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About THAT Scene in Looking for Alaska

2024-12-17 · letter vlog · John · 5:49 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing · mode: Personal essay

John says Looking for Alaska is widely banned over one deliberately unsexy oral sex scene meant to contrast with a tender kiss; read as a whole, the novel is about grief, guilt and radical hope, teenagers can read critically, teachers and librarians should decide, and book banners object not to books but to reality.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Looking for Alaska ranked second most banned by PEN; removed from classrooms and libraries; grooming accusations; Moms for Liberty

  • ★★ John says that according to PEN America, Looking for Alaska, which he wrote, is the second most banned book in the United States. — 00:00:00 · Looking for Alaska (novel), United States
  • ★★ John says that especially in the last few years the book has been removed from hundreds of classrooms and libraries. — 00:00:00 · Looking for Alaska (novel)
  • ★★ John says he and his work have been accused of all kinds of horrible things, including grooming children, which is hard not to take personally. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says Looking for Alaska is still taught in many high school English classes, which he calls the coolest thing that can happen to a book. — 00:00:00 · Looking for Alaska (novel)
  • ★★ John says the book is taught in fewer classes because groups like Moms for Liberty have very successfully challenged it out of curricula and often out of libraries. — 00:00:29 · Looking for Alaska (novel)
  • ★★★ John says the novel's teenagers smoke, drink and behave self-destructively because books exist not as moral screeds but as tellers of truths. — 00:00:29 · Looking for Alaska (novel)
  • ★★★ John says the book is banned not for smoking or drinking but because of one one-page scene in which two teenagers engage in oral sex. — 00:00:29 · Looking for Alaska (novel)

00:00:58 — The one-page oral sex scene: not pornography, written to be unsexy, contrasting with the next scene's kiss to serve the book's theme of grief and guilt

  • ★★ John says a concerned parent typically prints out that page and hands it around, and everyone is horrified that children are allowed to read pornography. — 00:00:58

  • ★★★ John says the scene is not pornography, which is designed to arouse: he wrote it to be awkward, uncomfortable, funny and definitely unsexy. — 00:00:58

    “pornography is designed to arouse and this scene is awkward and uncomfortable and funny and definitely unsexy”

  • ★★ John says the scene's language is cold and clinical, with exactly one descriptive adjective: nervous. — 00:00:58

  • ★★★ John says the fumbling scene is meant to contrast with the next one, where two teenagers only kiss but the language is far more sensorially evocative. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ John says school boards often miss this because they read only the page printed out for them, not the text and its context. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ John says the point of the contrast is that intimacy is more fulfilling when people are connected and communicative. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ John says the novel makes the somewhat old-fashioned argument that romance is more fulfilling when you like someone and communicate clearly, and needn't be very intimate to be meaningful. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ John says without those scenes the book would lack its core theme: how to live with grief and guilt after catastrophically failing someone you love. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John says he often hears that teenagers don't understand any of this and are corrupted by the sex in the book; he answers that the sex is not sexy. (playful) — 00:02:26

00:02:55 — Teenagers can read critically; teachers teach the whole novel, which is about grief, loss and radical hope; trust teachers and librarians as experts

  • ★★★ John calls that a huge insult to teenagers, who are perfectly capable of reading critically. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ John says teenagers reading Animal Farm don't fear power-hungry pigs, because they understand the book is about people, not an animal farm. (playful) — 00:02:55
  • ★★ John trusts teachers' expertise and would question one who assigned only the decontextualized page, but teachers read the whole novel, as all novels are meant to be read. — 00:02:55 · Looking for Alaska (novel)
  • ★★★ John says that read as a novel, Looking for Alaska is plainly not about sexual arousal or prurience but about grief and loss. — 00:03:24 · Looking for Alaska (novel)

  • ★★★ John says the novel is about radical hope, that hope and forgiveness are available to all people at all times, and about how we go on when loved ones cannot. — 00:03:53 · hope

    “hope and forgiveness are available to all people at all times”

  • ★★★ John believes teachers and librarians should be allowed to teach and curate information because they are the experts in those jobs; it is not up to him. — 00:03:53

00:04:22 — The irony of Christian challenges to a book built on a Christian idea; banners oppose reality, LGBTQ people and diversity; John proud to be banned; sign-off

  • ★★ John says if teachers or librarians find Looking for Alaska inappropriate for their classrooms or collections, that's fine: otherwise why train and employ them? — 00:04:22 · Looking for Alaska (novel)
  • ★★ John says Looking for Alaska is almost universally challenged in the name of Christianity, which he calls an extra irony. — 00:04:22 · Looking for Alaska (novel)
  • ★★★ John says the radical hope at the center of the book is a Christian idea he wrote about because of his own Christian faith. — 00:04:52 · hope
  • ★★★ John says there is no way to appease book banners: even sharing their professed values, any attempt to portray the world as it is will lead to censorship. — 00:04:52

  • ★★★ John says book banners oppose not books but reality: it is reality they find obscene. — 00:04:52

    “It's not books they find obscene, it's reality they find obscene.”

  • ★★★ John says book banners feel the existence of LGBTQ people is obscene, which is why they disproportionately ban books about them. — 00:04:52

  • ★★★ John says they feel racial and ethnic diversity is obscene, which is why they disproportionately ban books by and about people of color. — 00:05:21
  • ★★★ John says this is about not only which stories we may read but which people and realities we acknowledge as full parts of the human story. — 00:05:21
  • ★★ In that sense, John says, he is quite proud to be the author of a book so widely banned. — 00:05:21 · Looking for Alaska (novel)

In the description and comments

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: book censorship · grief · Looking for Alaska (novel)

Also: Works: Animal Farm

Organizations: Moms for Liberty · PEN America

Concepts: adolescence · Christianity · close reading · expert · guilt · hope · LGBTQ rights · pornography · romantic love

Places: United States

Only in the description or credits: Everything Is Tuberculosis

Also centred on book censorship: Brotherhood 2.0: May 2: Book Banning · I Am Not A Pornographer · On the Banning of Looking for Alaska · My Religion and My Banned Books · John Green's Brother

Also centred on grief: Rest In Awesome, Esther · John and Rainn Wilson Talk Romance · Thanks, Lemon · You Are Here · Hard Week · Esther Day 2026: Some Thoughts on Loss

← Previous: TIL Some People Have an 'Inner Monologue' · Next → Fine, I'll Talk About the Drones…