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Roald Dahl: Original books to be kept in print following criticism
- pbj1968 4y agoAnd the marketing stunt proceeded exactly as planned!
- yazzku 4y agoDamn fat ugly motherfucker. Sorry, I meant unattractive, average body-type mother lover.
- the_third_wave 4y agoThe original versions will be preserved on places like Library Genesis and similar electronic archives forever. They can try to hide the past, they can try to rewrite history but they will fail. Score one for Library Genesis (et al.), -1 for these rewriters of history (et al.).
- honksillet 4y agoBesides being Orwellian, is this also a sneaky way to extend the copyrights?
- mmcdermott 4y agoProbably not, at least in the United States. The new texts would receive a new copyright, but the old ones would still enter the public domain at the same time as they would have before. Imagine I created an annotated critical text of Oliver Twist. My new annotated text would be copyrighted from the date of publication, but Oliver Twist would still be in the public domain.
- dmurray 4y agoBut what if you could get the original text cancelled? No right-thinking publisher would print it, no God-fearing bookseller would stock it, no teacher who valued their career would add the unsanitized version to their school library, and they would buy your annotated version instead. I suppose someone could create a second censored version, but if the changes they made were too close to the current publisher's, they might lose a copyright case on that. So all the publisher has to do is keep up with the mores of the time on what must and must not be airbrushed out.
- cld8483 4y ago> But what if you could get the original text cancelled? No right-thinking publisher would print it, no God-fearing bookseller would stock it Modern book "cancelling" is not (yet?) so effective as that. Huckleberry Finn is a popular target for cancelling, yet is still widely available. Being in the public domain gives the book relative safety; even if one publisher gets cold feet, another will jump in to fill the demand. The real threat is to books which aren't in the public domain and won't be for a long time.
- newaccount2021 4y ago[dead]
- PentelicoMarble 4y agoSo this was a publicity stunt by the publisher? As far as anyone can tell, no one ever asked for these changes to be made in the first place
- Mattasher 4y agoSeems more like an attempt at woke-washing that backfired because of the negative public response.
- BryantD 4y agoThat negative public response came from all sides of the political spectrum, of course. If this hypothesis is accurate, it seems as if the problem might have been that the publisher uncritically accepted the hostile framing of "woke." Turns out it's not actually about censorship.
- bee_rider 4y agoThat’s an interesting point. Of course, corporations are willing to accept socially progressive language as a business matter, but they aren’t really “of the progress movement” so to speak.
- baobabKoodaa 4y agoAll sides? Including left? Examples?
- yowzadave 4y agoIt seems like virtually everyone is against it--it would be harder to find a leftist in favor of the bowdlerization than one against it: https://www.salon.com/2023/02/22/roald-dahl-censorship/ https://www.salon.com/2023/02/22/roald-dahl-censorship/
- MikePlacid 4y ago“ It feels like a bait and switch, ignoring the very real issues with the writer while labeling as bad, wrong or offensive words that have no such inherent value.” I read this as: editors are changing just some words in order to save Dahl, who should be banned completely. And Salon author calls their own stance “against censorship”. Hm.
- bluescrn 4y agoBefore long we'll have AI 'sensitivity readers' to purify digital content in real-time.
- nonethewiser 4y agoLet’s call it Lens: See the World _How it Really is_
- natpalmer1776 4y agoWell, that would be an improvement over changing the source material. At that point you elect to have the changes made by choice of reader.
- pessimizer 4y agoAfter a few iterations with different AIs over a few decades, you'll have to find somebody who still has a paper copy. I would say to thank god for piracy, but the odds that we'll be able to run computers that aren't continually scanning for the rights, authenticity and content of the files on them are nil.
- mc32 4y agoHopefully they’ll have different modes: Full throttle mode (and) Grandma mode.
- jonhohle 4y agoI’m assuming Full Throttle means as much modern interpretation of older texts and maximum modifications; while Grandma means keeping the book the way it was, why do they always have to change things, in my day we read whatever book we could find and we liked it? I know no Grandmas that like when things they had on their youth are changed.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoFull throttle? Or full frontal? ;)
- 4y ago
- mc32 4y agoI think this is sensible. You have two markets one that is willing to read the original and one that prefers bowdlerized versions of works. Music (used to?) do something like this. One version for Al Gore’s PMRC and one version for everyone else. So long as the original is also available, why not?
- tzs 4y ago> Al Gore’s PMRC Tipper Gore.
- didgeoridoo 4y agoBecause the market that wants the bowdlerized version mostly cares that YOU can’t read the original.
- SettembreNero 4y ago[flagged]
- BryantD 4y agoMovies still do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearPlay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearPlay
- nemo44x 4y agoBecause it is the artists decision to make, not a committee by force of pressure from a small but aggressive and vocal group. For instance, Dahl changed the Oompa Loompas description in the original book from African Pygmies to what they are today. Regardless of if there was pressure to do so, it was his choice as the artist. He doesn't exist any longer and his will makes no mention of editing his works. So doing so is a crime essentially.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- vidarh 4y agoMost traditionally published authors don't really get to decide these things entirely on their own - their publishers will have a word. In the case of deceased authors, ensuring your work is treated the way you want is why you put a literary executor in your will. In the absence of direct instructions, the literary executor gets to decide, and it's not relevant if there's no mention of changes in the will.
- motohagiography 4y agoNobody's first rodeo. Bowlderization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expurgation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expurgation This whole issue only exists because of a generation of people trained to fear criticism and to avoid anything that might attract it.
- Beldin 4y agoNo, this whole issue exists only because of a whole generation of people trained to put profit over other considerations. It was always about selling more books, not making them "better" or "less offensive"(1). (1) the move sure seems to have offended many people.
- windowshopping 4y agoIs there a value in using numbered footnote references when there's only one and it's the next line and it comprises 33% of the comment's total sentence count?
- HelloNurse 4y agoAn edited edition seems mostly a copyright renewal stunt, possibly combined with an attempt to reach the censored library market.
- filmgirlcw 4y agoNah, copyright is 70 years after the author’s death. They’ve got another 40 years or so before they have to ruin that. This was probably just a money/publicity grab. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reissues of the originals were the original goal, but copyright didn’t have anything to do with it.
- guelo 4y agoThe ridiculously long copyright is part of the problem here. If these books were out of copyright it wouldn't be up to the one publisher to make these decisions and everybody could get the edition they wanted. (Though the antiwoke mob strangely seems to want to ban any modifications to classics).
- kwhitefoot 4y agoPerhaps we need to set up a pirate publishing house.
- bvinc 4y agoTo be more clear, here is a quote from another article > The company said it would publish 17 of the author's books in their original form as The Roald Dahl Classic Collection along with the planned edited versions so "readers will be free to choose which version of Dahl's stories they prefer." To me, it feels like a way to quell anger but still proceed forward and possibly even make money. I bet that the “classic” editions will be quietly discontinued in a few years.
- ta1243 4y ago> I bet that the “classic” editions will be quietly discontinued in a few years. So buy them now, before they go out of copyright. This feels like a way to drum up publicity and sell more books. Many grandparents will be reading this outrage in the express and buying the full original set for their children this christmas. (it seems that copyright will last until 2060, which is crazy - 100 years after they were written)
- Oxidation 4y agoCopyright in general is far longer than most people expect. In most of the world it's at least 70 years after the death of the author. Most people will not live to see even their grandparents' generation's work enter the public domain.
- Breza 4y agoCopyright lasts much longer than necessary to incentivize creators. The last Civil War veteran died in 1956. Imagine he had written a memoir of his wartime experience and that current copyright laws had always been in effect. That means a book about events from the 1850s would still be under copyright! I think copyright should last long enough to encourage the following type of creation: An author writes a fantasy book series. The author publishes books in this fantasy world for the next 25 years. Then she signs a deal for the movie rights and the studio spends 15 years producing a trilogy. If copyright only lasted 50 years, the entire fantasy world would still be under copyright for a decade after the last movie was released (and that movie would be protected for 50 years). Now think of the benefit to society. The '60s and '70s produced a wealth of cultural content, and modern culture would benefit from seeing that material enter the public domain.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoWe still don't know the answer to the most important question, IMHO: why?
- irthomasthomas 4y agoAnd an explanation of the specific substitutions made. Like, why erase Rudyard Kipling instead of having a conversation about the historical context of racism.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoWell, there's also a significant and growing contemporary movement based on not having conversations about the historical context of racism.
- irthomasthomas 4y agoI think it's even broader than that. Just the destruction of context altogether.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoBecause a lot of parents are reading these to their younger kids and don’t want to have a conversation about the historical context of racism, or if they do: they want to do it in the context of different books.
- irthomasthomas 4y agoSo, pretend racism wasn't a thing? Or just outsource the conversation to Netflix and Government?
- anigbrowl 4y agoMost people's knowledge of Kipling is limited to 'wrote the Jungle Book,' if that.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
- kzrdude 4y agoI agree with that the books "should be allowed to fade away", not changed if people judge them to be offensive, as it's said in the article. It doesn't sit right to me that there is someone owning the rights of the deceased author's work and should try to profit maximize the catalog. That is kind of what is happening here, trying to change the text to sell a slightly different book. It is their incentive to try to keep their sales alive, but it feels like an artificial thing. I guess I'm not used to how this particular sausage is made.
- guelo 4y ago[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tstrimple 4y ago[flagged]
- jefftk 4y agoWhen they say original, do they mean just without this round of bowdlerization or really original? Are people looking for the Oompa Loompas as African Pygmies from the original version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, before they were removed in the 1972 edition?
- giraffe_lady 4y agoWe're at most five years away from florida passing a law requiring the original phrasing of eeny meeny miny moe.
- geraldwhen 4y agoThere is no original. The rhyme is shared among many languages with variants based on the language. Earliest known variant: Hana, man, mona, mike; Barcelona, bona, strike; Hare, ware, frown, vanac; Harrico, warico, we wo, wac. The rhyme potentially comes from old English.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago"The one my great grandfather would have used" could you well-actually that one as hard for me please?
- petsfed 4y agoI believe you should understand "original" in the parent as in quotation marks as well. The "original" here is akin to referencing the "original" pledge of allegiance in the US, the one with "under god" appended during the red scare. That is, the parent is saying they won't be surprised if Florida requires the line "catch a tiger by the toe" to instead be sung as "catch an [racial slur] by the toe".
- jefftk 4y agoIf someone said "the original pledge of allegiance" I think most people would interpret that as being about its form before any alterations. And so, the 1892 "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." (Before the 1923 addition of "the Flag of the United States of America" and the 1954 addition of "under God")
- locallost 4y agoI read recently a sensible comment on the situation that it was the publisher that decided to do the changes because parents were increasingly uncomfortable with it, thus long term unwilling to buy them. That they're backing out now is kind of a confirmation. I read Charlie and the chocolate factory with my son a couple years ago and, um, did not have a recollection of Oompa Loompas which were basically little slaves. I was fond of the book as a child, but some parts haven't aged well. Speaking of Oompa Loompas, they were even originally tiny black people, but Dahl changed them to white himself in a later revision.
- patwolf 4y agoI can understand the need, especially with kids books, to update them to keep parents willing to buy them. I own some of the original Hardy Boys books, and I won't be reading them to my kids. On the other hand, the Little House on the Prairie books contain things that go against modern sensibilities but I would prefer to keep unchanged due to the historical nature of the books. I don't know what the right balance is, but it seems the recent Dahl changes missed the mark.
- AstixAndBelix 4y agoThis is a very funny situation because it's the result of the mental shortcircuit caused by fetishizing both the past and the present at the same time for economic reasons Let's say that I believe that past authors are problematic. Ok, then why reprint their works? Why not print children stories from modern and more sensitive authors? The job of the publisher is not to keep history alive, it's to provide customers with a good selection of children's content. On the other hand the publisher knows that these books are cherished by the general population and are indeed immortal classics. So it would be stupid not to print them and leave a good chunk of money on the table. So here comes the contradiction: we need to publish this author because we want the money, but at the same time we don't agree with him. The solution? Editorialize his works, not with footnotes but by destructively changing the verbiage of the stories! This way we can both get rich and alter history to our liking!
- fwungy 4y agoThis is all so double plus ungood.
- davidgerard 4y agolol, the whole thing was a marketing op. Anyone looking for a deeper reason is lying to himself.
- nineplay 4y agoI'm normally sympathetic to 'wokeisms' but this sickens me. A lot of the value of reading is in learning to expand your mind, expand your perceptive. Take in the book, read it, make your own decisions on how to process it and how to feel about it. This is flat-out reducing stories so that nobody learns anything more than what they already know. I've got plenty of issues with modern literature written to confirm the readers opinions rather than challenge them. Reducing books from the past to fit the same modern views just history-washing. Let us all naively believe that all authors in the past have our same identical values so we are never challenged to look beyond them. It's revolting and frightening. No one is ever going to learn anything outside of their narrow world view if this trend continues, and I have a bad feeling that it will. Who's next? C.S. Lewis? Tolkien? I wouldn't be a bit surprised. I would truly be happier if these books got censored. Let them remain on the list of corrupting literature because at least then the bold reader can seek them out.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- warbeforepeace 4y agoYea kids should read the bible its much safer than any of these books.
- paisawalla 4y agoRevisionism is the logical end of the modern, expansive concept of psychological harm, and the safety regime it necessarily implies.
- schwartzworld 4y agoWhile I don't agree with all the specifics of what terms they censored out, I do think there's something to be said for updating outdated / offensive terminology. Language changes, acceptable terminology changes. Kids books are chosen for kids by their parents. If research showed that parents didn't want to buy their kids books with the word "fat", doesn't it make perfect sense to update it? If Dahl was writing today, and his editor said they had to change some phrasing, of course he would have done it. The important thing is getting kids to read his marvelous stories, not insisting on some form of literary purity.
- jeffwask 4y agoDahl edited his own works in future editions. The 1964 Oompa Loompas were wildly racist caricatures that he was forced to eventually step back from. https://groovyhistory.com/oompa-loompas-the-original-ones https://groovyhistory.com/oompa-loompas-the-original-ones There are a lot of wonderful things in his works that don't change because of minor edits to bring things in line with a modern zeitgeist.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y agoHe was also a raging anti-semite. Like, to the levels of proudly proclaiming "I have become anti-Semitic." It shouldn't be terribly surprising that an old British guy was a bigot, nor that some of that bigotry crept into his works. I'm not sure why this instance of censorship feels particularly egregious, though. It's ultimately for children, and we censor content for kids all the time. We do it with movies and TV shows and music, and I don't see much rage directed toward that practice. Is it because it's a book? Is it because it's a medium that hasn't really been censored like this before? Is it because it was done posthumously? Is it the specific content being censored? Something feels different about this one. Maybe it's just the fear that what was once sacred is now fair game for defilement, or the sinking realization that the dam is now broken and this will become the new norm.
- realjhol 4y ago> Is it because it's a book? Is it because it's a medium that hasn't really been censored like this before? Is it because it was done posthumously? Is it the specific content being censored? It's because it is fraud. I want to buy a copy of Roald Dhall's original work - unadulterated by leftist wankers. If censorship is required when reading to my children, I'll be the one to decide how to do it. If they want to tone police literature, let them produce their own dull sanitised works and see if anyone wants to buy them. But they know that noone does want to buy them, hence why they have to mutilate someone else's work instead.
- apmee 4y agoOn the other hand, other parents may well wish to have access to cherished stories from their childhood to read to their own children _without_ first having to re-read them all in advance and prepare their own annotated versions. I'm not even necessarily agreeing with the publisher's approach here, but I can certainly see there being a market for "modernised" versions of older books that tired parents can relax into reading aloud as a bedtime story, without that constant low-level unease about the possibility of some dodgy dated stuff popping up out of nowhere.
- TeeMassive 4y agoThe market for used pre-2010 physical books will be huge. Personally I've stopped buying online books because of this kind of shenanigans and reverting back to having local music and movies for similar reasons. The idea that some remote working technocrats can change words of a book while I'm reading it just creeps me out.
- paulmd 4y agoForget picking on one particular line and let's talk about the pages of racist caricatures in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator… https://www.resetera.com/threads/so%E2%80%A6-willy-wonka-and-the-great-glass-elevator-is-racist-as-hell%E2%80%A6.567982/ https://www.resetera.com/threads/so%E2%80%A6-willy-wonka-and... like the oompa loompas aren't just a whoopsie, didn't realize that was racist thing. dude said some racist grandpa shit, there's no beating around the bush on that one lol... and boy he had some thoughts on the jews too... in 1983. https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20160912-the-dark-side-of-roald-dahl https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20160912-the-dark-side... (stolen from down-thread:) https://groovyhistory.com/oompa-loompas-the-original-ones/2 https://groovyhistory.com/oompa-loompas-the-original-ones/2 so like yeah this is basically the "difficult literature from 50 years ago" question. Dude was kind of a racist and wrote some shit that would be pretty offensive to write today. On the other hand it's also good entertaining literature that's beloved by a lot of kids, minus some offensive pages and occasional themes. what do you do with that? answers vary - don't teach it, edit it to tone down a few things, or just teach it unfiltered with some flavor of "yeah, product of its time"? I guess I personally fall into the "teach it as a product of its time" camp but I'm also not the one personally affected either, and over time it may fall more and more out of favor as sentiments on casual racism change, I'm sure there was a "teach it as a product of its time" for huck finn too and nowadays ehhhhhhh maybe we just find a better example for english lit. And that's really the danger if you don't want to tone it down (which, I'm not saying that's a good idea either), that it just falls into obscurity over time as people decide "nah african pygmies are a little too racist for 2050".
- bee_rider 4y agoTeaching it as a product of its time works in the right context, and is a great idea. But also — I mean, I guess nowadays there’s YouTube and TikTok, but some kids still read for fun, right? They are fun stories, so it is nice to produce a version that can be read lightly without having to address weighty historical issues.
- zac23or 4y agoRidiculous! What is the next? A revised version of Mein Kampf?
- bee_rider 4y agoWow, that’s much faster than I expected. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34853596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34853596
- jacooper 4y ago> Words including "fat" and "ugly" were removed after being reviewed by sensitivity readers, who check for potentially offensive content. What a fragile Society.
- botanical 4y agoI firmly believe social media is the cause to this even being considered. If words in a book offend you, don't read the book. Don't subject others to your limited world-view. People should be exposed to all types of views on things, so they can better empathise with other people.