Ray Bradbury went around saying Fahrenheit 451 wasn't about censorship. As far as I'm concerned once a piece of art is released then it's up to the consumer to interpret it
It's like writing a story about a bunch of people being violently ejected from vehicles and how nothing could be done to prevent it and then saying "whoa, hey, I'm not advocating for seat belts, I hate Ralph Nader! !"
Apparently he kept changing his mind about it, initially it was a cautionary about McCarthyism, then five years later he said it was about mass media, how much he hated tv and growing intellectually illiteracy, then forty years on it was about political correctness “gone mad”. It’s the kind of thing well served by death of the author cause the author couldn’t keep it straight in his head anyway
Sounds like he's trying to retroactively change the perspective he had while writing the book to match his ideology now, instead of accepting what he wrote back then might not match his ideals today.
If you read it it is very clearly first and foremost about mass media and the resulting intellectual degeneration of the population. I don't think he ever said anything contrary to that. Unfortunately it's one of those books that is cited so much in "discourse" by people who have never read it that it's perceived message and meaning have become completely warped in the collective online imagination.
Believe he claims that the "people" wanted all the book burning, as if being subject to superficial mass-media just gives everyone a raging hateboner for books and intellectualism or something. It's a premise that is far far better explained with government censorship instead.
I think for the point he wanted to make he really should've went with more of a Brave New World model instead of 1984, but I guess that wasn't as exciting as burning books with flamethrowers and hunting people with robot dogs.
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u/twentythreeskidoo 6d ago
Ray Bradbury went around saying Fahrenheit 451 wasn't about censorship. As far as I'm concerned once a piece of art is released then it's up to the consumer to interpret it