9 ms·

The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism

170 points by mhb 4y ago

esotericimpl 4y ago
[dead]
AzzieElbab 4y ago
Why not mention brother Grimm or Arabian Nights that had already been re-written and re-worded beyond recognition
- jerkstate 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure everybody agrees that Disney's The Little Mermaid or Aladdin (or Willy Wonka) are not faithful representations of the original source material. Editing the book after Roald Dahl is dead and titling it "Mathilda, by Roald Dahl" is something completely different.
- parker_mountain 4y ago
  Those are intensely poor examples, for a handful of a reasons - Language translations are extremely culturally dependent, and is a known quantity. Modern translations frequently have many translator's notes explaining the decision or edits made. - Modern translations are transparent about their editorializing, there's a marked difference between "accurate" and "lay person" translations. - The source materials were written and translated in times when we, frankly, had lower standards.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  What does that have to do with the woke mob vandalizing Dahl's work?
  - mbStavola 4y ago
    Where does the "woke mob" come into this? As far as I can tell there hasn't been a public campaign to censor the books. Rather, these changes came from the Dahl Story Company and Penguin Random House, so this is good old fashion capitalism through-and-through. No one asked for a reason to repurchase novels that were already 50+ years old besides the people who own the rights to these books.
    - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
      The only group lurid enough to vandalize the story are the woke zombie cry-bullies. Their campaign is to burn down western culture and replace it with something that closely resembles intellectual gonorrhea.
      - jrmg 4y ago
        Please, try to be civil. It’s really hard for anyone with different views to seriously engage with you when you’re making such an abrasive presentation. Civil discussion is traditionally a value of the western culture you prize so much.
        PM_me_your_math 4y ago
        Civil like burning down and looting businesses that don't fly a particular flag? ...or pulling the fire alarms at venues when a speaker is presenting something you disagree with? Or civil like destroying timeless stories with emotional garbage and inserting woke ideology into things that have nothing to do with the zealotry? On the contrary, I'm being perfectly civil. Colorful descriptions that profess my disdain for the left's new mind-diarrhea is not even close to incivility. If you don't like my descriptions, then the proper course is to ask yourself why people might take issue with cry-bullies.
        jrmg 4y ago
        I mean, you’re really not being civil by any description of it I’d recognize. Accusing me of being okay with arson? ‘Mind-diarrhea’? Are you at all open to discussion? I’m projecting my own views a lot here, but I am pretty sure you’re not going to be swaying anyone even remotely left of center (most of whom would never engage in the acts you’re listing - and many of whom _are_ uneasy about many of the changes to Dahl’s works that sparked this discussion) in your direction by projecting such an angry, abrasive demeanor. I really worry about the state of online discourse. I’d be willing to bet that if we were to sit down and discuss this over a beverage in real life this isn’t how the discussion would go.
- albertopv 4y ago
  I read to my 6yo Grimm stories almost like originals ones. I think life is made of both good and bad things, hiding latter won't benefit child growth, you have to explain and give the kid the tools to manage both.
  - manuelabeledo 4y ago
    "Almost" is possibly the key word here. How do you explain the horrific violence depicted in many of the Grimm's fairy tales to a kid? And what is the expected benefit of it?
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      > How do you explain the horrific violence depicted in many of the Grimm's fairy tales to a kid? I loved that stuff when I was a kid. "Then they made the evil queen put on red-hot iron boots and dance until she died." Kids are a lot more resilient than people like to think.
      - manuelabeledo 4y ago
        I don't doubt that. But I honestly don't know how would I tell my kid that the Sleeping Beauty was a minor raped by a stranger who tripled her age. Nor I think it could provide any "life lesson" to a six year old.
- xkcd-sucks 4y ago
  Both of these examples are collections of folk tales. Arabian Nights in particular has no authoritative original at all, and there are many variations of the collection in many languages, many of which which are still available today from a variety of publishers. The Brothers Grimm similarly collected and adapted folk tales (and bowdlerized _their own work_ in subsequent editions), but reprints of most of these editions are still available, and versions of tales or collections that were not written by the Grimms are not published under their name. By contrast Dahl stories are original IP with an authoritative source who is now dead and can't revise his own work.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  Pretty much every single fable and tale out there have been rewritten to suit modern tastes. The Sleeping Beauty is raped in her sleep, Little Red Hood fills up the wolf with stones after it has been cut in half to rescue her grandmother, and Cinderella has a confusing relationship with incest.
willcipriano 4y ago
If you are curious how previous efforts similar to this one, look now after the foresight of history: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/25/adam-eve-naked-again-after-centuries-old-cover-up-fitzwilliam-museum https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/25/adam-ev...
- majormajor 4y ago
  Oh, I thought your link would be a reference to the lat time Roald Dahl himself was rewritten. The author of this article doesn't seem aware of, or just leaves out, the previous slaves-from-Africa origin of oompa loompas. I wonder if he wants to roll that one back too.
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    This is just a historical example of someone editing a childrens book and doing so poorly as to ruin the art of the work. Many pieces of art were vandalized in a similar manner, I haven't found a single case in antiquity where modern people, in western countries at least, are in favor of the censorship of the past.
    - majormajor 4y ago
      If only I still had the textbooks that were used to teach me about slavery and the civil war in Texas. Revisionism for days. People didn't see the censorship in the same way as that "fish don't have a word for water" bit.
LatteLazy 4y ago
On the one hand, "Yes, that is true". On the other hand, it's actually physically nauseating to have The Spectator pass any comment on integrity, cultural vandalism, RightThink etc. They've led the charge promoting fake news and alternative "facts" from Brexit to Covid.
- fortituded0002 4y ago
  I'm not familiar with them but things make a lot more sense now. The writing seemed pretty off with lots of odd signals about how to think, how to fall in line, and spell out what our outrage should be. The talking points seemed a little too clean-cut and less about a discussion. Not much to see here. Time to move on.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    Exactly. It's sad because (despite being mostly on the left) I used to read the Spectator, in a "hear the other side, challenge your own point if view" way. And it was good. Decent pragmatic right leaning people. Then in the run up to Brexit it just sort of fell apart. Out was anyone with facts or reasons. In were pre-canned talking points, appeals to emotion and bare faced lies.
- deleted 4y ago
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pprotas 4y ago
This one is very hard for me. I think about how we look at the things that used to be normal in the past. How the R word was a medical condition, how the N word was a normal thing to call somebody, how a gay man was called the F word. Nobody would bat an eye at these words back then. And yet - we look back on those times with disdain. I can't imagine giving a book to a child that contains those words; and yet maybe back then that was normal? Will people look back on our times with disdain and think how horrible we were for calling each other crazy, mad, fat and ugly? How we made such a big deal about gendering things? Maybe we are "the old men shouting at clouds" (ahem... I mean "old people shouting at clouds" xd)? Maybe we should get with the times? Or is this really all "cancel-culture" and everybody else except us is wrong? Unfortunately, I only have questions and no answers hahah
- majormajor 4y ago
  If you set aside which particular words, my hopeful/naive answer to the question "will people think how horrible we were for insulting each other so frequently" would be "yes." It would be wonderful if everyone was more civil and less vicious. Anyone here who was bullied in high school, say, and enjoyed it? I sure didn't. I don't think it will happen, but for words that become increasingly only employed as insults, I understand the desire to push back against those insults.
  - ClapperHeid 4y ago
    >Anyone here who was bullied in high school, say, and enjoyed it? I sure didn't... And therein lies the rub. People like you, who couldn't find a coping mechanism to deal with childhood bullying [all children are vicious wee thugs, until they learn otherwise] think that you can somehow control what people "feel inside" by controlling what words they can use to express themselves. Ditto the people who think you can somehow stop anyone having racist or homopobic attitudes by banning completely innocuous words [see Montenegro comment above] as people might see them as racist or hompophobic. Kids will always bully other kids, racists will always hate other races and homophobic people will always hate gays. If you ban one word, they'll come up with another. If you ban that, they'll come up with another... rinse and repeat. As I've said before, if you follow that path to its conclusion, you end up with Newspeak [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
disantlor 4y ago
the author is certain that they turned out fine but is not curious about the experience of the people for whom these changes are made
- felurx 4y ago
  That slightly annoyed me too! > How many of us chortled at fat Augustus Gloop getting stuck in that pipe, or winced at the idea of witches posing as cashiers, or smiled deviantly at the vision of a ‘tremendously flabby’ old lady? And we turned out fine. We weren’t wounded, we didn’t become hateful. I guess that you can say that "laughing about these specific fictional fat people" doesn't directly cause one to behave in hurtful ways towards fat real people. To me it still seems bizarre that the author decided to basically ask "Remember how we laughed at fat people and how good that was?" right before stating as fact that noone was hurt in consequence of any of the stuff in the book.
RheingoldRiver 4y ago
Is it an act of cultural vandalism to stage a modernized production of Shakespeare so that the audience can empathize with the plot & characters better? Be angry at copyright, not at the decision to attempt to modernize a work of art; without copyright, both versions could be circulated concurrently (and of course this is why you see both traditional & modernized Shakespeare productions, unlike Broadway where every tour is authorized and a replica (some exceptions for school versions and such)). Art is a product of its times, and imo it's completely reasonable to want to update a version to what makes sense in the modern day and what children can now empathize with, and see themselves reflected in.
- jordan_bonecut 4y ago
  It's one thing to advertise something as a modernized version and another to advertise it as the original work of the authors. Isn't it worth preserving how things were in the past? If not how will we understand where we came from? How will we know how to learn from mistakes if they're just erased?
  - RheingoldRiver 4y ago
    That's an interesting point. I would agree that the attribution should clearly state "Revised in 2023 by Puffin" or something along these lines. As for: > Isn't it worth preserving how things were in the past? Oh, yes, absolutely, and this is why archivists and librarians have such an important profession; and also why copyright law sucks so much. Do be angry at copyright law, don't be angry at the decision to modernize the texts.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    "Why do we lie to children in the places and times we do" is its own fascinating topic, but are we expecting anyone encountering Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the first time to be reading it through a lens of "how things were in the past" lens?
    - trey-jones 4y ago
spamizbad 4y ago
One way to prevent this from happening would be to close the copyright loophole associated with these actions. Estates of dead authors get to "update" works and can cash in a brand new copyright.
Barrin92 4y ago
>This is the doublespeak of modern-day censorship. 'Sensitivity’ is the garb moral censure now wears It's pretty funny that you never see these complaints when European folklore is butchered because it's deemed to be "unsafe for children", entire scenes are cut out of Leon or even Harry Potter is being attacked for promoting "witchcraft". Sure rewriting Dahl is silly but it is funny to me to pretend this is a modern invention in Anglosphere culture. The puritan moral panic has a long history
- _v7gu 4y ago
  > It's pretty funny that you never see these complaints Have you missed the 2000's on the internet? All the people mocking "fundamental Christian" outrages against things like Harry Potter, Pokemon (evolution lol) and even the utterance of the word "Magic"? A group that was so wide and loud, that EA organized a false-flag protest against itself on the release of Dante's Inferno--just to get publicity and support via that group? The reason that you "never" see those complaints is that they have won, and any mention of magic or violence being harmful in fiction is instantly ridiculed. They became invisible by actually being the norm
mattbee 4y ago
I don't hear the author complaining about the loss of the first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This is where Dahl bowed to early 70s wokery and erased the oompa-loompas' true identity as African slaves who would dribble for cocoa beans. Film adaptations have struggled with the fact that oompa-loompas are, however you dress them up, slaves. From this article which is much more interesting: https://theconversation.com/from-pygmies-to-puppets-what-to-do-with-roald-dahls-enslaved-oompa-loompas-in-modern-adaptations-166967 https://theconversation.com/from-pygmies-to-puppets-what-to-...
- bombcar 4y ago
  There’s a pretty obvious difference between convincing a living artist to revise his work and a massive company revising a dead author’s work.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    Our current intellectual property law makes no distinction between these two cases. We should fix copyright rather than stoke useless culture wars. The publisher and Dahl’s estate are laughing all the way to the bank on this controversy.
    - readthenotes1 4y ago
      Right? The new works should be accredited to new authors with perhaps a "with thanks to" attribution. It is only because of copyright that this is not done
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Sadly that’s probably a decent reason to do a “approved update” - you can force all libraries to buy the new edition
      - defrost 4y ago
        > you can force all libraries to buy the new edition I'm sorry, what now? My local library here in Western Australia has a second edition of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1860, 3000 copies). There's been no pressure that I'm aware of to acquire the first, third, fourth, fifth or sixth editions or the numerous translations that I'm aware of - many of these are carried by other libraries. Who is going around libraries forcing them to get more recent editions?
monero-xmr 4y ago
The changes I can’t understand most involve calling people fat. Obesity is a fact and it should not be normalized. Any obese person put on a desert island and fed water and a limited caloric diet would lose weight, a scientific fact. Any attempt at normalizing obesity is the same as normalizing smoking cigarettes or alcoholism - harmful to all of humanity.
- ofchnofc 4y ago
  I think this is put rather bluntly, and I've still got a bit to go probably to where I would call myself my ideal weight, so I say this with a certain empathy... but I really agree that obesity falls into a different category than most of what might be called "woke". What I perceive as a general normalization of obesity feels... very corporate, or certainly too convenient for corporate interests. Americans fail to consider many aspects of their lives regarding their health because they're trained to trust brands, and that doubly/triply extends to ignorance around diet and nutrition. Food, sex, alcohol. All vices that Americans glorify and demonize in nearly exactly the least effective ways. IDK, I don't want to preach but my body now, compared to with an extra 80-100lbs on it? It's hard to put into words how many aspects of my life are markedly better.
  - artificial 4y ago
    About 40% of Cocacola's income is from Foodstamps. https://revenuesandprofits.com/how-coca-cola-company-makes-money-understanding-coca-cola-business-model/ https://revenuesandprofits.com/how-coca-cola-company-makes-m...
    - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
      ... according to one person on Twitter.
      - artificial 4y ago
        As of 2016 20 cents of every SNAP dollar goes to sweetened beverages.[0] There's ~42 million people getting SNAP benefits. [1] [0a]https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/ops/SNAPFoodsTypicallyPurchased-Summary.pdf https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/ops/SNAPFo... [0b]https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/foods-typically-purchased-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap-households https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/foods-typically-purchased-supp... [1]https://hungerandhealth.feedingamerica.org/explore-our-work/programs-target-populations/snap-eligible-households/ https://hungerandhealth.feedingamerica.org/explore-our-work/... [2]https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-at-who-benefits-from-snap-state-by-state-fact-sheets#Alabama https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-...
Frondo 4y ago
The real act of cultural vandalism is the copyright regime that keeps these trust fund descendants of the Dahl estate in cash for something they did not do, for however many more decades that all his works will be locked up. "Updating" these works is gross, but only because it's nothing but a cash-grab for them, selling and re-selling this material to new audiences just by tweaking a few words here and there.
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- hummus_bae 4y ago
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algesten 4y ago
Didn't the Victorians (and people before that) rewrite Shakespear all the time to fit the current vibe? Roald Dahl also changed his own books so they would stay current.
- 130e13a 4y ago
  i feel like there's a difference between the author themselves doing the rewriting (which i'm fine with, because you're essentially just publishing a new edition of your book), and someone else who just happens to own the IP doing the rewriting (which i'm a bit uncomfortable with, regardless of what exactly is being changed). it's like if a painter adds something to an already-completed artwork that they had painted and then describes the result as a refined version of the painting (fine), vs when someone who just happens to have bought the painting adds something and then argues that the resulting painting is now the "official" version of the painting, while still naming the original painter as the creator (not fine).
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >Didn't the Victorians (and people before that) rewrite Shakespear all the time to fit the current vibe? Yes, and they are now generally mocked by today's critics for doing so.
duxup 4y ago
The Disney Channel has a short warning that appears before some Muppet Show episodes. I was surprised, but I liked the approach. Disney gets to say that someone might be upset, but we the viewers are empowered to see the content and make our own decision.
- hanoz 4y ago
  I certainly wouldn't patronise a publisher who saw fit to put any such warning in one of Roald Dahl's books.
  - duxup 4y ago
    I don’t have a problem with it. Tear the page out if you like.
    - hanoz 4y ago
      If that were an acceptable solution we wouldn't need your warning in the first place would we?
      - duxup 4y ago
        What do you mean acceptable solution? If there was a page with a warning in your book, you can do that. Then you have the book you wanted. https://youtu.be/8x0COtH4Vrw https://youtu.be/8x0COtH4Vrw
        hanoz 4y ago
        What I mean is you might just as well have suggested that anyone who has a problem with the original text applies the same technique.
        duxup 4y ago
        If it is their book I don’t really care what they do. As long as the original is there and a publisher add some silly warning page I really don’t care.
alsaaro 4y ago
When movies featuring nudity are censored for network TV, do we use such loaded phrases as "cultural vandalism" to describe this censorship. To me this is a case of "capital over all things" our censor is not the vandal, but us.
- kcplate 4y ago
  Ahh yes, the movie edits… Is it cultural vandalism? Absolutely, although hilarious, like vandalism certainly can be. “Your mother sews socks that smell…” “I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday through Friday plane!” “This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps!” "Pardon my French, but you're an AARDVARK!" "Hand me the keys, you fairy godmother."
insane_dreamer 4y ago
A modern re-adaptation of a dead author's work I have no issue with; we do that with Shakespeare as others have pointed out. But that's not the same thing as publishing a re-written work under the author's own name, which I do take exception with.
ClapperHeid 4y ago
One of the funniest onf these "Beat it to death with the PC stick" re-writes was when the Enid Blyton Famous Five books were dragged into the 21st century with "Famous 5 on the case" [0] featuring the children of the original Famous Five. This featured such mind-boggling concepts as: >Jo Misra (short for Jyothi, a Hindi word meaning light.) She is a 12-year-old daughter of George Kirrin, and like her mother before her is a tomboy... Given that everyone who ever read the Famous five realised in later life that "George[ina]" Kirrin was obviously going to grow up er... "not that interested in men", shall we say?... the fact she had a mixed-race daughter with an Indian bloke, is quite a surprise. Ironically, the original books have now leap-frogged the excerable rewrite in PC box-ticking, as the original George character can now be viewed as being a very early positvely portrayed "trans" character: ---- “I say! Are you Georgina?” The child in the opposite bed sat up and looked across at Anne. She had very short curly hair, almost as short as a boy’s. Her face was burnt a dark-brown with the sun, and her very blue eyes looked as bright as forget-me-nots in her face. But her mouth was rather sulky, and she had a frown like her father’s. “No,” she said. “I’m not Georgina.” “Oh!” said Anne, in surprise. “Then who are you?” “I’m George,” said the girl. “I shall only answer if you call me George. I hate being a girl. I won’t be. I don’t like doing the things that girls do. I like doing the things that boys do. I can climb better than any boy, and swim faster too. I can sail a boat as well as any fisher-boy on this coast. You’re to call me George. Then I’ll speak to you. But I shan’t if you don’t.” ---- [From "Five on a Treasure Island"] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_5:_On_the_Case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_5:_On_the_Case
felurx 4y ago
Hm. To me, it seems that the article could have been quite a bit more differentiated. I agree that it's ridiculous to avoid using the word/color "black". On the other hand I don't see a problem with for example using "children" instead of "boys and girls" as a generic term for, well, children. One thing that the article gets wrong though is why changes like these are made. As I read it, the author seems confident that the (only) reason is to avoid offending children. I'd be surprised if that was ever the reason for anyone to advocate for using other phrasings. Instead, I'd argue, the idea is to stop reinforcing/introducing shitty (read: harmful to some degree) ideas. "Boys and girls" implies that those are the only two options. Using "fat" as something that only evil characters are and as something that should be laughed at implies that fat people are bad and that it's okay to ridicule them for being fat. And so on. Now, the question about whether it's good and worth it to make these adjustments is one that imho can and should be discussed and that reasonable minds can differ on. But as is, the article seems to be written with either a lack of good understanding or good faith.
djur 4y ago
I think very few people can claim to an absolute principle against any kind of editing of books for children, since this has been happening for as long as books and children existed, including in the past century -- does anybody buy a "Grimm's Fairy Tales" book expecting to find "The Jew Among Thorns" included? There is also not a free speech issue at play here other than that already imposed by the copyright system. The Dahl estate is not being forced to make these changes, and indeed nobody can compel them to authorize publishing an unaltered version of the books (under current law). But once you've set those grander questions aside, you can evaluate this specific case. Do you agree with the purpose of the edits? Do you think they're appropriate in degree and scope? I would say that I am somewhat sympathetic to the intention of some of the edits. Dahl fielded objections to his work during his lifetime, and pushed back strongly against the suggestion that his books were unsuitable for children for moral reasons [1], but he also changed (or permitted his publisher to change) the Oompa-Loompas from an African tribe to something more fantastical. These kinds of spot changes can be seen as analogous to a parent or teacher reading aloud and skimming past occasional material [2] that they don't find suitable for their audience. It's the scope and degree of the changes here that I find inappropriate. This is not a scalpel removing a small blemish, it's a complete makeover. It's replacing Dahl's world (and his worldview) with a different one. Many of the changes feel arbitrary (Matilda can't read Conrad and Kipling? But Austen and Steinbeck are fine?) and others mutilate the humor or the meaning of the work. And there's no indication that unedited [3] versions of the work will be kept in print. For those reasons I think this is a terrible decision that should be reconsidered. If schools want reading material more compatible with modern mores there are many authors writing today. Or they can work to help kids get context on where Dahl was coming from. Authors don't need to be presented as moral exemplars. [1]: https://www.hbook.com/story/charlie-chocolate-factory-reply https://www.hbook.com/story/charlie-chocolate-factory-reply [2]: I recall a schoolteacher skimming past a scene in a book where a teenage boy was drawing a picture of his girl friend -- later, reading the book, I realized there was a brief reference to him "flushing at the swelling of her breast" or something along those lines. [3]: Many books are edited with the author's permission after release, so what "unedited" means is complex (and makes some of the "you lose copyright if you bowdlerize your book" solutions I've seen to this difficult).
trey-jones 4y ago
This is a difficult subject and my instinct is that there are no right answers, only opinions (so let's be civil and acknowledge that there are multiple valid points of view here). This is the thing that I agree most with: > The patrician urge of the sensitivity police to protect ethnic-minority children from certain words is infinitely more insulting to them than Dahl’s tales could ever be. You'll find me generally on the side of preserving history as-is, and I'm against the loss of the original intent of the author, almost always. Mein Kampf should be available just as it was written, not so that the ideas may be passed on as valid and correct, but so that we remember and acknowledge that powerful people have put about these ideas in the past, and to give us some insight into why they might have done so. And let's not forget the consequences please. However, I also have friends that I respect, who I think might be OK-with, or generally for this type of censorship (there's that pejorative language, not on purpose I promise). I still like them and I still respect them. I wish we could all just chill out a little. I would still say there are bigger fish to fry than this one right now anyway. No, I'm not a minority child or even a fat old man, but this is still the opinion that I have.
- hanoz 4y ago
  I don't think it's uncivil though to say that there are in fact right and wrong answers and that some people's points of view are only valid insomuch as any point of view is, but they are still wrong. It's wrong to censor a black tractor, or change boys and girls to children or a supermarket cashier to a top scientist to further a social engineering agenda, just flat out wrong.
- deleted 4y ago
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- thiht 4y ago
  > Mein Kampf should be available just as it was written In France (and probably a lot of other countries), Mein Kampf is freely available with annotations. I think it's a good compromise to distribute the book as it was written, but with inline analysis explaining historical context, fallacies and everything worth noting about the text. If an old book is problematic or contains problematic language, it should be explained, not banned or censored.
ploppyploppy 4y ago
How do we maintain the originals?
- deleted 4y ago
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- paavope 4y ago
  Well, nobody’s rounding them up to be burned, so in bookshelves, libraries and archives. The copyright owners might do well to print more copies of the original, too, as the demand has risen with this stunt. If they’re very shrewd, maybe that was the intent all along?
  - kcplate 4y ago
    > Well, nobody’s rounding them up to be burned… …yet
fleddr 4y ago
Project this into the future and all text written past and new will be converted into a bland gray blob catering to any imagined sensitivities, including those still to be invented. "Updated for a modern audience" as they say, where "modern audience" is 0.01% chronically online unhinged activists. So be it. Guess which tool is really awesome at spitting out such bland texts? Checkmate, "writers".
pickovven 4y ago
Owners discover they can make more money by changing what they own. Idiots with a column discover they can make more money by stoking culture war outrage. It's like a perpetual profit machine. Thanks for participating.
rhaway84773 4y ago
Amazing how such avowed free market capitalists have a meltdown against free market capitalism the moment it leads to an outcome they don’t like. I don’t like this decision by Dahl’s estate, but I wasn’t the one pushing for massively long copyright protections. It was all the people who pretend to be free market capitalists did. If you want to designate something as “culture” and then yet insist that it must be owned by a single private entity which is the only one that has the right to do anything with it, such things will be the inevitable consequence. The only cultural vandalism is the one that does not allow anyone but a private entity to reprint this apparent cultural treasures. And this wasn’t a result of woke-ism. It was a result of free market forces.
froh 4y ago
some of my treasured childhood audio books have instead been prefixed with a disclaimer "this audiobook was developed and recorded many years ago. It's a product of it's time and day. It contains discriminatory thinking and language which back then was not challenged or questioned sufficiently. Any discrimintation is wrong, back then and today, and it is inappropriate, as we understand today in our pluralistic and equal opportunity society. We have still made the deliberate decision to re-publish the audio book unmodified and to _not_ hide it's past cultural shortcomings. We recommend to critically reflect discrimination. We have gathered introductory and deepening material about discrimination on our website ... " imnsho this is a much more helpful approach, as it leads to critical thinking instead of shohooing "bad stuff" under the rug. The uncensored books are a learning opportunity for both parents and children, which is thrown out to present a sterile nice clean world. And this cleansing is doubling down on Roald Dahl, who very deliberately kept rough corners in all his works to get people thinking.
- gilmore606 4y ago
  > as it leads to critical thinking No, it tells you directly what to think about the material. That's the opposite of critical thinking.
  - froh 4y ago
    surprising twist. what makes you think so?
flandish 4y ago
It’s only ever to prep for sales of a new version; this is all marketing. The story is good no matter the characters and those who want the original, cool. Those who want the new version, cool as well. But the articles and “opinions” we keep seeing here and there all smell an awful lot like there’s gonna be a new chocolate factory remake coming out, just “coincidentally”…
trafficante 4y ago
This sort of thing has happened before within a similar genre of literature, but I suppose the body of work (The Famous Five by Enid Blyton) wasn’t popular enough to be amplified by the two opposing rage machines. It’s been kind of wild watching talking points get disseminated in real time on this one. A few days ago, most Twitter threads on the topic were nearly universal in expressing at least mild disapproval. If you look today (and not just on Twitter, this HN thread itself has several repeated examples), you’ll see a ton of reply guys snarkily parroting the same handful of snappy-but-vapid “gotchas” that don’t lend themselves to a rebuttal without going full “mucho texto”. And thus the most commonly visible pushback is a useless-but-inflammatory reactionary screed about how “the Wokes are changing history to push a Marxist agenda”. I’ve noticed a similar pattern with other recent events like the Ohio train derailment where every thread devolves into multiple people posting the same 2-3 obvious canned talking points and pointing fingers everywhere except at the company responsible or even the lack of comment/blame shifting by virtually all national leaders on both sides of the aisle. The sheer speed at which propaganda is being disseminated, digested, and recited absolutely everywhere is leading to situations where a toxic mushroom cloud of smoke can hover over the heartland while GOP Governors and Dem Transportation Secretaries can declare “eh it’s no big deal”, the rail company can cut $25 checks to the affected while doubling train engineer workloads, and yet somehow they’ll all get away with it and the populace will blame The Other Team. Absolute dysfunction.
ForestCritter 4y ago
If children can not deal with the reality of the words, fat, ugly, white, black, girls and boys, then we how will they deal with the world around them? Scary to think that we are erasing the ability of teaching children to discern and cope. Hiding the ugly doesn't make it go away.
- avinassh 4y ago
  eerily similar to Brave New World where we hide and ignore all the negativity
dmje 4y ago
IMO, I don't think this is a hard issue, at all. I don't think it's partisan, either - although it's (as ever) being wrapped up as such. It seems to be blindingly obvious. Culture, art, writing - life, in fact - is of its time. It should be left alone. And we - as later, perhaps "better" (in some ways?) future generations - should examine these works and those times, and use this to encourage our own sense of morality and direction. We should use it to explain what went on - and in some cases to condemn, in others to reflect on what was better, and why. To whitewash (sorry, oops, probably not supposed to..., ffs) this away and pretend things never happened IS censorship. It's the central tenet of 1984, or any dystopian vision, or that of dictatorships. This is the re-writing of history! So - yes, we should have a "Black Boys Road" in Bristol, for example, and we should then use our museums and our history books to illuminate the horrors of slavery, the reality that Bristol was deeply involved in the slave trade, that Colston was a slaver - we should examine this deeply, and understand it, and condemn it in the strongest possible terms. But to just remove all the bits we find uncomfortable is a terrible error. It removes our means to question, our means to reflect. It's the same as talking about mental health issues in my opinion - if you hide shit away, the problem will never, ever resolve. The only way to get to any kind of resolution - painful though it is - is to talk about it. All the above is a more general point about this terrible inflection point in our history where it seems certain people believe that All The Bad Things should be expunged, as if life can be made comfortable and easy, no bumps in the road here - and for god's sake don't "trigger me", I don't want to be sad... but in the Roald Dahl case, the example edits being quoted in the Spectator and other places are just so, so, SO misguided it hurts. I have teen children who can - and do - question the world, ask why things are as they are, point out the injustices of the past, know keenly what makes them (and others) sad. They're sometimes (gasp) sad themselves, and we work together to figure out what this means, and why. The world hurts sometimes, and we as humans need to learn how to deal with this stuff, without expecting some kind of sugar coated - and let's face it, insanely bland - landscape where everything is beautiful and happy and rose tinted all the time. If society feels the need to flag things like Dahl as being "triggering" (I hate that word, what b/s) then so be it - ("The original work was written a long time ago and doesn't reflect many modern views") - but FFS leave the original work as it is.
sazz 4y ago
For me, we live in pathological societies that prefer to fight symptoms rather than deal with the underlying issue. Yes, a popular strategy of people is to hurt other people with thoughts. The weapon for this is the word. The question is much more whether it is the task of society to create an environment in which no one can be hurt anymore. If one continues the thought, one must inevitably come to the conclusion to forbid EVERY word. The N-word or F-word was not created as an "evil" word, but it describes a thought. And only by these thoughts these words got the weight which now "seems to hurt". To forbid it (or to avoid) does not prevent the thought behind it. Energy always finds its way and the thought behind it will therefore conclude in a new word. And the revolution always eats its own children. The next generation will then be bothered by coffee makers because it reminds them of the unpleasant office life. And no - I don't mean that as a joke. Each generation has to set itself apart from the previous one by being more radical (and not necessarily more wise).

170 points by mhb 4y ago

esotericimpl 4y ago

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AzzieElbab 4y ago

Why not mention brother Grimm or Arabian Nights that had already been re-written and re-worded beyond recognition

jerkstate 4y ago
I'm pretty sure everybody agrees that Disney's The Little Mermaid or Aladdin (or Willy Wonka) are not faithful representations of the original source material. Editing the book after Roald Dahl is dead and titling it "Mathilda, by Roald Dahl" is something completely different.
parker_mountain 4y ago
Those are intensely poor examples, for a handful of a reasons - Language translations are extremely culturally dependent, and is a known quantity. Modern translations frequently have many translator's notes explaining the decision or edits made. - Modern translations are transparent about their editorializing, there's a marked difference between "accurate" and "lay person" translations. - The source materials were written and translated in times when we, frankly, had lower standards.
- deleted 4y ago
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PM_me_your_math 4y ago
What does that have to do with the woke mob vandalizing Dahl's work?
- mbStavola 4y ago
  Where does the "woke mob" come into this? As far as I can tell there hasn't been a public campaign to censor the books. Rather, these changes came from the Dahl Story Company and Penguin Random House, so this is good old fashion capitalism through-and-through. No one asked for a reason to repurchase novels that were already 50+ years old besides the people who own the rights to these books.
  - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
    The only group lurid enough to vandalize the story are the woke zombie cry-bullies. Their campaign is to burn down western culture and replace it with something that closely resembles intellectual gonorrhea.
    - jrmg 4y ago
      Please, try to be civil. It’s really hard for anyone with different views to seriously engage with you when you’re making such an abrasive presentation. Civil discussion is traditionally a value of the western culture you prize so much.
      - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
        Civil like burning down and looting businesses that don't fly a particular flag? ...or pulling the fire alarms at venues when a speaker is presenting something you disagree with? Or civil like destroying timeless stories with emotional garbage and inserting woke ideology into things that have nothing to do with the zealotry? On the contrary, I'm being perfectly civil. Colorful descriptions that profess my disdain for the left's new mind-diarrhea is not even close to incivility. If you don't like my descriptions, then the proper course is to ask yourself why people might take issue with cry-bullies.
        jrmg 4y ago
        I mean, you’re really not being civil by any description of it I’d recognize. Accusing me of being okay with arson? ‘Mind-diarrhea’? Are you at all open to discussion? I’m projecting my own views a lot here, but I am pretty sure you’re not going to be swaying anyone even remotely left of center (most of whom would never engage in the acts you’re listing - and many of whom _are_ uneasy about many of the changes to Dahl’s works that sparked this discussion) in your direction by projecting such an angry, abrasive demeanor. I really worry about the state of online discourse. I’d be willing to bet that if we were to sit down and discuss this over a beverage in real life this isn’t how the discussion would go.
albertopv 4y ago
I read to my 6yo Grimm stories almost like originals ones. I think life is made of both good and bad things, hiding latter won't benefit child growth, you have to explain and give the kid the tools to manage both.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  "Almost" is possibly the key word here. How do you explain the horrific violence depicted in many of the Grimm's fairy tales to a kid? And what is the expected benefit of it?
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    > How do you explain the horrific violence depicted in many of the Grimm's fairy tales to a kid? I loved that stuff when I was a kid. "Then they made the evil queen put on red-hot iron boots and dance until she died." Kids are a lot more resilient than people like to think.
    - manuelabeledo 4y ago
      I don't doubt that. But I honestly don't know how would I tell my kid that the Sleeping Beauty was a minor raped by a stranger who tripled her age. Nor I think it could provide any "life lesson" to a six year old.
xkcd-sucks 4y ago
Both of these examples are collections of folk tales. Arabian Nights in particular has no authoritative original at all, and there are many variations of the collection in many languages, many of which which are still available today from a variety of publishers. The Brothers Grimm similarly collected and adapted folk tales (and bowdlerized _their own work_ in subsequent editions), but reprints of most of these editions are still available, and versions of tales or collections that were not written by the Grimms are not published under their name. By contrast Dahl stories are original IP with an authoritative source who is now dead and can't revise his own work.
manuelabeledo 4y ago
Pretty much every single fable and tale out there have been rewritten to suit modern tastes. The Sleeping Beauty is raped in her sleep, Little Red Hood fills up the wolf with stones after it has been cut in half to rescue her grandmother, and Cinderella has a confusing relationship with incest.

willcipriano 4y ago

If you are curious how previous efforts similar to this one, look now after the foresight of history: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/25/adam-eve-naked-again-after-centuries-old-cover-up-fitzwilliam-museum https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/25/adam-ev...

majormajor 4y ago
Oh, I thought your link would be a reference to the lat time Roald Dahl himself was rewritten. The author of this article doesn't seem aware of, or just leaves out, the previous slaves-from-Africa origin of oompa loompas. I wonder if he wants to roll that one back too.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  This is just a historical example of someone editing a childrens book and doing so poorly as to ruin the art of the work. Many pieces of art were vandalized in a similar manner, I haven't found a single case in antiquity where modern people, in western countries at least, are in favor of the censorship of the past.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    If only I still had the textbooks that were used to teach me about slavery and the civil war in Texas. Revisionism for days. People didn't see the censorship in the same way as that "fish don't have a word for water" bit.

LatteLazy 4y ago

On the one hand, "Yes, that is true". On the other hand, it's actually physically nauseating to have The Spectator pass any comment on integrity, cultural vandalism, RightThink etc. They've led the charge promoting fake news and alternative "facts" from Brexit to Covid.

fortituded0002 4y ago
I'm not familiar with them but things make a lot more sense now. The writing seemed pretty off with lots of odd signals about how to think, how to fall in line, and spell out what our outrage should be. The talking points seemed a little too clean-cut and less about a discussion. Not much to see here. Time to move on.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  Exactly. It's sad because (despite being mostly on the left) I used to read the Spectator, in a "hear the other side, challenge your own point if view" way. And it was good. Decent pragmatic right leaning people. Then in the run up to Brexit it just sort of fell apart. Out was anyone with facts or reasons. In were pre-canned talking points, appeals to emotion and bare faced lies.
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pprotas 4y ago

This one is very hard for me. I think about how we look at the things that used to be normal in the past. How the R word was a medical condition, how the N word was a normal thing to call somebody, how a gay man was called the F word. Nobody would bat an eye at these words back then. And yet - we look back on those times with disdain. I can't imagine giving a book to a child that contains those words; and yet maybe back then that was normal? Will people look back on our times with disdain and think how horrible we were for calling each other crazy, mad, fat and ugly? How we made such a big deal about gendering things? Maybe we are "the old men shouting at clouds" (ahem... I mean "old people shouting at clouds" xd)? Maybe we should get with the times? Or is this really all "cancel-culture" and everybody else except us is wrong? Unfortunately, I only have questions and no answers hahah

majormajor 4y ago
If you set aside which particular words, my hopeful/naive answer to the question "will people think how horrible we were for insulting each other so frequently" would be "yes." It would be wonderful if everyone was more civil and less vicious. Anyone here who was bullied in high school, say, and enjoyed it? I sure didn't. I don't think it will happen, but for words that become increasingly only employed as insults, I understand the desire to push back against those insults.
- ClapperHeid 4y ago
  >Anyone here who was bullied in high school, say, and enjoyed it? I sure didn't... And therein lies the rub. People like you, who couldn't find a coping mechanism to deal with childhood bullying [all children are vicious wee thugs, until they learn otherwise] think that you can somehow control what people "feel inside" by controlling what words they can use to express themselves. Ditto the people who think you can somehow stop anyone having racist or homopobic attitudes by banning completely innocuous words [see Montenegro comment above] as people might see them as racist or hompophobic. Kids will always bully other kids, racists will always hate other races and homophobic people will always hate gays. If you ban one word, they'll come up with another. If you ban that, they'll come up with another... rinse and repeat. As I've said before, if you follow that path to its conclusion, you end up with Newspeak [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

disantlor 4y ago

the author is certain that they turned out fine but is not curious about the experience of the people for whom these changes are made

felurx 4y ago
That slightly annoyed me too! > How many of us chortled at fat Augustus Gloop getting stuck in that pipe, or winced at the idea of witches posing as cashiers, or smiled deviantly at the vision of a ‘tremendously flabby’ old lady? And we turned out fine. We weren’t wounded, we didn’t become hateful. I guess that you can say that "laughing about these specific fictional fat people" doesn't directly cause one to behave in hurtful ways towards fat real people. To me it still seems bizarre that the author decided to basically ask "Remember how we laughed at fat people and how good that was?" right before stating as fact that noone was hurt in consequence of any of the stuff in the book.

RheingoldRiver 4y ago

Is it an act of cultural vandalism to stage a modernized production of Shakespeare so that the audience can empathize with the plot & characters better? Be angry at copyright, not at the decision to attempt to modernize a work of art; without copyright, both versions could be circulated concurrently (and of course this is why you see both traditional & modernized Shakespeare productions, unlike Broadway where every tour is authorized and a replica (some exceptions for school versions and such)). Art is a product of its times, and imo it's completely reasonable to want to update a version to what makes sense in the modern day and what children can now empathize with, and see themselves reflected in.

jordan_bonecut 4y ago
It's one thing to advertise something as a modernized version and another to advertise it as the original work of the authors. Isn't it worth preserving how things were in the past? If not how will we understand where we came from? How will we know how to learn from mistakes if they're just erased?
- RheingoldRiver 4y ago
  That's an interesting point. I would agree that the attribution should clearly state "Revised in 2023 by Puffin" or something along these lines. As for: > Isn't it worth preserving how things were in the past? Oh, yes, absolutely, and this is why archivists and librarians have such an important profession; and also why copyright law sucks so much. Do be angry at copyright law, don't be angry at the decision to modernize the texts.
- majormajor 4y ago
  "Why do we lie to children in the places and times we do" is its own fascinating topic, but are we expecting anyone encountering Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the first time to be reading it through a lens of "how things were in the past" lens?
  - trey-jones 4y ago

spamizbad 4y ago

One way to prevent this from happening would be to close the copyright loophole associated with these actions. Estates of dead authors get to "update" works and can cash in a brand new copyright.

Barrin92 4y ago

>This is the doublespeak of modern-day censorship. 'Sensitivity’ is the garb moral censure now wears It's pretty funny that you never see these complaints when European folklore is butchered because it's deemed to be "unsafe for children", entire scenes are cut out of Leon or even Harry Potter is being attacked for promoting "witchcraft". Sure rewriting Dahl is silly but it is funny to me to pretend this is a modern invention in Anglosphere culture. The puritan moral panic has a long history

_v7gu 4y ago
> It's pretty funny that you never see these complaints Have you missed the 2000's on the internet? All the people mocking "fundamental Christian" outrages against things like Harry Potter, Pokemon (evolution lol) and even the utterance of the word "Magic"? A group that was so wide and loud, that EA organized a false-flag protest against itself on the release of Dante's Inferno--just to get publicity and support via that group? The reason that you "never" see those complaints is that they have won, and any mention of magic or violence being harmful in fiction is instantly ridiculed. They became invisible by actually being the norm

mattbee 4y ago

I don't hear the author complaining about the loss of the first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This is where Dahl bowed to early 70s wokery and erased the oompa-loompas' true identity as African slaves who would dribble for cocoa beans. Film adaptations have struggled with the fact that oompa-loompas are, however you dress them up, slaves. From this article which is much more interesting: https://theconversation.com/from-pygmies-to-puppets-what-to-do-with-roald-dahls-enslaved-oompa-loompas-in-modern-adaptations-166967 https://theconversation.com/from-pygmies-to-puppets-what-to-...

bombcar 4y ago
There’s a pretty obvious difference between convincing a living artist to revise his work and a massive company revising a dead author’s work.
- pavlov 4y ago
  Our current intellectual property law makes no distinction between these two cases. We should fix copyright rather than stoke useless culture wars. The publisher and Dahl’s estate are laughing all the way to the bank on this controversy.
  - readthenotes1 4y ago
    Right? The new works should be accredited to new authors with perhaps a "with thanks to" attribution. It is only because of copyright that this is not done
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Sadly that’s probably a decent reason to do a “approved update” - you can force all libraries to buy the new edition
    - defrost 4y ago
      > you can force all libraries to buy the new edition I'm sorry, what now? My local library here in Western Australia has a second edition of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1860, 3000 copies). There's been no pressure that I'm aware of to acquire the first, third, fourth, fifth or sixth editions or the numerous translations that I'm aware of - many of these are carried by other libraries. Who is going around libraries forcing them to get more recent editions?

monero-xmr 4y ago

The changes I can’t understand most involve calling people fat. Obesity is a fact and it should not be normalized. Any obese person put on a desert island and fed water and a limited caloric diet would lose weight, a scientific fact. Any attempt at normalizing obesity is the same as normalizing smoking cigarettes or alcoholism - harmful to all of humanity.

ofchnofc 4y ago
I think this is put rather bluntly, and I've still got a bit to go probably to where I would call myself my ideal weight, so I say this with a certain empathy... but I really agree that obesity falls into a different category than most of what might be called "woke". What I perceive as a general normalization of obesity feels... very corporate, or certainly too convenient for corporate interests. Americans fail to consider many aspects of their lives regarding their health because they're trained to trust brands, and that doubly/triply extends to ignorance around diet and nutrition. Food, sex, alcohol. All vices that Americans glorify and demonize in nearly exactly the least effective ways. IDK, I don't want to preach but my body now, compared to with an extra 80-100lbs on it? It's hard to put into words how many aspects of my life are markedly better.
- artificial 4y ago
  About 40% of Cocacola's income is from Foodstamps. https://revenuesandprofits.com/how-coca-cola-company-makes-money-understanding-coca-cola-business-model/ https://revenuesandprofits.com/how-coca-cola-company-makes-m...
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    ... according to one person on Twitter.
    - artificial 4y ago
      As of 2016 20 cents of every SNAP dollar goes to sweetened beverages.[0] There's ~42 million people getting SNAP benefits. [1] [0a]https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/ops/SNAPFoodsTypicallyPurchased-Summary.pdf https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/ops/SNAPFo... [0b]https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/foods-typically-purchased-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap-households https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/foods-typically-purchased-supp... [1]https://hungerandhealth.feedingamerica.org/explore-our-work/programs-target-populations/snap-eligible-households/ https://hungerandhealth.feedingamerica.org/explore-our-work/... [2]https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-at-who-benefits-from-snap-state-by-state-fact-sheets#Alabama https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-...

Frondo 4y ago

The real act of cultural vandalism is the copyright regime that keeps these trust fund descendants of the Dahl estate in cash for something they did not do, for however many more decades that all his works will be locked up. "Updating" these works is gross, but only because it's nothing but a cash-grab for them, selling and re-selling this material to new audiences just by tweaking a few words here and there.

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hummus_bae 4y ago
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algesten 4y ago

Didn't the Victorians (and people before that) rewrite Shakespear all the time to fit the current vibe? Roald Dahl also changed his own books so they would stay current.

130e13a 4y ago
i feel like there's a difference between the author themselves doing the rewriting (which i'm fine with, because you're essentially just publishing a new edition of your book), and someone else who just happens to own the IP doing the rewriting (which i'm a bit uncomfortable with, regardless of what exactly is being changed). it's like if a painter adds something to an already-completed artwork that they had painted and then describes the result as a refined version of the painting (fine), vs when someone who just happens to have bought the painting adds something and then argues that the resulting painting is now the "official" version of the painting, while still naming the original painter as the creator (not fine).
TMWNN 4y ago
>Didn't the Victorians (and people before that) rewrite Shakespear all the time to fit the current vibe? Yes, and they are now generally mocked by today's critics for doing so.

duxup 4y ago

The Disney Channel has a short warning that appears before some Muppet Show episodes. I was surprised, but I liked the approach. Disney gets to say that someone might be upset, but we the viewers are empowered to see the content and make our own decision.

hanoz 4y ago
I certainly wouldn't patronise a publisher who saw fit to put any such warning in one of Roald Dahl's books.
- duxup 4y ago
  I don’t have a problem with it. Tear the page out if you like.
  - hanoz 4y ago
    If that were an acceptable solution we wouldn't need your warning in the first place would we?
    - duxup 4y ago
      What do you mean acceptable solution? If there was a page with a warning in your book, you can do that. Then you have the book you wanted. https://youtu.be/8x0COtH4Vrw https://youtu.be/8x0COtH4Vrw
      - hanoz 4y ago
        What I mean is you might just as well have suggested that anyone who has a problem with the original text applies the same technique.
        duxup 4y ago
        If it is their book I don’t really care what they do. As long as the original is there and a publisher add some silly warning page I really don’t care.

alsaaro 4y ago

When movies featuring nudity are censored for network TV, do we use such loaded phrases as "cultural vandalism" to describe this censorship. To me this is a case of "capital over all things" our censor is not the vandal, but us.

kcplate 4y ago
Ahh yes, the movie edits… Is it cultural vandalism? Absolutely, although hilarious, like vandalism certainly can be. “Your mother sews socks that smell…” “I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday through Friday plane!” “This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps!” "Pardon my French, but you're an AARDVARK!" "Hand me the keys, you fairy godmother."

insane_dreamer 4y ago

A modern re-adaptation of a dead author's work I have no issue with; we do that with Shakespeare as others have pointed out. But that's not the same thing as publishing a re-written work under the author's own name, which I do take exception with.

ClapperHeid 4y ago

One of the funniest onf these "Beat it to death with the PC stick" re-writes was when the Enid Blyton Famous Five books were dragged into the 21st century with "Famous 5 on the case" [0] featuring the children of the original Famous Five. This featured such mind-boggling concepts as: >Jo Misra (short for Jyothi, a Hindi word meaning light.) She is a 12-year-old daughter of George Kirrin, and like her mother before her is a tomboy... Given that everyone who ever read the Famous five realised in later life that "George[ina]" Kirrin was obviously going to grow up er... "not that interested in men", shall we say?... the fact she had a mixed-race daughter with an Indian bloke, is quite a surprise. Ironically, the original books have now leap-frogged the excerable rewrite in PC box-ticking, as the original George character can now be viewed as being a very early positvely portrayed "trans" character: ---- “I say! Are you Georgina?” The child in the opposite bed sat up and looked across at Anne. She had very short curly hair, almost as short as a boy’s. Her face was burnt a dark-brown with the sun, and her very blue eyes looked as bright as forget-me-nots in her face. But her mouth was rather sulky, and she had a frown like her father’s. “No,” she said. “I’m not Georgina.” “Oh!” said Anne, in surprise. “Then who are you?” “I’m George,” said the girl. “I shall only answer if you call me George. I hate being a girl. I won’t be. I don’t like doing the things that girls do. I like doing the things that boys do. I can climb better than any boy, and swim faster too. I can sail a boat as well as any fisher-boy on this coast. You’re to call me George. Then I’ll speak to you. But I shan’t if you don’t.” ---- [From "Five on a Treasure Island"] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_5:_On_the_Case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_5:_On_the_Case

felurx 4y ago

Hm. To me, it seems that the article could have been quite a bit more differentiated. I agree that it's ridiculous to avoid using the word/color "black". On the other hand I don't see a problem with for example using "children" instead of "boys and girls" as a generic term for, well, children. One thing that the article gets wrong though is why changes like these are made. As I read it, the author seems confident that the (only) reason is to avoid offending children. I'd be surprised if that was ever the reason for anyone to advocate for using other phrasings. Instead, I'd argue, the idea is to stop reinforcing/introducing shitty (read: harmful to some degree) ideas. "Boys and girls" implies that those are the only two options. Using "fat" as something that only evil characters are and as something that should be laughed at implies that fat people are bad and that it's okay to ridicule them for being fat. And so on. Now, the question about whether it's good and worth it to make these adjustments is one that imho can and should be discussed and that reasonable minds can differ on. But as is, the article seems to be written with either a lack of good understanding or good faith.

djur 4y ago

I think very few people can claim to an absolute principle against any kind of editing of books for children, since this has been happening for as long as books and children existed, including in the past century -- does anybody buy a "Grimm's Fairy Tales" book expecting to find "The Jew Among Thorns" included? There is also not a free speech issue at play here other than that already imposed by the copyright system. The Dahl estate is not being forced to make these changes, and indeed nobody can compel them to authorize publishing an unaltered version of the books (under current law). But once you've set those grander questions aside, you can evaluate this specific case. Do you agree with the purpose of the edits? Do you think they're appropriate in degree and scope? I would say that I am somewhat sympathetic to the intention of some of the edits. Dahl fielded objections to his work during his lifetime, and pushed back strongly against the suggestion that his books were unsuitable for children for moral reasons [1], but he also changed (or permitted his publisher to change) the Oompa-Loompas from an African tribe to something more fantastical. These kinds of spot changes can be seen as analogous to a parent or teacher reading aloud and skimming past occasional material [2] that they don't find suitable for their audience. It's the scope and degree of the changes here that I find inappropriate. This is not a scalpel removing a small blemish, it's a complete makeover. It's replacing Dahl's world (and his worldview) with a different one. Many of the changes feel arbitrary (Matilda can't read Conrad and Kipling? But Austen and Steinbeck are fine?) and others mutilate the humor or the meaning of the work. And there's no indication that unedited [3] versions of the work will be kept in print. For those reasons I think this is a terrible decision that should be reconsidered. If schools want reading material more compatible with modern mores there are many authors writing today. Or they can work to help kids get context on where Dahl was coming from. Authors don't need to be presented as moral exemplars. [1]: https://www.hbook.com/story/charlie-chocolate-factory-reply https://www.hbook.com/story/charlie-chocolate-factory-reply [2]: I recall a schoolteacher skimming past a scene in a book where a teenage boy was drawing a picture of his girl friend -- later, reading the book, I realized there was a brief reference to him "flushing at the swelling of her breast" or something along those lines. [3]: Many books are edited with the author's permission after release, so what "unedited" means is complex (and makes some of the "you lose copyright if you bowdlerize your book" solutions I've seen to this difficult).

trey-jones 4y ago

This is a difficult subject and my instinct is that there are no right answers, only opinions (so let's be civil and acknowledge that there are multiple valid points of view here). This is the thing that I agree most with: > The patrician urge of the sensitivity police to protect ethnic-minority children from certain words is infinitely more insulting to them than Dahl’s tales could ever be. You'll find me generally on the side of preserving history as-is, and I'm against the loss of the original intent of the author, almost always. Mein Kampf should be available just as it was written, not so that the ideas may be passed on as valid and correct, but so that we remember and acknowledge that powerful people have put about these ideas in the past, and to give us some insight into why they might have done so. And let's not forget the consequences please. However, I also have friends that I respect, who I think might be OK-with, or generally for this type of censorship (there's that pejorative language, not on purpose I promise). I still like them and I still respect them. I wish we could all just chill out a little. I would still say there are bigger fish to fry than this one right now anyway. No, I'm not a minority child or even a fat old man, but this is still the opinion that I have.

hanoz 4y ago
I don't think it's uncivil though to say that there are in fact right and wrong answers and that some people's points of view are only valid insomuch as any point of view is, but they are still wrong. It's wrong to censor a black tractor, or change boys and girls to children or a supermarket cashier to a top scientist to further a social engineering agenda, just flat out wrong.
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thiht 4y ago
> Mein Kampf should be available just as it was written In France (and probably a lot of other countries), Mein Kampf is freely available with annotations. I think it's a good compromise to distribute the book as it was written, but with inline analysis explaining historical context, fallacies and everything worth noting about the text. If an old book is problematic or contains problematic language, it should be explained, not banned or censored.

ploppyploppy 4y ago

How do we maintain the originals?

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paavope 4y ago
Well, nobody’s rounding them up to be burned, so in bookshelves, libraries and archives. The copyright owners might do well to print more copies of the original, too, as the demand has risen with this stunt. If they’re very shrewd, maybe that was the intent all along?
- kcplate 4y ago
  > Well, nobody’s rounding them up to be burned… …yet

fleddr 4y ago

Project this into the future and all text written past and new will be converted into a bland gray blob catering to any imagined sensitivities, including those still to be invented. "Updated for a modern audience" as they say, where "modern audience" is 0.01% chronically online unhinged activists. So be it. Guess which tool is really awesome at spitting out such bland texts? Checkmate, "writers".

pickovven 4y ago

Owners discover they can make more money by changing what they own. Idiots with a column discover they can make more money by stoking culture war outrage. It's like a perpetual profit machine. Thanks for participating.

rhaway84773 4y ago

Amazing how such avowed free market capitalists have a meltdown against free market capitalism the moment it leads to an outcome they don’t like. I don’t like this decision by Dahl’s estate, but I wasn’t the one pushing for massively long copyright protections. It was all the people who pretend to be free market capitalists did. If you want to designate something as “culture” and then yet insist that it must be owned by a single private entity which is the only one that has the right to do anything with it, such things will be the inevitable consequence. The only cultural vandalism is the one that does not allow anyone but a private entity to reprint this apparent cultural treasures. And this wasn’t a result of woke-ism. It was a result of free market forces.

froh 4y ago

some of my treasured childhood audio books have instead been prefixed with a disclaimer "this audiobook was developed and recorded many years ago. It's a product of it's time and day. It contains discriminatory thinking and language which back then was not challenged or questioned sufficiently. Any discrimintation is wrong, back then and today, and it is inappropriate, as we understand today in our pluralistic and equal opportunity society. We have still made the deliberate decision to re-publish the audio book unmodified and to _not_ hide it's past cultural shortcomings. We recommend to critically reflect discrimination. We have gathered introductory and deepening material about discrimination on our website ... " imnsho this is a much more helpful approach, as it leads to critical thinking instead of shohooing "bad stuff" under the rug. The uncensored books are a learning opportunity for both parents and children, which is thrown out to present a sterile nice clean world. And this cleansing is doubling down on Roald Dahl, who very deliberately kept rough corners in all his works to get people thinking.

gilmore606 4y ago
> as it leads to critical thinking No, it tells you directly what to think about the material. That's the opposite of critical thinking.
- froh 4y ago
  surprising twist. what makes you think so?

flandish 4y ago

It’s only ever to prep for sales of a new version; this is all marketing. The story is good no matter the characters and those who want the original, cool. Those who want the new version, cool as well. But the articles and “opinions” we keep seeing here and there all smell an awful lot like there’s gonna be a new chocolate factory remake coming out, just “coincidentally”…

trafficante 4y ago

This sort of thing has happened before within a similar genre of literature, but I suppose the body of work (The Famous Five by Enid Blyton) wasn’t popular enough to be amplified by the two opposing rage machines. It’s been kind of wild watching talking points get disseminated in real time on this one. A few days ago, most Twitter threads on the topic were nearly universal in expressing at least mild disapproval. If you look today (and not just on Twitter, this HN thread itself has several repeated examples), you’ll see a ton of reply guys snarkily parroting the same handful of snappy-but-vapid “gotchas” that don’t lend themselves to a rebuttal without going full “mucho texto”. And thus the most commonly visible pushback is a useless-but-inflammatory reactionary screed about how “the Wokes are changing history to push a Marxist agenda”. I’ve noticed a similar pattern with other recent events like the Ohio train derailment where every thread devolves into multiple people posting the same 2-3 obvious canned talking points and pointing fingers everywhere except at the company responsible or even the lack of comment/blame shifting by virtually all national leaders on both sides of the aisle. The sheer speed at which propaganda is being disseminated, digested, and recited absolutely everywhere is leading to situations where a toxic mushroom cloud of smoke can hover over the heartland while GOP Governors and Dem Transportation Secretaries can declare “eh it’s no big deal”, the rail company can cut $25 checks to the affected while doubling train engineer workloads, and yet somehow they’ll all get away with it and the populace will blame The Other Team. Absolute dysfunction.

ForestCritter 4y ago

If children can not deal with the reality of the words, fat, ugly, white, black, girls and boys, then we how will they deal with the world around them? Scary to think that we are erasing the ability of teaching children to discern and cope. Hiding the ugly doesn't make it go away.

avinassh 4y ago
eerily similar to Brave New World where we hide and ignore all the negativity

dmje 4y ago

IMO, I don't think this is a hard issue, at all. I don't think it's partisan, either - although it's (as ever) being wrapped up as such. It seems to be blindingly obvious. Culture, art, writing - life, in fact - is of its time. It should be left alone. And we - as later, perhaps "better" (in some ways?) future generations - should examine these works and those times, and use this to encourage our own sense of morality and direction. We should use it to explain what went on - and in some cases to condemn, in others to reflect on what was better, and why. To whitewash (sorry, oops, probably not supposed to..., ffs) this away and pretend things never happened IS censorship. It's the central tenet of 1984, or any dystopian vision, or that of dictatorships. This is the re-writing of history! So - yes, we should have a "Black Boys Road" in Bristol, for example, and we should then use our museums and our history books to illuminate the horrors of slavery, the reality that Bristol was deeply involved in the slave trade, that Colston was a slaver - we should examine this deeply, and understand it, and condemn it in the strongest possible terms. But to just remove all the bits we find uncomfortable is a terrible error. It removes our means to question, our means to reflect. It's the same as talking about mental health issues in my opinion - if you hide shit away, the problem will never, ever resolve. The only way to get to any kind of resolution - painful though it is - is to talk about it. All the above is a more general point about this terrible inflection point in our history where it seems certain people believe that All The Bad Things should be expunged, as if life can be made comfortable and easy, no bumps in the road here - and for god's sake don't "trigger me", I don't want to be sad... but in the Roald Dahl case, the example edits being quoted in the Spectator and other places are just so, so, SO misguided it hurts. I have teen children who can - and do - question the world, ask why things are as they are, point out the injustices of the past, know keenly what makes them (and others) sad. They're sometimes (gasp) sad themselves, and we work together to figure out what this means, and why. The world hurts sometimes, and we as humans need to learn how to deal with this stuff, without expecting some kind of sugar coated - and let's face it, insanely bland - landscape where everything is beautiful and happy and rose tinted all the time. If society feels the need to flag things like Dahl as being "triggering" (I hate that word, what b/s) then so be it - ("The original work was written a long time ago and doesn't reflect many modern views") - but FFS leave the original work as it is.

sazz 4y ago

For me, we live in pathological societies that prefer to fight symptoms rather than deal with the underlying issue. Yes, a popular strategy of people is to hurt other people with thoughts. The weapon for this is the word. The question is much more whether it is the task of society to create an environment in which no one can be hurt anymore. If one continues the thought, one must inevitably come to the conclusion to forbid EVERY word. The N-word or F-word was not created as an "evil" word, but it describes a thought. And only by these thoughts these words got the weight which now "seems to hurt". To forbid it (or to avoid) does not prevent the thought behind it. Energy always finds its way and the thought behind it will therefore conclude in a new word. And the revolution always eats its own children. The next generation will then be bothered by coffee makers because it reminds them of the unpleasant office life. And no - I don't mean that as a joke. Each generation has to set itself apart from the previous one by being more radical (and not necessarily more wise).