There’s a wonderful novel by the Japanese writer Yōko Ogawa called The Memory Police, which portrays an island community living under a strange form of repression: every now and again, something is taken from them – it might be photographs, or rose petals, or hats – and not only do the objects disappear but all references, memories and language associated with them.
I remembered it last week, as reports circulated that the streaming platform HBO Max had been removing titles from its catalogue following a merger with Discovery+. Were we in a beautifully suggestive allegory of cultural authoritarianism, the anguished howls that have greeted the disappearance of shows such as Vinyl, An American Pickle and The Witches would have themselves been silenced; as it is, this is just business and some of them are even now popping up elsewhere.
