Three seemingly unrelated stories have gone viral this week. Firstly, the M&Ms were given new shoes. Secondly, a Tennessee school board banned Maus. And third, Minnie Mouse has been given a Stella McCartney pantsuit for Disneyland Paris' 30th anniversary. These feel like very different stories, and two of them feel quite frivolous, while the banning of Maus (a graphic novel that starkly depicts the Holocaust in an engaging and heartbreaking way) seems more serious, perhaps even a little scary. Here's the thing though - they're all the same story.
It's incredibly clumsy to split politics merely into 'the left' and 'the right', but indulge me for a second, because this debate is always framed as ‘right’ versus ‘left’, even if the two are never fully defined. 'The right' frequently likes to accuse 'the left' of censorship. A lot of the time, this is less 'censorship' and more 'don't be a knob'. No, you can't say racist or homophobic things like you used to get away with in the '70s. That doesn't mean your freedoms are being eroded. Occasionally, with the accuracy of a broken clock, they might have a point. The word 'Latinx' is loaded with controversy even amongst those who fall under its definition. 'Womxn' even more so. And even someone like me, a trans woman who writes about the political and gender intersection of video games and thus gets called an SJW and a whole lot worse on a regular basis, can agree that we're a little too sensitive these days.
Corporations are keen to be seen as 'woke' without putting in the work to improve life for either their workers or the minorities whose flags they wave in the hopes of prying open some rainbow wallets. A Golden Girls episode was pulled not so long ago for a blackface joke - but the joke was not about Black people, nor did it involve actual blackface, it was just that the sweet old dears were worried people would think their mud mask was an offensive attempt at blackface. While I think that's an example of oversensitivity, I don't think it's an example of censorship wildly changing our media landscape. Ricky Gervais and Steve Carrell have both said their versions of The Office wouldn't be allowed today, but both versions are still on the air through streaming and reruns. Carrell's version especially remains at the peak of popular sitcoms. Meanwhile, Family Guy and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia continue to get renewed. South Park, a show that actively attempts to offend people, is such a hit it was renewed through multiple seasons and movies just last year.
This is where the M&Ms come into it. The redesign is minimal. If it had just happened, I don't think it would have picked up any steam. But because the press release that went alongside it was so silly (Orange will "embrace" his anxiety, Green is wearing "progressive" sneakers), it went viral. At first, it mostly went viral because people on Twitter - predominantly left-leaning younger adults - passed it around and said 'haha silly chocolate', before it was picked up by the likes of Fox News who took it extremely seriously. Or at least, they pretended to, because it's good fuel for the outrage machine, and further proof that 'the left' is killing our culture because Tucker Carlson can't jack it to candy if it's not wearing go-go boots. Sorry for making you picture that.
It was a similar story last year when Dr Seuss Enterprises willingly decided to stop printing mostly unpopular books which contained racist caricatures of Asian people. This was quickly spun into 'the left' taking away The Cat in the Hat through censorship, despite the fact that a) the company did so willingly, and b) The Cat in the Hat was never mentioned. Minnie Mouse is somewhat similar, with Candace Owens calling her pantsuit an attempt to "destroy fabrics of our society." This is nonsense, and Owens knows it.
Various iterations of Minnie have worn pants and shorts before, and this is specifically a McCartney pantsuit for the 30th anniversary, not a permanent makeover. Personally, I don't like the anniversary blue and black polka dot look, but I don't think our society is destroyed by a fictional mouse wearing an overly designed, slightly ugly pantsuit. Neither does Candace Owens, she just wants to keep you angry, and to keep herself in the headlines. Considering this is the first time I've ever written about Candace Owens, I suppose she succeeded, but it's important to highlight these grifters - especially when it's all a distraction technique.
M&Ms in new shoes and Minnie Mouse wearing a designer pantsuit is not censorship. Dr Seuss Enterprises not selling unpopular, racist books is not censorship, and neither is Golden Girls pulling a single episode out of oversensitivity. Not really. Not in a way that actually matters. A school board banning Maus, one of the most engaging tools for informing children of the horrors of the Holocaust, is censorship, and whether you're angry at the M&Ms or laughing at them, you've been played. M&Ms are not the story here. Maus is.
Of course it's possible to be aware of both at once, but M&Ms have gotten far more airtime and discussion. It's trite to label those who disagree with you politically as Nazis, but when you want to stop children learning about the Holocaust, there are only so many motivations you might have for that. The official reason is the vulgarity (an utterance of "fuck"), and nudity (when prisoners are marched naked and have prison uniforms thrown at them), but they both feel pretty transparent.
There is no outrage machine for this kind of censorship. The Carlsons and the Owens' keep quiet, because this kind of censorship they don't mind. And those of us who should be outraged by it think ourselves too good, too smart to get angry. We don't want to look like Tucker Carlson, screaming because kids can't read a comic book about mice. So we have nice, measured conversations that nobody listens to, and we laugh at Tucker Carlson, raking in millions of dollars, eyeballs, and column inches, talking about sexy boots on the Green M&M. Maybe we should be angry. Maybe we should stop paying attention to all this fake censorship and start getting mad at the censorship that matters.