Mickey Maus in the Styx

A while ago I was told of 'a certain mouse', to reprise the terms of the eminently praiseworthy Zoo Rabbi (Natan Slifkin), who has such questions to answer as 'Dear Zoo Rabbi, why did the Lord create roaches, they are disgusting'. Indeed. Man and Beast was a pleasure to read. Pigs, dogs and mice feature in that book too.

Of course I am on about the banning of the graphic novel Maus from a school library in the sticks in Tennessee. Reason: nudity and violent content inappropriate for 13 years old and below within the school premises. There was of course an immediate inflamed reaction in the US of A and elsewhere, along with a good harvest time for publishers and booksellers, as any ban on books usually proves to be. I hope they're grateful for the windfall, however I wanted to let things calm down and to reflect on the school move so vigorously vilified by all and sundry.

I don't approve of casual and exploitative nudity in art as well as anywhere else, it is to me the beginning of the end for the brain going thus down the drain, because art is not a stew where permissiveness rules, because nudity, aggressively targeting females in 90% of cases is easy, sensationalist and a clear indication of threat and intimidation. Look at what I could do to you, nudity seems to be saying, I know your s...ecret and I can scare you into submission for fear of degrading punishment. In more civilised times, we used to call vulnerability Achilles heel, and we were informed of myths in order to keep our self-defence real. Nowadays females seem to have one option, that of modesty clothing. Cowering up might not even do, if you look at the recent Sarah Everard case in London.

Times have changed and a number of thirteen year olds and younger persons around the world would prove more than able to teach Hugh Heffner how to sext.

I have of course read Maus when it came out. The nudity targeting the mother made me very uneasy and angry at the time and it still does, I prefer by far the picture of the kid turning over his plateful of detritus on the table and getting smacked for it, as I would. As some of you already know, part of my tribe came from an almost permanent war zone called the Bulge, with a touch of westward mobile Indians and relentlessly agitated Poles in the background. War damage is definitely in my DNA. I was not happy at all with the depiction of the sick mother in the bathroom, it felt disrespectful and unnecessary, the Nazis having already done it all in that regard. I wouldn't revise history for as much, there is no way I would send the Boy in Pyjamas to bed early because it depicts a reality that bothers me and a lot of others. Nevertheless I never could warm up to Benigni's Life is Beautiful, although the film was lavishly praised and has become a reference. Too sugar-coated and benevolent for me, too aesthetic even, like the well-cut, clean and ironed female deportees' stripy outfits also worn by the deported mother in the movie. I can only accept that film as something useful to begin to start talking about the war to younger children asking questions about the war whom you don't want to shock, or to scar and scare out of their wits. I am more of an Inglorious Bees' fan, to me this much talked-about Volunteer State film has captured the essence of a war you can believe in in a cartoonish way. I have seen Pulp Fiction not so long ago. and I got so much more out of it than just ticking one more must-see box, although it initially is so very simple and accessible to watch, as easy as delving through the pages of a lighter-minded magazine. Yet it is very deep a reflexion on the potential lack of a collective, stable past in the USA, in a pioneers' land with more differences in common than a shared all-encompassing historical experience - that only happens when the US Army fight wars abroad - a fast-track industrialisation with not much archaeology buried deep in the grounds, but a lot of violent conflict and a rare commitment to Blue Law, if it weren't for saloons and exotic dancers, Mae West, The Exorcist, Dirty Harry (I am a fervent Clint follower), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc...The list goes on, and maybe I can add in the way of an adequate transition The Last Temptation of Christ, scandalous as it may have been (I haven't seen it), because ultimately I have to ask why it is that people who worship a naked man tortured to death on a cross as their Lord, a Son born of what some consider a rape (indeed I ask myself what the insistence on God the Father could mean, if you have a sinister turn of mind like me. I am very suspicious by nature, having had to look over my shoulder all my life, on high alert to spar efficiently with the next aggro) are always so judgemental and so vindictive when it comes to any other representation of nudity and degrading violence. Keep your house in order, and beware of the worship of images, even Jewish ones. Chaim Potok himself fell into the trap to save you from it.

In Israel, 1961, at the time of the Eichmann trial, a huge Board of Censors raid scooped out all but a few of well-named comic strips of an obscene nature, then a very popular read among the first generation descendants of Jewish war time deportees. The now notorious Stalag literature was deemed unpresentable even to a restrained audience and damaging to the trial and to the youth. A few remaining copies are very securely kept in the basement of Israel National Library, and they are only accessible to accredited researchers. The cartoons in question were porno-graphic delusions about WWII deportation camps, a formulaic view of the mind involving camp vixens sexually degrading and torturing English/American male POWs, until the Frauleins SS got themselves raped and killed by the prisoners. Raised in the ignorance of the realities of WWII and the obliteration camps, confronted only by the silence of adult parents and survivors extremely reluctant to talk, as it goes with any veteran, Israeli teenagers improvised their own history in a typical hormone-fuelled fantasy that had to be stopped for one reason or the other before it gained official myth status. This kind of heavy-duty censorship would seem a bit harsh by today's standards, and even very difficult to carry out in the days of paperless communication media, however this kind of past within the context of the Eichmann trial should point in the right direction: ban if you like, but talk to your kids before they grab a pen, a camera or a gun to wreak lasting havoc. You could begin to start with Nazi stolen art in Making a Killing with the habitual warning for the weak of art, contains war time nudity and violence, historical. One may prefer the gently colourful Care Bares and that episode of the Simpsons involving Marge and visually explicit Greek statues. Giving the choice of a less challenging choice is more constructive for your kids' personality than seeing judgemental adults from both sides, the liberal and the not-so waging a lost war about some ugly piece of ass. Look at yourselves in the mirror, it won't break like the photocopier glass at the British office Xmas party, hopefully.

As for myself, whilst I detest any nudity including that of Cranach the Elder and his Eve, I cannot and I will not condemn Flemish painters who protested vehemently the only way they could at the time against war crimes, notably the Spanish Fury (and that of other nationals) in works such as The Sack of Antwerp or The Looting of the Village of Francorchamps. There is no way a war can be sanitised, ever. I am a staunch supporter of the Hayes Code, I am also a seasoned reader of Pacheco, the one of the Castle of Purity and You Shall Die in a Distant Land. I am never going to condone revisionist theories for the sake of spineless sissies who can't accept that basic humans are perverts by nature, fact. I would tell them, to each their fiction. I was born free in a free country, therefore I choose WWII as my personal fiction if you have to call it that way; I don't forbid you to believe in Father Xmas or the fairies at the bottom of the garden, as long as you keep to your side of the fence, end of.

As a conclusion, I cannot but let the lovable, heartfelt and truly blue patriot Sam the Eagle beam with his famed conservation speech on bees, birds and other sentient creatures walking through their lives wearing out nothing but their own selves under their fur, feathers or clothes. You are all weirdos.