cosplayers); [[Google]] won't auto-complete them if you try to search for those terms, and would attempt to block out anything remotely resembling paedophilia, occasionally warning users that such content can and will land them a jail sentence. [[TV Tropes]] reflexively banned it in counterfeit moral outrage during their [[Think of the Advertisers!|purge of revenue-threatening material]] after [[The Second Google Incident]], and only restored its page when they realized that leaving it censored was worse for their image than having it on the wiki. It also didn't help that the underground Tor site ''Lolita City'', which was seized by the FBI for hosting child pornography, was named after the novel.

* The ''Uncle Remus'' stories are a group of actual fables told by slaves and former slaves in the American South, making them a valuable cultural resource. However, though once popular, they are now nearly unknown. Compiler and editor Joel Chandler Harris' fictional character who tells the stories, Uncle Remus, was written as an elderly ex-slave who was basically content to continue to work for a white family. The implied racism is now almost all that is known of the stories. The fables themselves, taken out of the Remus context, are stories about animals using their wiles to trick each other, and man, in order to survive. Unlike Aesop's fables, they are not meant to be morally instructive, but are a commentary on man resorting to animal-like behaviors in desperate circumstances.

 

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