esteroff artfully seeks to demonstrate how current catchphrases like 'cancel culture' and 'political correctness' are just variations of the same generational and ideological divides which have undergirded American society throughout Hollywood’s history ... His arguments are cogent and his histories entertaining.
Nesteroff doesn’t explicitly tell us what to do with the knowledge he’s shared, and maybe he doesn’t have to. But I would argue that one thing we need to do is continue sharing the history of the culture wars. It’s why I teach the aforementioned class and am considering my own book on the subject. We need to expand conversation outside of the social media black hole where algorithms privilege the most idiotic content, and books like Outrageous give us a tool to share with others ... This book should spark useful conversations, even debate, by offering a template for discussing the relevance and origins of historic outrage culture. Nesteroff argues that outrage against popular culture often comes from a place of religious bigotry, is a generously funded venture, and is usually launched purely out of the desire to exercise political power.
Essentially a history of American censorship of all kinds of popular culture ... Though he’s generally cheerfully contemptuous of the censors, he is himself rather censorious about the indulgence back then of what is unacceptable to us now ... Nesteroff’s somewhat censorious study of censorship provides a useful reminder that censorship and censoriousness are significantly different things. Censorship is the actual government interdiction of forbidden speech, and in liberal-democratic countries there’s essentially none of this when it comes to culturally contested zones. It’s just that we’re inclined to voice emphatic disapproval about certain forms of speech, which, though disconcerting for the subject of our disapproval, is not at all what we mean by censorship
Nesteroff shows that this kind of lobbying is hardly new — his book is overloaded with excerpts from letter-writing campaigns to the editors of small-town newspapers — though it may be more organized than ever before .... He’s interested in the historical context.
Extensive if somewhat one-note ... While the point is well taken, the argument never progresses much beyond its origins; readers are bombarded with endless historical examples that, while often fascinating, generally fail to elicit more far-reaching analysis. Still, readers seeking evidence to rebut criticism of today’s 'snowflakes' will have plenty to choose from here.
