The Case Against School Censorship of ‘Thirteen Reasons Why’ – Signature Reads

The new Netflix adaptation has young readers (and their parents, and their teachers) casting a curious eye at Jay Ashers Thirteen Reasons Why and if the suicide of its main character is likely to influence real-life tragedies. A librarian tackles this subject for Book Riot, pointing to an instance in Colorado where the book was briefly banned from a high school campus in the wake oflosing several students to suicide.The pain ofsuch an incident overwhelms the reason of even the most reasonable adult, creating the ideal conditions for censorship: In response, we become desperate to do something. Thats good, writes Amy Diegelman. The trouble, though, is that we want something to do now and there are no fast or easy answers. She goes on to list some of the other steps a community can take to ensure that the needs of its young people are taken care of.

By handing its Best Director award to Sofia Coppola, the Cannes Film Festival seems to have set a new standard for representation in the film world, but according to Jessica Chastain, ifyou watch all the movies themselves, you might get a different impression. Speaking out asthe eventconcluded, the actress (and festival judge) offered a grimdiagnosis, having just watched twenty movies in ten days: The one thing I really took away from this experience is how the world views women from the female characters that I saw represented. And it was quite disturbing to me to be honest. (She did note there were some exceptions.) The article also points out that, despite Coppolas historic win and an overall increase of films directed by women, they still only made up 15.8% of the competition. While these moments of progress are definitely something to celebrate, this is hardly the time to start feeling complacent.

Speaking of female directors, Patty Jenkins may have achieved the impossible with her newWonder Woman adaptation, which is already a hit with the critics. Unlike so many of the superhero movies that have preceded it, Jenkinss Wonder Woman required very few reshoots (which means there are almost no deleted scenes), nor did we change the order of one scene in this movie from the script that we went in shooting with. In the age of action films that end up mostly being made (and re-made) in the editing room, this is a terrific accomplishment. Just dont expect to see a teaser about the sequel in the closing credits, because so far no one (including Jenkins) has any idea what happens next.

David Sedaris has opened some of his diaries to the public in the new bookTheft by Finding, but the author claims thatanythinghe found while diggingthrough these old records is somewhat outshone by the material thatsnotably absent. Sedaris explains how growing up in the pre-digital era putlimits on what he was willing to commit to paper: I think thats one of the reasons that Ive never written about sex. Because early on you had to worry that someone was going to find your diary, so its bad enough to be writing like Joan Didion, but writing like Joan Didion about sex acts youd performed with somebody you had known for twenty minutes, thats a bit worse. So I would write in my diary, I met J. and we had sex five times last night. But I would never write about what we did. Now Id give anything to know what I did. Id give anything to know!

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The Case Against School Censorship of 'Thirteen Reasons Why' - Signature Reads