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Something somebody else wrote in a locked entry, about really Not Wanting To Know About It if any of their friends thought a certain act was acceptable, reminded me of something I know I've mentioned in several places in the past but don't recall whether I've written about in a blog entry here:
As far as I can remember, only one movie has ever given me nightmares. When I was a child, and already a voracious reader, my parents thought I should see a movie that was coming on the television. I didn't completely grasp the plot until I read the book when I was a little older; I found some parts confusing at the time. But the most important images and the basic idea stuck with me and gave me nightmares for the next several nights running.
Most of you have probably already guessed: the movie was Fahrenheit 451. I would wake up in terror from a dream about either being arrested for trying to extinguish burning books, or being thrown on a pyre of books. Or of being restrained, weeping, forced to watch books burning. <<shudder>>
I have enough trouble dealing with the notion of books being burned or buried in a landfill because they're unsalable excess from way too large a print run, or because they're damaged beyond the point of salvage, or because smebody's freezing to death and the books are the only fuel available. Those scenarios make me twitch uncomfortably. The idea of burning books because one disapproves of their content, or trying to eradicate all copies of a work, is right out. I'd have to agree with that other blogger in saying that's a squick.
This isn't connected to anything in particular except, as I mentioned at the start, having been reminded of that movie by what someone else said about the unacceptability of burning books.
movie nightmare
From a strict movie p.o.v., when Jim and I were in England for our honeymoon (many years ago), we saw the U.K. release of "Brazil".
I had such a bad nightmare that night. Yikes, it was bad.
The U.K. had some additional frightening scenes towards the end of the movie.
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"I burnt it," she replied.
"Why?" I asked in hostile reply.
"I was bored."
I bounced my lit cigarette off her cleavage and walked away.
That's pretty much my attitude toward book burning. Sort of like you take tattered American flags to the fire station for proper and reverential disposal, you take old books and donate them to the library. If it is to be disposed of, I will let the priests of literacy do it. I am not qualified to determine which books should live and which should be recycled.
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I can't think of any movie, ever, that gave me one. The only book that ever has is Ammie, Come Home, a ghost story set in Georgetown by Barbara Michaels (Elizabeth Peters' other pen name pre-Amelia Peabody).
ANTI-NIGHTMARE SPOILER SPACE
The ghost of a murderer who died in a fire manifests as a pillar of greasy black smoke that radiates intense cold. That alone would probably have not done it for me, but when it *moved* and chased the heroes clean out of the house...
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Well, the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh did it too -- but that was the face and the laugh.
And I cannot even imagine being restrained and watching books burn. They'd have to knock me out; I'd be struggling too hard.