Florida, Texas schools ban "Anne Frank pornography"
I have a cursory knowledge of classic Western Literature. In school, I had well-thumbed copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Tropic of Cancer, Fanny Hill, and Anais Nin’s diaries. The love poetry of Catullus was the only reason I paid attention to my Latin homework. I also had my stash of ‘adult’ mags — because there was no internet. But no permutation of my literary concupiscence included The Diary of Anne Frank.
I do not claim to remember the Diary well. I was too young to have a well-developed sense of empathy. I could feel bad for a mate who had skinned his knee — I understood that pain. But the suffering of a foreign girl living in terror, hidden in a secret annex, to escape the Nazis was not something that I, as a boarding school-educated, middle-class boy living in peacetime, could feel intuitively. That came later. I did know that my puerile brain did not consider her writing smut.
Some parents in Florida and Texas do — as they want to ban some of the things Anne Frank wrote.
In fairness, it is not the original diary most of them object to — at least in this case. The object of their opprobrium is Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation, published in 2018. According to The Jerusalem Post, the book is:
“a new, abridged version of Frank’s famous diary presented in comic-book format. The project was authorized by the Anne Frank Fonds, the Switzerland-based foundation started by Anne’s father Otto Frank, which controls the copyright to the diary Otto rescued after he survived the Holocaust. Anne herself perished in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after hiding out for most of the war with her family in an Amsterdam annex.
The Oscar-nominated Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman, together with illustrator David Polonsky, put the new book together. It was intended as a companion piece to the 2021 animated film Where Is Anne Frank, which Folman directed.”
So why have parents objected? The text of the graphic novel is abridged. But there is nothing in the graphic novel that the young girl — Frank started her diary soon after she turned 13 — had not written.
Critics of the book say they object to the handful of passages in which Anne describes sexual matters. In one, she discusses when she asked a female friend if they could show each other their breasts but was rebuffed. (“If only I had a girlfriend,” she muses.) In another, she describes details of her own vagina.
Some adult readers thought that the graphic novel’s author had gratuitously added this language, as they had no recollection of reading it. They may not have. While the original diary, published in Dutch in 1947 as The Secret Annex, contained the triggering passages, the first English version, published in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, did not.
Later editions published in the 1980s have the passages restored, but the 1952 version is still widely used. Regardless, Anne Frank wrote what she wrote. And parents need to get a grip.
Then there is the artwork. The book is a graphic novel with illustrations not in the original. One of them is an image portraying Anne walking through a statuary garden of classically-inspired female nudes. (Think the Venus de Milo). This imagery has led the prudes to label it pornographic.
Some people have dirty minds.
It is not just the musings of a pubescent girl on her budding sexuality that has the Puritans scandalized. Others sensitive to hidden meanings have interpreted the publishing of Frank’s actual words as antisemitic. Florida Rep. Randy Fine told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“I read the Diary of Anne Frank many times as a kid. I don’t remember any of that stuff that they put in that graphic novel.
Calling the adaptation an “Anne Frank pornography book,” he continued, “And frankly that graphic novel is antisemitic. To sexualize the diary of Anne Frank in that sort of inappropriate way, it is antisemitic.”
His remarks are not surprising. First, even local conservatives think Fine is a nasty piece of work. Second, he is an indefatigable bigot. He has repeatedly claimed gays and lesbians are "grooming" minors and has advocated "erasing" the LGBT community. Third, he is quick to throw “antisemitic” around. He once even accused a Jewish constituent of being a Judenrat for supporting an event that discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Some people challenging the book have offered other explanations. Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms For Liberty, complains the adaptation only replicates a small percentage of the original. Her stated concern is that current child literacy levels “are woefully low”, and she is infuriated by the idea that Frank’s diary needed an illustrated version.
“Anne wrote the diary when she was 13. So the diary is written at a level where children of that age can completely understand it.”
She might have a point about graphic novels in general. But her point is blunted by the fact she chose this particular book as an exemplar of the dumbing down of American literary education. Has she demanded school authorities ban other graphic novels?
Why not have students read both — and write an essay on why the graphic novel is not a fair substitute for the original?
She will not. Bigotry works backward. It starts with identifying the target of prejudice and then looks for examples of bad behavior that “prove” the target deserves the hate thrown at them. No group could remain unscathed by that sophistry.
People who object to certain books do so either out of genuine concern or — this is the usual case — to promote an agenda that whitewashes sex, LGBTQ, and race. It does a disservice to kids who have far more robust intellects and discernment than some of these parents. And it ignores the internet. Where these same children — bereft of guidance — wander, learning God only knows what.
You cannot shield the young from reality — no matter how much you want to deny it to yourself.