5 ms·

It turns out that Dahl was a real antisemite, to me that is more of an issue: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/06/roald-dahl-family-apologises-for-his

It turns out that Dahl was a real antisemite, to me that is more of an issue: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/06/roald-dahl-family-apologises-for-his-antisemitism https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/06/roald-dahl-fam...

wwwolfwwwarrior 4y ago
[dead]
avazhi 4y ago
Turns out a person being something you dislike has no direct bearing on the quality of their writing and storytelling. If you can’t appreciate the latter on account of the former, that’s your problem.
- memalign 4y ago
  It can be more complicated than that (depending on your personal philosophy). Art can be standalone but it can also be tightly interwoven with cultural and political context. There’s an interesting recent YouTube video from Wisecrack on the topic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jVts8D1LzF0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jVts8D1LzF0
- MichaelMoser123 4y ago
  > Turns out a person being something you dislike has no direct bearing on the quality of their writing and storytelling. It turns out that this has a direct bearing on my perception of his writing. For example i don't have to pay for his stories, if the author doesn't like me for the color of my skin or for belonging to people that the author happens to dislike. I am also allowed to say that these are very objectionable attitudes. And i can also remind other people that these are very objectionable attitudes.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    He's been dead for over 30 years. I'm pretty sure your money doesn't affect him one way or the other. If you don't have any friends who have parents who are morally reprehensible, then you don't have many friends.
    - MichaelMoser123 4y ago
      > If you don't have any friends who have parents who are morally reprehensible, then you don't have many friends. I wouldn't judge anyone for the deeds of his parents.
      - hinkley 4y ago
        Good, so buying a book whose proceeds go to the children of a long deceased person shouldn't give you pause. (or at least, you should see how far the apple fell from the tree)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - anonreeeeplor 4y ago
    He personally fought Nazis and killed them in WWII. Did you?
  - zirgs 4y ago
    HP Lovecraft was ridiculously racist. Do you perceive his works differently because of that?
- phist_mcgee 4y ago
  The boycotters of Hogwarts: Legacy would like a word..
swatcoder 4y ago
I know very little about the beliefs or personal lives of nearly any artist whose work I enjoy, but I know that most people carry beliefs and histories that I would disagree with, so I have to assume that this is no less true of the artists. It seems like fretting over the occasional artist that’s been “outed” is a convenient way to pretend that rest of them are somehow saints, when in reality nearly all of them have likely said awful things and treated people quite terribly sometimes. While exceptions might be made for egregious offenders, often the only real difference between the two groups is a lack of visibility into their personal lives. So why get so invested?
- MichaelMoser123 4y ago
  Things do have a historic context, if one admits to hating Jews in the second half of the twentieth century then that speaks an awful lot about his attitudes as a writer.
  - oska 4y ago
    > that speaks an awful lot about his attitudes as a writer How? Especially when, to my knowledge, there is no anti-Jewish content in his children's books.
    - MichaelMoser123 4y ago
      See this post by @jasonhansel https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849383#34853283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849383#34853283
      - oska 4y ago
        Ok, I read the article [1] linked in that comment and I think it's mostly junk. To give one example, the author's picking on the large noses and wigs of the witches as somehow mirroring negative portrayals of Jews is a massive stretch. The stereotypes of witches include all sorts of negative prejudices against older women. Older people have larger noses (and ears), as their faces 'shrink in' a bit (and I think cartilage also can keep growing). Losing their hair or having 'strange' hair is also a prejudicial stereotype against older, unmarried, 'strange' women (because hair is considered such a defining aspect of 'normal' femininity). The linking of 'secret societies who run the world' to an anti-Jewish message (to the readers of the books) is also a huge stretch and I think it wrong. That the people who actually 'run the world' are hidden was evidently part of Dahl's mindset. It's not an unusual mindset. Dahl attributed some powerful Jews as (at least part of) that 'secret society' in the real world, yes. I've read those anti-Jewish quotes from Dahl before and his thinking on the matter is pretty clear. But Matilda is a work of fiction. It's not at all strange that he reflected those 'secret power group' conceptions in one of his books with a cabal of witches actually running a fictional book world. But I don't think he in any way intended the book to be an explicit analogy to what he thought about our actual world situation, i.e. I don't think witches are meant to be a stand-in for Jews, and the big noses and wigs thing is pretty weak sauce to use to make that case, as I've already addressed. Contrast Matilda here to Orwell's Animal Farm which was written as an explicit analogy to the real world, and Orwell made clear links, e.g. Snowball == Trotsky, showing that he intended it as such. While Orwell's work is partly a warning against communism (and partly just a good story, well told), Dahl's Matilda isn't a warning against 'powerful secret societies who run the world', let alone Jewish ones; the secret, malignant society is simply a good fictional plot device and one that's been used many times before (sometimes with explicit prejudice, sometimes not). [1] https://www.heyalma.com/is-roald-dahls-the-witches-antisemitic/amp/ https://www.heyalma.com/is-roald-dahls-the-witches-antisemit...
josephg 4y ago
I don't want to downplay antisemitism - its a real problem. But why does that bother you, given he's dead? Matilda was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. There's something in it that hits me right in the soul, even as an adult. I hear you when you say his antisemitism is an issue for you - but - I just can't see how that has any bearing on my relationship with his books. As a child I didn't understand, and now as an adult I can't bring myself to care. Its not like the royalties go to him - he's dead. I struggle more with Scott Orson Card. Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead are fantastic books. Both different, and both absolutely excellent. I'd rather not support him financially given he's used his platform to attack gay people. But I also suspect it would have taken someone with a conservative outlook on life to write Speaker for the dead. There's ideas in that book I never hear anyone talk about. Hearing those perspectives has broadened my outlook a little. My life would be dimmer for not having read his books. I also think a lot of the delight in Dahl's books comes from his unbridled wildness, and his unabashed delight in being a monster to his characters - in ways modern sensibilities don't approve of. I don't think he would have been on board with the modern insistence on political correctness in children's books. I understand the edits, especially if there's netflix deals in the works. But I suspect history won't look kindly on the edits made to his books. Its ok for Wonka to have slaves (so long as they're not african) and straight up murder annoying children, but he can't call someone fat? This all feels very of-the-moment.
- MichaelMoser123 4y ago
  >But why does that bother you, given he's dead For example it can be taken it as a call to others to hate your guts too, and it can play out pretty nasty, if the economy turns bad and if people will start to look out for scapegoats. This is not something entirely abstract, it happened before.
  - josephg 4y ago
    Half my ancestry is Jewish. I'm sure plenty of dead people hate me for one reason or another. But, they're dead and I'm alive. So why should I care? Its kind of a weird move but there's plenty of other ways we can weave meaning out of whats happening here. - We could say "Ha ha - you hate Jewish people but your life's work still involved giving beautiful books for me to enjoy! Sounds like you lose, Dahl!". Taking treasure from a dragon is more virtuous if the dragon you're stealing from is evil. - Or turn this into a story about mending fences. Here's an antisemite and a semite bonding over our shared love of stories. Sounds like a lived example of us being more alike than we are different, after all. Racism, in all its forms, diminishes through empathy and shared understanding. If two communities read different books growing up, they're much less likely to understand each other. If two communities enjoy the same books, they'll find it easier to connect and build bridges. He may have been antisemitic. Isn't that even more reason to use his life's work to bring people closer together? This might sound weak or saccharine. But I find it pretty hard to imagine any scenario in which enjoying Matilda will somehow incite people to blame "the Jews" for a bad economy. That sounds pretty far fetched to me.
vxNsr 4y ago
As a Jew I’d say it sounds like he had a grudge against a specific Jew that he generalized to all Jewish people. Let him be hateful doesn’t bother me. His books are fantastic, I’m gonna go on eBay and look for an older collection that isn’t badly mangled like the ones the publisher is putting out now.
cafard 4y ago
Somebody a few years ago proposed that if one really wished to read only poets who were guaranteed to be unobjectionable in their opinions and exemplary in their private lives, one would have to stick to George Herbert. Did Dahl's antisemitism color much or some of his work? I haven't read that much of his stuff.
- MichaelMoser123 4y ago
  >Did Dahl's antisemitism color much or some of his work? That's probably a matter of interpretation, I am not an expert in these matters. I also don't have to like his books, if I need to check upon these questions on a permanent basis. I got better things to do. Also this post by @jasonhansel https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849383#34853283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849383#34853283
anonreeeeplor 4y ago
Roald Dahl personally killed Nazis as a fighter pilot. Go look it up.
- defrost 4y ago
  He had four or five confirmed kills with no indication that the German pilots of the Junkers Ju 88s over Greece were Nazis. He also killed at least one Vichy French Air Force pilot .. again there's no indication whether that pilot (or pilots) were Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl#Fighter_pilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl#Fighter_pilot
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    This is just a weird, though pretty common nitpick, but I'll bite. The pilots he downed were actively fighting for a nazi state. They might have not been nazis themselves, but they were still fighting to spread nazi ideology. It wouldn't matter even if literally no german pilots were actually ideologically nazis, if they were still flying planes and combat missions in hopes of a victory for their side (nazi germany).
    - defrost 4y ago
      > They might have not been nazis themselves ... Perhaps surprisingly large numbers of the military did not support the Nazi ideals. High ranking members of the military failed to assisinate Hitler several times. The specific "nitpick" is that the pilot and crew were very likely to not be actual literal Nazis. That's just history .. the point of current interest now is the question of whether niche ideologies can take over a state and take it to war on the global stage.
  - zirgs 4y ago
    Every single German soldier who kept fighting ensured that death camps stayed open for longer. Every single piece of land that they managed to capture was annexed to the Nazi state and the SS could do their dirty work there. It doesn't really matter what those pilots thought themselves. My country is almost Judenfrei now, because of those German soldiers.

wwwolfwwwarrior 4y ago

[dead]

avazhi 4y ago

Turns out a person being something you dislike has no direct bearing on the quality of their writing and storytelling. If you can’t appreciate the latter on account of the former, that’s your problem.

memalign 4y ago
It can be more complicated than that (depending on your personal philosophy). Art can be standalone but it can also be tightly interwoven with cultural and political context. There’s an interesting recent YouTube video from Wisecrack on the topic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jVts8D1LzF0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jVts8D1LzF0
MichaelMoser123 4y ago
> Turns out a person being something you dislike has no direct bearing on the quality of their writing and storytelling. It turns out that this has a direct bearing on my perception of his writing. For example i don't have to pay for his stories, if the author doesn't like me for the color of my skin or for belonging to people that the author happens to dislike. I am also allowed to say that these are very objectionable attitudes. And i can also remind other people that these are very objectionable attitudes.
- hinkley 4y ago
  He's been dead for over 30 years. I'm pretty sure your money doesn't affect him one way or the other. If you don't have any friends who have parents who are morally reprehensible, then you don't have many friends.
  - MichaelMoser123 4y ago
    > If you don't have any friends who have parents who are morally reprehensible, then you don't have many friends. I wouldn't judge anyone for the deeds of his parents.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      Good, so buying a book whose proceeds go to the children of a long deceased person shouldn't give you pause. (or at least, you should see how far the apple fell from the tree)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- anonreeeeplor 4y ago
  He personally fought Nazis and killed them in WWII. Did you?
- zirgs 4y ago
  HP Lovecraft was ridiculously racist. Do you perceive his works differently because of that?
phist_mcgee 4y ago
The boycotters of Hogwarts: Legacy would like a word..

swatcoder 4y ago

I know very little about the beliefs or personal lives of nearly any artist whose work I enjoy, but I know that most people carry beliefs and histories that I would disagree with, so I have to assume that this is no less true of the artists. It seems like fretting over the occasional artist that’s been “outed” is a convenient way to pretend that rest of them are somehow saints, when in reality nearly all of them have likely said awful things and treated people quite terribly sometimes. While exceptions might be made for egregious offenders, often the only real difference between the two groups is a lack of visibility into their personal lives. So why get so invested?

MichaelMoser123 4y ago
Things do have a historic context, if one admits to hating Jews in the second half of the twentieth century then that speaks an awful lot about his attitudes as a writer.
- oska 4y ago
  > that speaks an awful lot about his attitudes as a writer How? Especially when, to my knowledge, there is no anti-Jewish content in his children's books.
  - MichaelMoser123 4y ago
    See this post by @jasonhansel https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849383#34853283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849383#34853283
    - oska 4y ago
      Ok, I read the article [1] linked in that comment and I think it's mostly junk. To give one example, the author's picking on the large noses and wigs of the witches as somehow mirroring negative portrayals of Jews is a massive stretch. The stereotypes of witches include all sorts of negative prejudices against older women. Older people have larger noses (and ears), as their faces 'shrink in' a bit (and I think cartilage also can keep growing). Losing their hair or having 'strange' hair is also a prejudicial stereotype against older, unmarried, 'strange' women (because hair is considered such a defining aspect of 'normal' femininity). The linking of 'secret societies who run the world' to an anti-Jewish message (to the readers of the books) is also a huge stretch and I think it wrong. That the people who actually 'run the world' are hidden was evidently part of Dahl's mindset. It's not an unusual mindset. Dahl attributed some powerful Jews as (at least part of) that 'secret society' in the real world, yes. I've read those anti-Jewish quotes from Dahl before and his thinking on the matter is pretty clear. But Matilda is a work of fiction. It's not at all strange that he reflected those 'secret power group' conceptions in one of his books with a cabal of witches actually running a fictional book world. But I don't think he in any way intended the book to be an explicit analogy to what he thought about our actual world situation, i.e. I don't think witches are meant to be a stand-in for Jews, and the big noses and wigs thing is pretty weak sauce to use to make that case, as I've already addressed. Contrast Matilda here to Orwell's Animal Farm which was written as an explicit analogy to the real world, and Orwell made clear links, e.g. Snowball == Trotsky, showing that he intended it as such. While Orwell's work is partly a warning against communism (and partly just a good story, well told), Dahl's Matilda isn't a warning against 'powerful secret societies who run the world', let alone Jewish ones; the secret, malignant society is simply a good fictional plot device and one that's been used many times before (sometimes with explicit prejudice, sometimes not). [1] https://www.heyalma.com/is-roald-dahls-the-witches-antisemitic/amp/ https://www.heyalma.com/is-roald-dahls-the-witches-antisemit...

josephg 4y ago

I don't want to downplay antisemitism - its a real problem. But why does that bother you, given he's dead? Matilda was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. There's something in it that hits me right in the soul, even as an adult. I hear you when you say his antisemitism is an issue for you - but - I just can't see how that has any bearing on my relationship with his books. As a child I didn't understand, and now as an adult I can't bring myself to care. Its not like the royalties go to him - he's dead. I struggle more with Scott Orson Card. Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead are fantastic books. Both different, and both absolutely excellent. I'd rather not support him financially given he's used his platform to attack gay people. But I also suspect it would have taken someone with a conservative outlook on life to write Speaker for the dead. There's ideas in that book I never hear anyone talk about. Hearing those perspectives has broadened my outlook a little. My life would be dimmer for not having read his books. I also think a lot of the delight in Dahl's books comes from his unbridled wildness, and his unabashed delight in being a monster to his characters - in ways modern sensibilities don't approve of. I don't think he would have been on board with the modern insistence on political correctness in children's books. I understand the edits, especially if there's netflix deals in the works. But I suspect history won't look kindly on the edits made to his books. Its ok for Wonka to have slaves (so long as they're not african) and straight up murder annoying children, but he can't call someone fat? This all feels very of-the-moment.

MichaelMoser123 4y ago
>But why does that bother you, given he's dead For example it can be taken it as a call to others to hate your guts too, and it can play out pretty nasty, if the economy turns bad and if people will start to look out for scapegoats. This is not something entirely abstract, it happened before.
- josephg 4y ago
  Half my ancestry is Jewish. I'm sure plenty of dead people hate me for one reason or another. But, they're dead and I'm alive. So why should I care? Its kind of a weird move but there's plenty of other ways we can weave meaning out of whats happening here. - We could say "Ha ha - you hate Jewish people but your life's work still involved giving beautiful books for me to enjoy! Sounds like you lose, Dahl!". Taking treasure from a dragon is more virtuous if the dragon you're stealing from is evil. - Or turn this into a story about mending fences. Here's an antisemite and a semite bonding over our shared love of stories. Sounds like a lived example of us being more alike than we are different, after all. Racism, in all its forms, diminishes through empathy and shared understanding. If two communities read different books growing up, they're much less likely to understand each other. If two communities enjoy the same books, they'll find it easier to connect and build bridges. He may have been antisemitic. Isn't that even more reason to use his life's work to bring people closer together? This might sound weak or saccharine. But I find it pretty hard to imagine any scenario in which enjoying Matilda will somehow incite people to blame "the Jews" for a bad economy. That sounds pretty far fetched to me.

vxNsr 4y ago

As a Jew I’d say it sounds like he had a grudge against a specific Jew that he generalized to all Jewish people. Let him be hateful doesn’t bother me. His books are fantastic, I’m gonna go on eBay and look for an older collection that isn’t badly mangled like the ones the publisher is putting out now.

cafard 4y ago

Somebody a few years ago proposed that if one really wished to read only poets who were guaranteed to be unobjectionable in their opinions and exemplary in their private lives, one would have to stick to George Herbert. Did Dahl's antisemitism color much or some of his work? I haven't read that much of his stuff.

MichaelMoser123 4y ago
>Did Dahl's antisemitism color much or some of his work? That's probably a matter of interpretation, I am not an expert in these matters. I also don't have to like his books, if I need to check upon these questions on a permanent basis. I got better things to do. Also this post by @jasonhansel https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849383#34853283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849383#34853283

anonreeeeplor 4y ago

Roald Dahl personally killed Nazis as a fighter pilot. Go look it up.

defrost 4y ago
He had four or five confirmed kills with no indication that the German pilots of the Junkers Ju 88s over Greece were Nazis. He also killed at least one Vichy French Air Force pilot .. again there's no indication whether that pilot (or pilots) were Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl#Fighter_pilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl#Fighter_pilot
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  This is just a weird, though pretty common nitpick, but I'll bite. The pilots he downed were actively fighting for a nazi state. They might have not been nazis themselves, but they were still fighting to spread nazi ideology. It wouldn't matter even if literally no german pilots were actually ideologically nazis, if they were still flying planes and combat missions in hopes of a victory for their side (nazi germany).
  - defrost 4y ago
    > They might have not been nazis themselves ... Perhaps surprisingly large numbers of the military did not support the Nazi ideals. High ranking members of the military failed to assisinate Hitler several times. The specific "nitpick" is that the pilot and crew were very likely to not be actual literal Nazis. That's just history .. the point of current interest now is the question of whether niche ideologies can take over a state and take it to war on the global stage.
- zirgs 4y ago
  Every single German soldier who kept fighting ensured that death camps stayed open for longer. Every single piece of land that they managed to capture was annexed to the Nazi state and the SS could do their dirty work there. It doesn't really matter what those pilots thought themselves. My country is almost Judenfrei now, because of those German soldiers.