Remember when there was no Tumblr and teenagers didnât look for reasons to get offended and stifle creativity because it was something they didnât like?
Remember when Tom Pettyâs Mary Janeâs Last Dance made it to #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Male Video back in 1994?
Remember how there was a surge in necrophilia and tons of teenagers whining and crying that he was romanticizing necrophilia and how Tom Petty must himself be a necrophiliac or at the very least condone necrophilia and be an a necrophilia apologist? Wait⊠wait⊠that part didnât happen.
The video was creative, creepy, haunting and ground breaking. And people appreciated that. No one took it for more than it was. Fiction.
No one (unless they were absolutely insane, I guess) thought Tom Petty condoned what he did in the video with Kim Basingerâs corpse (or anything that may be implied). No one thought he was running out on the weekends banging the dead or bringing them home for dates. No one was accusing Tom Petty of being a necrophiliac apologist.
When did people stop being able to separate fiction from reality in their heads? When did people get so fixated on the idea that if someone writes something in fiction that they condone it in real life? Do people really think that every gross thing possibly âromanticizedâ in horror is something the creator condones or wants to actually do in real life? Iâm assuming a lot of you all havenât seen movies like Welcome to the Dollhouse? American Beauty? There are some movies out there with some pretty eyebrow raising love stories. American Beauty won five Oscars lol. And it was a grown ass man infatuated with his teenage daughterâs best friend.
When did people get so ridiculous? Just because someone writes something - it doesnât mean they think it is something that is acceptable outside of fiction. Dark fiction is important and intriguing and⊠do people even read Poe, Shakespeare or Dickens anymore?
When did if you donât like it, donât seek it out or read it become so fucking hard for people?
When did people become so entitled that they started to think that just because something wasnât for them that no one else should be allowed to create it?
The characters in fiction are not real people. Writers and artists are not hurting actual real people. That people canât understand that simple fact boggles my mind. I once wrote about a pregnant woman and her husband being callously murdered. Absolutely no one was harmed in the making of that scene.
Where does the line get drawn? I know some people that if given the opportunity wouldnât let their children see Michelangeloâs David because itâs a nude male. Should all nudity be banned from art because nudity offends some people?
Fuck censorship. Fuck expecting the whole world to walk on eggshells to cater to your delicate sensibilities.
If you donât like something, donât watch it or read it.
But donât you dare demand the censorship of others.
I donât want to live in a world where creativity and artistic brilliance is stifled because some people feel like they should be the boss of everyone and what art is acceptable based on their personal hang ups or so-called moral objections.