Whisper House Press

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Film Title: The Librarians

Director: Kim Snyder

Production Companies: KA Snyder Productions, Cuomo Cole Productions, Ideal Partners, ITVS, World of Ha Productions, Artemis Rising, The Brandt Jackson Foundation, Good Gravy Films, Two Chairs Productions, The Harnisch Foundation, Pretty Matches Productions, Independent Lens

Release Date: Jan. 24, 2025 (limited release: Sundance Film Festival—look for it on PBS Fall 2025)

Capone’s Rating: 5⭐ out of 5⭐

The Librarians is not a happy movie. An opening quote (ingeniously incorporated into one of the many thematically apt graphic sequences, short and sweet, sprinkled throughout the film) comes from Fahrenheit 451: “It was a pleasure to burn.” In brighter days, this quote appearing in a film would be taken as applying to social conditions in the United States merely figuratively—as long as there are right-wing extremists, there will always be challenges to books—but the words find literal application here. After all, what’s a community to do with thousands of banned books removed from schools and public libraries? Eventually, some of them decide (and have in fact decided) to host a bonfire in a demonstration that not only echoes but matches exactly the scenes of book fires seen in documentaries about the Third Reich and Nazi Germany. And those books that aren’t burned in a literal sense are destroyed in other ways or locked in closets, amounting to the same thing.

Those of us in education are familiar with this tale already, but others may be (and ought to be) shocked: across the United States, conservative PACs and candidates they support, fund, and for whom they campaign have driven fanatical pushes to remove books from young people’s hands. The number of books banned varies sometimes by state and at other times by district or community. In Utah, the number (as of this writing—it’s apt to rise at any time) is fifteen. In Texas, the number started at 850 and has risen from there. In Florida, the number is 4,500. The Librarians is a documentary that follows librarians in several states as they wrestle with their sworn ethical codes (by whose standards they were trained and hired) in the face of these bans. Those violating the strict dictates of these state-by-state laws are at risk of prison time with felony-level criminal charges and being listed as sex offenders on those life-altering, career-destroying lists. The reason for this is that the books being banned are being stipulatively defined as “pornographic” and “indecent,” such that the distribution of these books amounts to distributing pornography to a minor.

Librarians face not only legal challenges threatening their livelihoods and codes of ethics but also physical threats to their safety and the safety of their family members. Those banning books often see what they’re doing as the will of a god, and they see their culture as being under threat of annihilation, so the lengths to which they’re willing to go to stop the distribution of these books know no bounds. The Librarians humanizes—personalizes—the people who are often on the front lines of these debates, against all their hopes.

What books are being banned in these states? Well, in Utah, it’s mostly female authors. In Texas, anything that smells of LGBTQ+ rights, representation of LGBTQ+ individuals, and histories of the United States dealing with racism or slavery, and any book critical of ideas challengers hold dear are targets for removal.

That’s right. You read “indecent” and “pornographic” and, like any reasonable person, were suspicious: Maybe what’s being removed really is pornographic, in which case it ought to be removed for younger readers. But that’s not what’s happening. No. Teachers and librarians do curate their libraries and are trained explicitly about what kind of material is age-appropriate (and what’s age-appropriate for one reader may not be for another, given that not all readers are the same person), and they do not maintain collections containing literally pornographic books or magazines. But in The Librarians, over and over, we witness footage of right-wing Americans stumping for the removal of “pornography” and accusing librarians of grooming their children for abuse. What they’re talking about when they talk about “pornography” is actually “material I don’t want my child to read” and what they really mean is “material I don’t want any children reading”—and what determines the material indicated by such statements? Who fucking knows. The Bible. Family tradition. White supremacy. All of that.

The Librarians, through the titular representatives, tells a part of this ongoing story. It should terrify all of us who believe in a free-thinking, liberal democracy (and we’re talking small-L “liberal” here, as in “free,” which is something Republicans and Democrats can agree on). Others who are on the front lines include teachers and educators of all stripes who are now on alert that their lives should not also be destroyed by reactionary political movements and their dupes.

This is not a happy story, but it is one we should all be talking more about—and speaking openly about the manner in which the anti-intellectual-freedom movement in the United States runs counter to our nation’s most core commitments: to free speech and free thought. As one student activist put it at a board meeting recorded in this documentary, folks banning books have never before been recorded as the “good guys” in human history. In other words: If you’re banning books, prima facie, you’re the bad guy.

For more information about pro-reading groups in Utah, you can go to www.letutahread.org. In other states, I’ll wager there are groups working in concert in similar ways.

The Librarians will be available for everyone to watch via PBS Independent Lens in the Fall of 2025. For now, it’s showing only at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah (Screenings in Park City on Wednesday Jan 29th and on Friday January 31st remain). Five stars.