Melbourne International Film Festival: The Librarians (dir. Kim A Snyder)
The Librarians is one of those documentaries that’s kind of hard to assess. In a way, it’s like arguing with a baby. Sure, your points might be totally accurate and compelling and maybe you made those points with veracious integrity. But ultimately, you’re still arguing with a baby. Intellectually, a film about book bans in the United States is a totally valid subject and director Kim A. Snyder has her references locked (if a little obvious; looking at you Fahrenheit 451) and argues her point saliently. It’s nicely shot and decently well assembled—it really homes in on some great dynamics in its second half, too. But she’s arguing with people who would fling their own shit at the mirror for looking back at them backwards.
Yes, it’s maddening. Yes, it’s infuriating. Yes, it’s exasperating and honestly exhausting watching the sheer mental dunderheadedness on display. It’s like Bluesky vs Twitter/X with its noble wokes against the screeching crazies. It’s the sort of stupidity that makes me throw my hands up like Manila Luzon in that episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars.
And yet. Here we are. Again! Snyder previously directed Newtown about the Sandy Hook school shooting massacre. That subject was a political issue that still hasn’t been fixed and one that inspired genuinely insane rhetoric that spread from the fringes into the mainstream much like The Librarians. Snyder’s humanistic approach to her subject matter is again evident here, following librarians across America (predominantly Texas and Florida, but like a virus it spreads) who have been accused of being pornography pushers, paedophiles and groomers. All because they are following the very constitution that their opponents claim to pledge allegiance to when really they’d shred it within a moment’s notice if it meant the christian Bible was put in its place.
The narrative goes more or less as you’d expect: religious fundamentalist politician raises “concern” about books with LGBTIQA+ themes, racial themes, gender themes, sex education themes. Conservative mothers weaponise their white ‘traditional’ parenthood (often through groups such as Moms for Liberty) and their obvious boredom (gotta have a hobby) through provocative propogandist language and ‘grassroots’ ‘activism’ all with the aid of wealthy millionaires and billionaire donors who have a financial stake in stoking fear and division while the politicians keep us distracted. “It’s the transgender, the LGBTQ, and the sex”, says one of the crazies (superintendent Jeremy Glenn no less) like a malfunctioning anti-woke robot. It’S tHe TrAnsGenDEr!! Perversely, and as we all know is all too familiar and certainly a feature not a bug, these characters all acting like insane people about Beloved or educational books about menstruation only seeks to empower the actual paedophiles and those grooming children who now not only don’t know their own bodies but also don’t know what is normal and what isn’t. Which of the antagonists of this film will be the first to be charged with an actual sexual crime. Because it won’t be ol’ Gladys over there, I can say that for sure.
I don’t want to say naïve, but so many of them appear to be completely unaware of what country they live in. It’s kind of charming that they thought this just sprung up two years ago. But Snyder does a nice job of showing the effort that these people do and why.
See, it’s virtually impossible to even really write about this movie without it turning into a sort of angry rant. Alas, we carry on. Snyder treats her subjects as (funnily enough) god-like figures. Appropriate, but also sometimes comes off as a little simplistic. I don’t want to say naïve, but so many of them appear to be completely unaware of what country they live in. It’s kind of charming that they thought this just sprung up two years ago. But Snyder does a nice job of showing the effort that these people do and why. For Australian audiences for whom this sort of culture war nonsense is prevalent but not as crazy cookoo as America might want to take some warning from a film like The Librarians. Give them an inch and they’ll take a Nazi salute (converted to metric). I did chuckle when one gives Snyder a tour of the library she used to work at and as she looks wistfully through the glass window and goes, “that was my office.” It’s like the movie frowns along with her. They’re all just such good people and sometimes that is enough for a documentary.
The Librarians does perk up a bit more as it barrels towards its non-conclusion (it ends, but it’s not the end if you know what I mean—you’re fooling yourself if you think it’ll end just because President Trump eventually dies on his golden fascist toilet). Particularly as Snyder branches slightly beyond the Librarians themselves and begins to put some heavier attention on others in their purview. There is the money factor, touched on briefly but hardly surprising. There are the school boards, including one such elected member (Courtney Gore) who is deemed a “failure” by her right-wing podcasting backers (dorothy-zbornak-disapproving.gif) because she eventually did the reading and found it was all a big lie (she, and others, received death threats as a result). There are the actual queer and black communities. There’s the man who claims a non-fiction book can’t be non-fiction because it isn’t based on scripture, which maybe I misheard him but I think that’s right and is just odd more than anything else.
And then there is one woman who attends school board meetings in towns she does not live in support of book bans. Stepping up the lectern looking like the entity from Twin Peaks: The Return with a bad dye job and heels, spouting words she doesn’t understand. Licking her lips at the chance to inflict as much mental pain and anguish on society as she can in her not-brief-enough stint on this planet. It's Helen Lovejoy levelling up to her ultimate final form. Snyder lucks out and gets the woman’s son, kicked out of the family for opening up about his homosexuality, who even attends the very same meeting as his mother. It’s like a mini soap opera within a very earnest documentary about nice librarians holding a handful of books attempting to stop the rolling tank of fascism.
I highly doubt anybody on the other side of this argument (it’s certainly no debate!) will watch The Librarians. Except maybe to have more notes for the next school board meeting that they intend to storm. The Moms for Liberty wackos and the stark-raving mad right-wing politicians won’t be having any moments of clarity because an old Bette Davis movie clip (Storm Center) suggests they’re actually the bad guys. That isn’t a requirement of course for any documentary like this. I don’t know how you achieve that, quite honestly. Again, it’s like arguing with babies. But in this case the babies are racist, bigoted fascists so it’s easy to forgive.
