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Agatha Christie novels reworked to remove potentially offensive language
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- FridayoLeary 4y agoHonestly this insults the intelligence of readers and it's nothing less then cultural vandalism. Not to mention historical revisionism.
- TechBro8615 4y agoMy cynical take is that it's outrage bait to get some old books into the news cycle while having a chance to sell them to people who already own them. They're not removing words for any puritanical reasons, but rather because they know it pisses people off and it's a sure way to get people talking about their books.
- nullc 4y agoI think that's actually a more hopeful take than the reality. Instead, I think it's just a stuffed shirt bureaucratic box checkers who knows that no one ever got fired for sending a book to a sensitivity reader engaging in some busy work to pad out their annual review accomplishments. The extremely low quality and incoherence of the bowdlerization shows their total indifference to both the book and any conceivable external agenda of the sensitivity edits. If it was being done to generate controversy at least it would stop when it stopped making them money.
- ctoth 4y agoI can't decide if this possibility is worse, but I'm leaning towards yes.
- version_five 4y agoIt's almost like a variation of Poe's law, where it's impossible to tell whether they're doing it out of some memetic bureaucratic desire to remove all the entropy from the universe, or if they're just trolling.
- none_to_remain 4y agoAlways consider the possibility the "por qué no los dos" principle applies: for the actual implementers it's an opportunity to work towards the glorification of the new faith, for their bosses it's an opportunity to market through controversy.
- TechBro8615 4y agoPoe qué no los dos?
- dudul 4y agoFor another example of this lazy marketing strategy see the garbage live action remakes Disney has been putting out there over the past few years.
- beej71 4y agoThey're "vandalizing" their own book. It's not our book. It's theirs to do with as they please. You're allowed to rewrite your own books, too--and even leave the same title on them. At least in the US, the government isn't allowed to stop you. The publisher's reasons are certainly straightforward: 1. Generate controversy/awareness to make more money. 2. Get last-minute books sales of the "old" version to make more money. 3. Get new book sales of the "new" version to make more money.
- rocketbop 4y ago> In the new edition of the 1964 Miss Marple novel A Caribbean Mystery, the amateur detective’s musing that a hotel worker smiling at her has “such lovely white teeth” has been removed, the newspaper added. This is absurd, if the reason was to avoid using the term white.
- OscarCunningham 4y agoThe original is based on a stereotype of black people having shining white teeth.
- readthenotes1 4y agoStereotype? Or observation?
- rocketbop 4y agoOh I see, I didn’t realise the character in question was Black. I any case, I think it’s still absurd to change. It’s the character’s observation at the time.
- thiht 4y agoBut in this case it’s about a specific character, is he not allowed to have white teeth?
- snozolli 4y agoYou might want to read about the history of Asia's popular toothpaste brand Darlie: https://www.goldthread2.com/identity/origins-colgate-darlie-black-person-toothpaste-explained/article/3089860 https://www.goldthread2.com/identity/origins-colgate-darlie-...
- OscarCunningham 4y agoIt shouldn't be legal to sell these as though they were the real book. There needs to be an asterisk next to the author's name on the front cover.
- Ekaros 4y agoI think some reasonable cigarette packet style warning and plain labelling should be used as well. Let's say covering 80% of surface.
- version_five 4y agoSomething like "reading this version can make you boring" and showing a picture of Phil Collins.
- chrismeller 4y agoDidn't we just establish with Roald Dahl's books that people don't think this is a good idea? Why are we doing this again?
- morelisp 4y agoThese edits don't seem nearly as contentious, arbitrary, or destructive to the original prose as the ones in Dahl's works.
- marklubi 4y agoThey are not what the author wrote. Whether or not someone finds them to be 'contentious, arbitrary, or destructive' really shouldn't matter, as the author was the one that chose the words that they put to paper at the time that it was written. Society changes, but changing a work to conform to new and/or different societal norms should be frowned upon.
- morelisp 4y ago> They are not what the author wrote. I'm begging you to learn how the editing process works.
- marklubi 4y agoI'm well aware of how the editing process works. These changes are post publication... after the author's approval. Agatha Christie had no input regarding these changes.
- true_religion 4y agoSo what? We translate books to different languages all the time, or edit original works for reasons of clarity with modern day prose. Just label the book as edited in the forward and there ought not to be a problem, right? The reason for this edit is similar to that of a modernization: to make it more accessible to a present day audience.
- rsynnott 4y ago> Though this is the first time the content of Christie’s novels has been changed, her 1939 novel And Then There Were None was previously published under a different title that included a racist term, which was last used in 1977. A little confusingly worded. They mean that the title was last used in 1977, and not, unfortunately, the term (for a few seconds I was trying to think of what racist term was so archaic and/or offensive that no-one had used it since 1977, but then I remembered that book's rather unfortunate original title...)
- morelisp 4y agoWikipedia, incidentally, pegs the change at 1985(!). And as I wrote in another comment, it's definitely false it was only a title change.
- caddemon 4y agoIn the UK, in the US it always had the more modern title from the time it released there in 1940. Not sure about content differences in the US version though.
- snozolli 4y agoFor anyone else wondering what this is about: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- morelisp 4y agoThough this is the first time the content of Christie’s novels has been changed, her 1939 novel And Then There Were None was previously published under a different title that included a racist term, which was last used in 1977. This is false; the 1940 US printing and 1985 UK printing edited similar contents of the book, and probably several other times because when I read it it was "Indians" and today it's apparently "soldier boys".
- pjmlp 4y agoSo the censorship overlords are on the rise it seems. The blue pencil is back. :(
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fishnchips 4y agoIs it me being so insensitive or are these edits mostly overzealous?
- thesuperbigfrog 4y ago"[T]he Party member, like the proletarian, tolerates present-day conditions because he has no standards of comparison. He must be cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising." -- George Orwell, 1984. Keep on editing the past, lest someone be offended or see reality as viewed by those who lived then.
- dudul 4y agoIt was always funny to me how people seem to focus so much on the 24/7 surveillance in 1984 while I always found the rewriting of the past and the shrinking of language so much more terrifying. Admittedly, the constant surveillance is what enables everything else.
- sampa 4y agoinstead of creating something great, they edit and censor great pieces of the past
- antman 4y agoIn the future when offensive will be violence, meat eating, hurting feelings, aristocracy etc they might probably sell as empty notebooks.
- AbraKdabra 4y agoWhat a joke, this should be illegal.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoAre we going to do this to every literary work? I get the idea, but I personally find thi Absolutely ridiculous.
- Julesman 4y agoShall we do the Declaration of Independence next? ... This is so silly.
- horsh1 4y agoGiven the progress of the large language models, the news is almost irrelevant now: "Produce me Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but more offensive to everyone". "Make Catch 22 version, but make higher officers less dumb". "Rewrite Winnie the Pooh, but make Eeyore less offensive, in general".
- vintermann 4y agoWorth noting that both Agatha Christie and Roald Dahl accepted some editorial changes to their own works when they were alive, and in the latter case I think he was involved personally. The Oompa-Lompas were changed from being dark-skinned ("He's made people out of chocolate!") to being orange-skinned, and the original title of Agatha Christie's "And then there were none" was considered too offensive in the US even in 1939.
- barrysteve 4y agoAlso worth noting that Roald Dahl worked with a small team of people he collaborated with, as his work was being written.
- bluescrn 4y agoA one-off edit to remove a slur is a lot more justifiable than the drastic PC overhaul that appeared to be happening to Roald Dahl's work - which seems to have included purging every reference to the word 'fat', along with many others such as 'ugly', 'rotting teeth', and even 'female' (while gender-neutralising references to mothers/fathers) It's like they've done a mass search+replace for a long list of 'bad' (descriptive!) and/or gendered words, and what's left is no longer the writing of Roald Dahl.
- eesmith 4y agoThey weren't just dark-skinned. They were African Pygmies. https://archive.org/details/charliechocolate0000unse_u3w0/page/72/mode/2up?q=oompa https://archive.org/details/charliechocolate0000unse_u3w0/pa... > “Right!” cried Mr. Wonka. “Pygmies they are! Imported direct from Africa! They belong to a tribe of tiny miniature pygmies known as the Oompa-Loompas. I discovered them myself. I brought them over from Africa myself—the whole tribe of them, three thousand in all. I found them in the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had ever been before. (BTW, an archive.org search doesn't find the phrase 'people out of chocolate'.) The movie - and after threats by the NAACP and others to boycott the movie - portrayed them as orange. Dahl's revision depicts them as white. https://archive.org/details/charliechocolate0000dahl_x9u4/page/80/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/charliechocolate0000dahl_x9u4/pa... > The Oompa-Loompa bowed and smiled, showing beautiful white teeth. His skin was rosy-white, his long hair was golden-brown, and the top of his head came just above the height of Mr. Wonka’s knee.
- Bloating 4y agoI'm guessing this is more about clickbait marketing to spur sales of books, and nothing to do with modern moral standards. That said, it reminds me of a years ago controversy over some social conservative group selling "family friendly" edits of movies. "Both sides" do this, hence, much like most headline controversy, why I believe its marketing ruse to sell more stuff
- 1MachineElf 4y agoPresumably the ones up on Project Gutenberg are all untouched: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Agatha+Christie+&submit_search=Search https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Agatha+Christ...
- barrysteve 4y agoWe can just completely axe the idea of there being "no gatekeepers". They are moved to the post-publication area, and you no longer get to understand why they changed what they changed, and you won't know if they approve of your work before you release it. Yay.
- beefman 4y agoHilarious that this is flagged
- beej71 4y agoWhoever owns the rights to the book can absolutely change the book. Period. All this talk about "should" or "woke" is completely irrelevant. The owner does what the owner wants. The publisher is clearly doing this so they can make more money just like any other good capitalist. There are a lot of calls for this to be "illegal" in the comments. That would be a ludicrous level of government oversight on the publishing process and certainly a violation of the First Amendment in the US. The owner of the rights to the work is free to change the work in whatever way they want, and they don't have to ask our permission or the government's (thank Christ!). This isn't a case of some sneaky leftist changing the content behind the owner's back. The owner of the content is doing it, actively and knowingly, for bigger profits. They know a certain demographic doesn't like it, but they've done the math, and know where the best money is.
- OscarCunningham 4y agoI don't think that most consumers of these books will know that modern changes have been made. And I think that most of them would be less willing to pay for copies with these changes. So they're being mislead for increased profit. Even in the US, the First Amendment doesn't protect false advertising. I don't think making these changes without informing the buyer would be illegal under current law, but I don't think it would be unconstitutional to make it illegal, not would it contravene the spirit of free speech.
- beej71 4y ago> I don't think that most consumers of these books will know that modern changes have been made. Indeed, one never knows what changes have been made without an itemized list, which is rarely provided and certainly not required by law. And I'd argue it shouldn't be. > And I think that most of them would be less willing to pay for copies with these changes. The publishers clearly disagree, or at least they disagree they'd make more money without the changes. And maybe they're wrong, but it's entirely their prerogative. What mechanism do you propose to use to notify a reader of the particular changes in a printing?
- 4y ago
- petodo 4y agoanonymous flagging without provided reason should be gone on HN yesterday
- xboxnolifes 4y agoReading the comments have made me wonder: how much editing can one do and keep the author's association? How does reusing the author's name, changing their work, work? Are groups able to republish under an author's name because the author sold their name rights? Or is it something else? If so, how much can the owner change and still attribute to the author? Could they write a whole new book and put Agatha Christie as the author? What if they just "edit" the current book with 100% new contents? Or 50%? Where does editing end and writing begin?
- mcphage 4y ago> Reading the comments have made me wonder: how much editing can one do and keep the author's association? > What if they just "edit" the current book with 100% new contents? Or 50%? Where does editing end and writing begin? What percentage are they suggesting changing here? Do you think it's 0.1% — 60 words out of 60,000? 0.5%, that would be 300. 1% would be 600 words, that seems unlikely.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoIrrelevant to my question. I am not asking anything specific to this particular change.
- mcphage 4y agoI agree you weren't asking anything specific about this change, but I wanted to make that fact clear. The publishers are talking about a change, the discussion here inspired you to ask where the threshold is, and you floated numbers like 50% or 100%, and I wanted to make clear that in the situation at hand, the change is closer to 1% or (most likely significantly) below.