15 ms·

21st-century editors should keep their hands off of 20th-century books

251 points by CrankyBear 3y ago

mcguire 3y ago
I'm finding their examples hilarious, especially considering one of them is Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which the Oompa Loompas were originally African pygmies.
- tivert 3y ago
  > I'm finding their examples hilarious, especially considering one of them is Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which the Oompa Loompas were originally African pygmies. IIRC, that was done by the original author himself. That's far different than an anonymous committee quietly revising past works to conform to the current political line. I mean that's such a blatant parallel to a famous work of dystopian fiction that they should know better not to do it. Though, I honestly look forward to a revised version of that famous work, revised to conform to modern sensitivities. IIRC, there's some out-of-fashion racial descriptions and the whole disapproving take on doctoring older works has to go.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    I think that it's anti-black to de-racist-ify the past. Take it or leave it, but don't gaslight black people over the experience that they've had for the last century or four in relation to Europeans. As far as I can tell, a major component of woke bowdlerization of the past seems to be finding depictions of black people and either eliminating them or making them conform to the idealistic stereotypes of modern white liberals. That's stacking stereotypes on stereotypes, and the truth of the black experience gets buried even deeper. The way my grandmother spoke would be cut out of a modern novel as a racist stereotype.
    - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      I read an article last week where a DEI expert was angry about the new release of The Little Mermaid because it wasn't nearly racist enough; that 18th-century Caribbean people were friends and kind to each other no matter what their race or sex; it was unconscionable that history should be rewritten to leave out the allegedly horrible experiences being had by BIPOC in that place and time.
      - pessimizer 3y ago
        That's a symptom of trying to rewrite white stories and stick black people into them. It's the same process as trying to rewrite male stories with female protagonists. It's the creation of fictional pasts. If all we see is fictional pasts where black people are just white people with tans, and women are just pretty men, what are black people and women complaining about? They should have just tried harder.
        slg 3y ago
        And the reason we get these stories in this way is not because of anything related to wokeism, progressivism, DEI, or whatever buzzword you wanted use. It is because of risk averse capitalists. Disney knows a Black Little Mermaid is a safer investment than an original story with a Black protagonist so that is the version we get.
        themaninthedark 3y ago
        That is rather racist isn't it?(Not your comment but the attitude held by the corporation)
        slg 3y ago
        No, it is cynical, ignorant, and lazy, but I don't think it qualifies as racist. I would compare it to those people who like to claim they "don't see race". It isn't actually racist because it isn't discriminatory or putting one race above another. It is just ignoring something that often can't be ignored.
    - BenisMaximus 3y ago
      It's like going through life with autism and being called "neurodiverse" as if you haven't lived with an active disability your whole life, you're just a little different from everyone else. Back in the early 2000s I saw someone refer to a wheelchair-bound person as "handicapable". The disabled fellow ran over his foot lol. Point being I think it's best not to minimize people's suffering. Acknowledge it, respect it, and try to move forward together.
      - Aloha 3y ago
        I dont think of Autism (as someone who has it) as a disability - even though it does make me different (normal people and their societal norms are often baffling to me, but I still follow those norms to the extent I am able). I don't want others to think of me as disabled either (though a little understanding might be nice when I fail to mask well enough). Maybe the problem is how we treat the disabled, not the words we use to talk about disability?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      Changing characters and their depictions is a thing that can be argued about, but there's definitely no need to print n-bombs in books printed in 2023. In general, it's (IMHO) not needed to have centuries old books full of stereotypes in modern curricula. There are so many works that have been published in the last decades that provide far better diversity of all kinds than even a "de-racisted" historic book can. Modern authors, modern artists, modern composers and other artists deserve their shine in the spotlight as well - it's ridiculous how much of curricula is spent on stuff that happened or got created hundreds to thousands of years ago. We have to refocus education on modern events if we want a modern society. And if you want something filled with racial or other stereotypes in curricula, ffs print it with commentary like we do with Hitler's "Mein Kampf" here in Germany. That is, coincidentally, the only way one is allowed to do a reprint in Germany due to copyright and anti-Nazi symbolism laws.
      - xg15 3y ago
        > but there's definitely no need to print n-bombs in books printed in 2023. How can a word be a bomb? And I'm still at a loss how in a supposedly post-enlightenment world, a single word can be so evil that you have to resort to code to refer to it, no matter in which context or even when you're quoting. Yes, you shouldn't call people that way - and if you do, that is a clear sign of a racist mindset. But treating the word itself as some kind of forbidden symbol that must be purged from everything is not much better than medieval magical thinking.
        mschuster91 3y ago
        > But treating the word itself as some kind of forbidden symbol that must be purged from everything is not much better than medieval magical thinking. Nonetheless, the continued reproduction of that word makes it "acceptable" to be used, and every time affected persons have to read that, it's bad for them.
    - civilitty 3y ago
      > The way my grandmother spoke would be cut out of a modern novel as a racist stereotype. That’s nothing new sadly, especially in academia. It used to be considered proper literary form to “translate” how people actually spoke to “proper English” and you can imagine the demographic of the people doing the “translating.” See for example Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" [1] about one of the last living former slaves in the US. It was published a few years ago nearly a century after it was written because the author refused to white wash the subject’s language and couldn’t get it published in her life time. Hell that criticism could easily be leveled at some of the most popular western canon like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracoon:_The_Story_of_the_Last_%22Black_Cargo%22 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracoon:_The_Story_of_the_...
      - quacked 3y ago
        Barracoon is the greatest work of anti-slavery literature I've ever read. It wouldn't have been as effective if they'd removed his dialect. "Sometimes I think I die in my sleep when I dream bout my mama." I had tears in my eyes.
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    Except it's never a faceless authoritarian committee in practice. It's one of two things: The copyright holders are publishing new editions edited to modern sensibilities to maximize their profits by selling to a new audience. The works are in the public domain, in which case anyone can edit up a new edition however they like, for fun or profit. What's the alternative? We take away the right of copyright holders to publish new editions of their IP? We disallow people to edit works in the public domain?
    - domador 3y ago
      An alternative: allow copyright holders to publish new editions but only if they 1) clearly label them as new, edited versions that are not the original and 2) make the unedited originals fully and completely available upon request, for a (truly) reasonable fee to anyone who requests access to them for whatever reason. If these conditions aren't met within a reasonable timeframe, then (by law) the original version would automatically become fully (or partially) public domain. ("Partial" public domain would mean than anyone could make or distribute copies of the original version. The copyright holders would temporarily retain the exclusive right to make edited versions, until the work fully becomes public domain when the standard copyright term lapses. At that point anyone could make and distribute the original version or their own, edited versions.)
      - saalweachter 3y ago
        So should Bill Nye be required to keep publishing the original version of his book "Undeniable"? [Between the publication of the hardcover and softcover editions, he changed his views on GMO foods, and updated the relevant chapter.]
        Pet_Ant 3y ago
        Perhaps as an on-demand title. Add a foreword if he'd like, but yeah.
        tivert 3y ago
        > So should Bill Nye be required to keep publishing the original version of his book "Undeniable"? [Between the publication of the hardcover and softcover editions, he changed his views on GMO foods, and updated the relevant chapter.] Ideally, yes, but at a minimum he should provide a list of changes and their rationale(s) in the newer editions.
- technothrasher 3y ago
  Roald Dahl's stories are so full of inappropriate conflict resolution and outgrouping of others that it honestly feels silly to change a few words and call it fixed. I loved Dahl's stories as a kid specifically because it was obvious they were 'naughty' and like a lot of fiction they allowed me to explore darker feelings and desires without actually living them out in real life. However, that said, I don't particularly mind people updating stories to modern sensibilities as long is it is made obvious that it isn't the original edition, and those original editions are archived somewhere.
- morkalork 3y ago
  Editors have been pulling tricks forever. Taking Roald Dahl as an example, he published stories from his time as a pilot in WWII and one of them being autobiographical and about the time he crashed his plane. The editors didn't think that was exciting enough for their magazine so they changed it to imply he was shot down. Which is not what happened at all!
hospitalJail 3y ago
EDIT: Not sure how to delete, but people didn't understand my point.
- COGlory 3y ago
  Which fascist things were people pretending to believe in the 90s?
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  FYI: You can only delete comments within the first couple hours of posting (I'm not sure if it's the same as the edit window or less) and if they haven't been replied to. The other option is to reach out to the HN mods (see "Contact" at the bottom of the page).
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago
  [dead]
COGlory 3y ago
I'm going to do a very poor attempt at explaining my feelings over this. For a long time I've idolized Teddy Roosevelt. Parts of his story just speak to me: * He was sickly but just worked very hard to compensate and overcome it to live an outdoors-centric life. I suffer from some undiagnosable(word?) arthritis, I work hard to still do my favorite activities (backpacking, hunting and fishing). * He was extremely well learned, thoughtful, and articulate. He kept a detailed journal. I admire those traits and try to emulate them. I pursued a PhD, I keep a journal, I frequently write to relatives and friends. I try to be thoughtful and articulate. * He was a legendary hunter (as I mentioned I love hunting), and conservationist. He is partly responsible for the National Parks, which I enjoy every free day (I live near Yellowstone and routinely pass under his arch). * He was empathetic and progressive for his time [0], despite his unshaking nationalism. He didn't seem to fall for toxic tropes of conservatism (although those political terms don't translate to today, Teddy is universally celebrated by the right). I believe strongly in what I consider to be core unshaking tenets of American national identity, but I also try hard to be empathetic and make sure no one is left behind. I don't believe the answer is exclusion of outgroups, which I think is a common conservative trope today. I have a lot of respect for Teddy (with some important caveats) [1]. * He held himself, and those in government to a higher standard [2]. He believed he was a public servant, and fought tirelessly against corruption. There is nothing that makes me angrier than corruption and entitlement in political office today. I also learned, a couple years ago, he probably would have despised me, had our paths crossed. I'm mostly Italian-American, who he openly viewed as mostly criminals [3], and even went so far as to applaud a lynching of Italian Americans in New Orleans [4]. I think it's important that I learned this. I'm glad it wasn't erased or ignored or left out of the record. I learned a few things from it. I learned (well, I already knew, but it was reinforced) that no one is perfect. No one. And that perfection is the enemy of self-improvement, it is the enemy of progress, and it is the enemy of good. There's no part of me that I'm aware of that's worse for having held TR in such high esteem and tried to emulate the great things I found about him. In fact, his example has improved my life in a variety of ways, particularly my mental health and fortitude, seeing him as an example. Sure, it made me sad to learn that fact about him, but in terms of material affect? It had no change. Words, thoughts, opinions, ideas, are necessarily flawed and incomplete as a direct result of the human condition. Pretending they are not creates two things: 1) An impossible standard 2) A false sense of security and satisfaction I'm better at some things than TR. I don't have Italian Americans (or any minority group for that matter, my understanding was that he had similar feelings about natives). That alone is a major victory. By not having to draw myself against perfect examples, I can foster some feeling of accomplishment, but I can also learn that my idols were flawed and that even if I am flawed in many ways, I can hopefully still do some good. That's an important motivator. A perfect example is one I will never live up to, and in that case, why even try? [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/theodore-roosevelt-mississippi-postmaster/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/theodore-roosevelt-mississ... [1] https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/08/theodore-roosevelt-and-the-case-for-a-popular-constitution/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/08/theodore-roosevel... [2] https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2020/09/14/president-theodore-roosevelt-on-the-importance-of-fighting-corruption/ https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2020/09/14/president-th... [3] https://theamericanmag.com/a-rather-good-thing/ https://theamericanmag.com/a-rather-good-thing/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings
egypturnash 3y ago
21st-century publishers should stop trying to endlessly flog 20th-century books that have severe dissonance with current values, then. There is a point where you just can't serve the old stuff up without a huge "hey it was sixty years ago and this author was a horrible product of Britain's racist, colonialist upper class" disclaimer in the front, or a major re-working. I find it kind of fascinating that this article is fine with the changes made to Ursula K. LeGuin's work, but is up in arms over Dahl and Fleming and Christie getting a de-upper-class-twitification. Why is this particular shit so sacred to the Post's "editorial board"?
- quacked 3y ago
  I don't share your values, and I don't want you or people like you to have any control over what I read it or how I read it. There are many people who agree with me. It's "sacred" to the Post because the people writing for the Post believe these works have a place in the literary canon. People in society possess systems of morals that directly contradict each other.
- causi 3y ago
  I find it kind of fascinating that this article is fine with the changes made to Ursula K. LeGuin's work, but is up in arms over Dahl and Fleming and Christie It's a case of changing the meaning of the statement vs translating the vocabulary to more accurately reflect the original meaning. Editing Lord of the Rings so Frodo tosses another bundle of sticks onto the fire doesn't alter the meaning. His example from Death on the Nile is straight-up altering the personality of a character to make her a better person.
  - slily 3y ago
    I'd argue that any alteration to the prose is counter to authorial intent. Some people might be fine with that, but I don't want to read a book not knowing whether words were substituted for others because some editor thought that they were too antiquated or difficult for lowly readers. Footnotes exist for a reason (and dictionaries for that matter). Lately I often feel that publishers don't respect consumers' intelligence.
lyu07282 3y ago
This already happened for a long time with translations, I assume because it's easier to get away with mistranslation of originals. It's common to translate a phrase into the most current version of the phrase in the target language and to update the translation regularly. To me this always felt very noticeable, doing this requires an impressive level of entitlement to take a great work of literature and add your own artistry on top of it. I vaguely imagine you should get hard prison time for violating great works of literature like that, but that's just me. It's akin to defacing paintings or statues to hide genitalia which happened in the past.
- tivert 3y ago
  > This already happened for a long time with translations, I assume because it's easier to get away with mistranslation of originals. It's common to translate a phrase into the most current version of the phrase in the target language and to update the translation regularly. To me this always felt very noticeable, doing this requires an impressive level of entitlement to take a great work of literature and add your own artistry on top of it. Isn't that "impressive level of entitlement" a basic requirement for translation? It does take artistry to make a translation. Even if you're not going for a literary result, there are always going to be meanings that exist (or can be expressed efficiently) on one language but not the other. Then there are idioms and cultural references.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    Indeed, to the point where translations are often known relative to their translator because the translator is often part of what makes a given edition of a work.
- burnished 3y ago
  My understanding was that this is a requirement of translation, specifically because many things do not translate literally? Like wordplay, or idioms, or euphemisms.
- watwut 3y ago
  > It's common to translate a phrase into the most current version of the phrase in the target language That is correct way of translating and not an violation. If the original author wrote the book with contemporary style, pleasant to read to people at the time, proper translation will produce contemporary text. There is no reason to use archaisms or outdated language in translation if the original author was not using archaisms or outdated language.
slg 3y ago
>But, in general, the best way to respond to language that some or most readers would find inappropriate is not with unexplained revisions but to surround original works with context, in the form of critical introductions as well as annotations in new editions, wherever possible. I agree with this, however at a certain point we have to be pragmatic and avoid the perfect being the enemy of the good. These works are often never put into context. Sometimes that is because a child is reading the work themselves. Sometimes it is because the government is actively trying to make it illegal to provide that context. Therefore I wonder if it is just easier to remove a word here and there when it is mostly irrelevant to the story. Changing "natives" to "locals" or "fat" to "enormous" doesn't change anything material about those works. If anything it makes the original more accessible because it removes a potential distraction for a modern reader. It seems a little weird to me to be so dogmatic about the importance of preserving the exact original text as in many instances those were in flux too. The fact that the article uses Oompa Loompas as an example is especially strange considering the version the article wants to preserve is already a politically correct update of the original in which they were more clearly African slaves.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  When and where does it end? It's completely arbitrary. Why is the word you find offensive OK to edit but the ones I find not? It all becomes a political thing and everything gets ruined. We all know that controlling language is a form of power and that's the entire point of these revisions. Whoever controls the language controls the masses, it has been said. Destroy whatever was important and sacred to the culture you're colonizing and/or destroying. The first step is to change the meaning of words. And of course, it's "for the children".
  - slg 3y ago
    >When and where does it end? It's completely arbitrary. Why is the word you find offensive OK to edit but the ones I find not? It all becomes a political thing and everything gets ruined. I don't buy this slippery slope argument. Where does it end? It ends wherever the rights holders of the books say it ends. If you want them to change a word you think is offensive, try to convince them to change it. >We all know that controlling language is a form of power and that's the entire point of these revisions. Whoever controls the language controls the masses, it has been said. Destroy whatever was important and sacred to the culture you're colonizing and/or destroying. The first step is to change the meaning of words. And of course, it's "for the children". This is a rather hyperbolic claim for changing a few sentences in a story about kids visiting a chocolate factory. No one is "controlling the masses" with Roald Dahl books. This isn't about changing the history books. It is ensuring that stories can still be enjoyed in the same way they were originally without being burdened with either an accompanied history lesson or what we now view as bigotry.
krater23 3y ago
I would love to read the revised non racist version of 'Mein Kampf' to my children...
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  A historical work like Mein Kampf you would read annotated with scientific insights and commentary (which is exactly what was done in Germany with that book a few years ago), or just straight up as-is if your German is up to it and you have the ability to place it in its proper context. It's a political pamphlet, not a novel.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    And one hell of a hard book to read, not because zhe content is awful, but the writting is, apparently, incredibly bad...
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
  > non racist version of 'Mein Kampf' Peter Singer?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
quacked 3y ago
I haven't seen anyone that doesn't like the edits give the real reason that they are so upset about the edits. If the edits were politically slanted in a different direction, the edit-opposers would only oppose edits on principle. "Why, of course I don't support changing words in old works to make the work conform to modern standards, don't be ridiculous." But the edit-opposers are angry because the edits are clearly the work of modern western hyper-progressives, who are simultaneously trying to retain the conquests and achievements of the Old World while erasing any moral belief left over from the Old World. I do not wish to see society remade by the vision of the modern western progressive, and so I don't want progressive edits to books I loved as a child. Edit: Editing books allows progressives to simultaneously avoid the label of "book banning", which they at least claim to detest, while also constructing an incorrect image of the people of the past to aid in the moral instruction of modern children. It is the same story, over and over again, whether it's communists or religious people: "you cannot have access to information that contradicts the moral worldview we wish you to have. This is for your own safety and for the good of your fellow man."
awesome_dude 3y ago
I find this whole argument quite bizarre - we've been 'updating' books for centuries to match the current (at time of update) language, norms, fashions. The original Shakespeare is still available, but most people read/watch adaptations or revisions (partly because Shakespeare's English has long gone). So, as long as the originals haven't been burnt by the good people of Florida, who cares about the updates?
- low_tech_love 3y ago
  A translation is a translation, a book is a book. Would you agree to retouch some paintings in the Louvre for the greater good? Or, less radically, take the originals down and put retouched versions up?
  - at_a_remove 3y ago
    Look at all of those unrealistic beauty standards and white skin. It's time for the Ministry of Truth to put up the correct paintings.
  - jankyxenon 3y ago
    I personally wouldn’t touch an updated classic with a 10 foot pole - but there’s a market for sanitized classics. If the publishers think it will help them sell more books, it’s hard to fault them for it.
  - awesome_dude 3y ago
    I have a print of the Mona Lisa with sunglasses, a moustache (and goatee), the original is untouched, and unharmed by the print existing.
    - okanat 3y ago
      But you do know that the original one is the one in Louvre and saw a least a detailed photo of it, maybe even the real thing. Racist, misogynist or whatever, the art in its original form is still there. When the books are censored the opposite happens. The original in the people's mind changes and the original nuances of the art is lost. Moreover we lose our understanding of progress. The change of the worldview and the values is an important part of understanding art. If we would like to show the progress we made and our current values, we should create our own classics for generations to read and understand us, rather than muddying the water between us and the previous generations.
acadapter 3y ago
Meh, language changes. 21st-century books will be edited by 22nd century people, that's for sure. And verbatim copies will be free to reprint as they fall out of copyright. Politically motivated changes might sometimes be ridiculous, but there's also the real need to update forgotten words, or words that have drastically changed their meaning. At least it's not done with the same level of fanaticism as Iceland's war against foreign loanwords, for example. The example with "fat" Augustus Gloop becoming "enormous" - that's actually a good thing, regardless of the politics involved! The causes of obesity were poorly understood back then, partially due to the sugar industry's lobbying. There's no need to propagate this misunderstanding to the next generation in a book for young people. Edit: Wow - this is a downvote magnet! Go and try reading Beowulf in the original Old English, or something.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  > And verbatim copies will be free to reprint as they fall out of copyright. Far from guaranteed, with today's ever-lengthening copyright terms, and DMCA making it a felony to keep original versions around.
- tetromino_ 3y ago
  > The causes of obesity were poorly understood back then, partially due to the sugar industry's lobbying. I am fat, and the sugar industry has nothing to do with it. I don't like sugar, or sweet food in general; I eat healthy, old-fashioned home-cooked meals prepared from zero-sugar raw ingredients - they just happen to be consistently bigger meals than a stressed out software engineer with a low physical activity level ought to be eating. So the weight increases. There is a sane medium to be found somewhere between the "fat person = greedy and evil person" trope of 20th century fiction, and today's "fat person = innocent, agency-less victim of the Big Sugar conspiracy" trope.
  - quacked 3y ago
    Did you ever find yourself offended by Augustus Gloop?
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
What about remastered movies?
- andi999 3y ago
  Read my lips: Han. Shot. FIRST.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    Not even that egregious. I often see remasters on top of remasters in 4k HDR for very old films. If these are really a better experience does that mean the original audience had a lesser experience?
    - tehnub 3y ago
      The original audiences saw them projected on film and the resolution was fantastic. I believe the contrast was not as good as an OLED TV or Dolby Cinema though.
      - mavhc 3y ago
        Assuming the film didn't have dust on it, and the projection lamp wasn't turned down to save money, and the audio wasn't good at all
- slothtrop 3y ago
  Music albums are the greater offenders. Lots of old catalogs from 20th century rock bands are only available in some remaster format.
__alexs 3y ago
If you are the owner of a 20th century IP there is no reason you should not want to rework it for a new market if your motive is profit. It's not wokeism to make Rohl Dahl readable to zoomers, it's capitalism.
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago
  Yet another reason why copyright shouldn't last for such an absurdly long time.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  I mean, where's the lie?
- jimbob45 3y ago
  Roald Dahl himself didn’t agree with you. He didn’t try to pass off a censored Cinderella as the original version. He wrote his own and published it under his own name. And you know what? His Cinderella was fucking terrible and I’ve been waiting decades to have a platform to point that out. His original IPs are way better than his retellings. Glad to get that off my chest.
  - stubybubs 3y ago
    This comment gave me a solid chuckle. I have things like this as well, but I've been low-key stewing on for years or decades, just waiting for the right moment to let the world know.
kayodelycaon 3y ago
As an author, a lot of this bugs me but not for the reasons listed in the article. Trying to patch over old stories just ends up making them worse most of the time. I'd rather see people retell the story without the stuff they see as problems. Get at the heart of the story and tell it better. (IIRC, this is what happened in Shakespeare's time.) But no one is going to do that. It's more work and everyone is looking to do this as cheaply as possible to make more money.
- Aloha 3y ago
  Editing is supposed to be a collaborative process - and these people are dead - there is no author to collaborate with - it just makes a worse product in the end (in ever example cited in the article) - a good editor can make a good work great, a bad one can make a great work bad.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > But no one is going to do that. It's more work Actually, most of the refusal is because of copyrights.
  - kayodelycaon 3y ago
    Copyright doesn’t apply to ideas or plots. It’s perfectly legal to take something someone else wrote and write something similar. Otherwise Star Trek Deep Space Nine would have infringed on Babylon 5.
    - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      There are some of us who say that it definitely does, and that it was reprehensible of Paramount executives to sit through a pitch, reject it, and then direct their writers to create exactly the same concept for their own existing franchise. It cost the Babylon 5 makers considerable money and reputation. It was abuse of privileged information.
- blooalien 3y ago
  > "I'd rather see people retell the story without the stuff they see as problems. Get at the heart of the story and tell it better." Isn't that what happened with the more famous version of "The Princess Bride" (the one that ended up made into a movie)?
linusg789 3y ago
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/aZbLI https://ghostarchive.org/archive/aZbLI
googlryas 3y ago
Children don't need "historical honesty". They need simple tales that help them understand the world around them and spark their imagination. No one is saying to burn all 20th century prints of Dahl books, but I don't really understand why the stories can't be tweaked a little to more aligned with the world we live in now. I can't find much reason to alter Agatha Christie or Ian Fleming though, since those books are intended for adults.
- nradov 3y ago
  You're projecting, and presenting a false choice. As a child I never needed or wanted such simple tales. Nor did they help me understand the world: rather the opposite. But perhaps your childhood was different.
  - googlryas 3y ago
    Boy, speak about projection. Believe it or not, but there was a time when you didn't know everything about the world, and even simple concepts needed to be explicitly taught to you.
- Flatcircle 3y ago
  It's a line that shouldn't be crossed imho. Even if a work of art features offensive language or ideas, the art should still exist in its original form like the creators intended. To change art based on modern standards has been done before, when the clergy covered up nude paintings by "fig leafing" them, it was later seen for what it was. subsequent conservative social norms interfering with the purpose of the original art. It's absurd, it's tacky, and it won't age well.
  - slg 3y ago
    >Even if a work of art features offensive language or ideas, the art should still exist in its original form like the creators intended. Often these edits are about preserving the creator's intent. If an author used a word that was inoffensive a hundred years ago and is now offensive, it is more in line with the author's intent to change the word to the modern inoffensive equivalent than to preserve the offensive one that now conveys something different from what it meant to the author.
OscarCunningham 3y ago
I'm fine with such edits as long as the buyers know what they're getting. Otherwise I'm going to end up in a situation where I'm defending some author whose book wasn't racist at all, not knowing that I read an edited version of the racist original.
- crote 3y ago
  The problem is that they are almost guaranteed to just be marketed as the "original", and the real original won't be available for sale anymore. Explicitly marketing a book as the "censored edition" wouldn't really go over well, would it?
ggm 3y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_Shakespeare https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_Shakespeare
- jihadjihad 3y ago
  Oddly this seems to be the same idea that Bowdler [0] had, and in the same year, even (1807). But there is no mention of Bowdlerization on the page! 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler
  - ggm 3y ago
    I thought about posting Bowdler. I decided it was too far over the ledge.
coliveira 3y ago
The author claims that literature is not a consumer good, but that's wrong for most of 20th century books. This is exactly why author estates are doing this, to maintain the profitability of their products.
- tropdrop 3y ago
  Minor gripe: there was no one "author." I found it interesting that this was "authored" by WP's Editorial Board. I sense that they wanted to avoid someone specific being dragged to shreds on Twitter (a lot harder to drag an entire editorial board of a publication than an individual). It is a smart move. And I agree with your point, and that it extends well beyond the 20th century back to the day of patrons and benefactors who would support a creative endeavor.
Georgelemental 3y ago
Copyright is supposed to protect and promote cultural works. When a copyright holder stops doing that, and instead actively makes a work harder to find in its original form, their rights to that work should be revoked.
- eesmith 3y ago
  I don't think you understand copyright. Let's consider a cultural work. If I make a poem, it's covered under copyright. Suppose the local library posts it on the wall for a season, for anyone to come by and read. Libraries like to promote local culture, so they rotate things out so others get a chance to show their work. At the end of the season, my work comes down. I take it home and file it for later. Perhaps I'm looking for a publisher but it takes a few years to find one. It's now much harder to find in its original form. That withdrawal from the public sphere does not revoke my copyright, nor should it revoke my copyright.
at_a_remove 3y ago
The part of me which holds a very dismal view of human nature is chuckling at this slow-motion Year Zero. Pull these books, edit others. Take these statues down; we start with some Confederates but we should be able to get Jefferson. While we are at it, why not go after the faces on Mount Rushmore.
- skinnymuch 3y ago
  Sure why not. Why does it matter? There’s unhoused and hungry people in the US and where its military bases are. Instead of worrying about the country being founded by bourgeoisie supremacists whose writing the country still uses as its foundation…let’s worry if Mount Rushmore or Jefferson get “cancelled”. If they aren’t cancelled, what of all the dead victims of the exclusionary foundation of the country?
  - at_a_remove 3y ago
    It's what happens after Year Zero. Nobody stops at Year Zero.
bl_valance 3y ago
It is absolutely insane that we are allowing the destruction of culture in this manner. Can people not leave works for what they were? What has happened to today's society that everything has to be sunshine and rainbows, they can't enjoy anything without being enraged by something they don't agree. Should we only consume media that we agree with? What a boring life that is.
- mikrotikker 3y ago
  It's not all that different to ISIS smashing the Iraq museum to pieces.
  - slg 3y ago
    Destroying a one of a kind physical object is in fact very different from releasing a new edition of a book with a few words changed.
    - 6510 3y ago
      But if we change a few words we can have you say something else entirely. By the 4th modification you could be advocating for the destruction of physical objects. Meanwhile people discussing the topic question if the book is improved. This has nothing to do with the topic. Assuming we've change your words, have you say something else, should there be a discussion pondering if we've improved you?
    - hulitu 3y ago
      Are you sure ? Changing only one word is enough to change the meaning of a sentence.
      - Gud 3y ago
        The original work is still there.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
dahwolf 3y ago
The problem of the idea "updated for a modern audience" is that the updates do not cater to the actual audience, instead a minority of motivated activists that seem to thrive in finding offense and extrapolating it. It's dysfunctional toxic behavior packaged as doing good.
bikenaga 3y ago
I might allow different treatment of stuff for kids and stuff for adults, but I think I prefer to let the unadorned facts (or writings) speak for themselves. Some personal examples: - In The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor Lavalle turns H. P. Lovecraft's most racist story ("The Horror at Red Hook") on its head, retelling it with a black protagonist. The most memorable thing about the book was that Lavalle dedicates his book "To H. P. Lovecraft, with all my conflicted feelings". I wasn't aware when I first read Lovecraft in high school of how deeply racist he was. Anyone who isn't aware, as I wasn't, should read the article by Nnedi Okorafor, who won the World Fantasy Award a few years ago: http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2011/12/lovecrafts-racism-world-fantasy-award.html http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2011/12/lovecrafts-racism-world-fa... The Lovecraft poem quoted there is absolutely appalling. In her article, Okorafor says: "Do I want 'The Howard' (the nickname for the World Fantasy Award statuette. Lovecraft’s full name is 'Howard Phillips Lovecraft') replaced with the head of some other great writer? Maybe. Maybe it’s about that time. Maybe not. What I know I want is to face the history of this leg of literature rather than put it aside or bury it. If this is how some of the great minds of speculative fiction felt, then let’s deal with that... as opposed to never mention it or explain it away. If Lovecraft’s likeness and name are to be used in connection to the World Fantasy Award, I think there should be some discourse about what it means to honor a talented racist." - I've been reading westerns the last few years, and (especially in the older works) see a lot of ethnic stereotyping and racism. I'm currently reading The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie. The writing is brilliant - in the westerns I've read, the only writing as good has been Willa Cather's. Guthrie is a master of free indirect speech, and most of the narration is in that form. So the characters - mountain men of the 1830s - largely tell the story. But I don't have another book (out of over a thousand) where the "n-word" occurs as frequently - an average of maybe once every 3 - 4 pages. However ... there are essentially no black characters. It is almost always used by white characters to refer to other white characters, to Indians, or to themselves (the way we'd say "this guy" or "that guy"). A more general point is how you deal with someone who did good stuff but also held, say, racist views. Within reason, I think you should credit the good things but be honest about the bad. People will differ about what falls "within reason". - I've enjoyed Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays since high school, and still enjoy reading them. He was progressive for his time, and staunchly anti-slavery. But I was disappointed when I saw some of his journal entries in which he denigrates black people, Irish, Indians, and Chinese. - I took a course in existentialism and phenomenology in college. When we started the section on Heidegger, the professor (Izchak Miller, who later became part of the NetHack dev team) began by putting on the screen Heidegger's infamous statement made as rector at Freiburg. Miller said that, as a Jew, he was disgusted by Heidegger's Nazi sympathies, and that someone that smart should have known better. Nevertheless, he said that Heidegger was simply too important to be ignored, and that we would examine his philosophy - and that he left it up to us to think about how we would regard his moral failings.
aimor 3y ago
It's part of the current trend of hyper-moralization. "Moral exactitude is now so important that we examine all art with a fine-toothed comb for any possible transgression." I don't mean that book revisions are unthinkable evils, they happen all the time. Plenty of famous works were revised both by the author and posthumously, often to appeal to a wider audience. After all, authors like money too. And in the digital age I'm not too worried we'll lose access to the Nth edition of anything far reaching (books I mean, I do think other media can disappear). What's interesting is the trend itself, after decades of liberation why are we on eggshells? Is this emergent or a purposeful effort? What is this doing to current art? How much longer will this persist? I suspect it's related to the extreme "partyism" we see today. Moral issues are now political issues. And while our personal lives have been liberated, our politics are both judged harshly and used as our identity. I think new art is suffering, that interesting things don't thrive in a partisan environment: this is the popularity-fueled echo chamber you're probably aware of. I don't want to believe this will last long, I want to say that people are losing interest in their dogma and want to hear new music again. But I'm not confident in that at all, I feel the trend has yet to peak. The quote above ( https://artofericwayne.com/2020/08/01/hyper-moralization-the-art-world/ https://artofericwayne.com/2020/08/01/hyper-moralization-the... ) is talking specifically about people actively removing art, but I see the same hyper-moralization inspiring these book revisions.
- boppo1 3y ago
  Look up Brad Troemel. Art for our time.
ZoomZoomZoom 3y ago
Changing the text without author's consent is either a cenzorship or a palimpsest, not editing.
duxup 3y ago
The whole thing is weird. Books have some context, the author, the time it was written and so on. It seems bizarre to alter it.
onlypositive 3y ago
I can't wait for the updated version of 1984.
- christophilus 3y ago
  I vote for Fahrenheit 451.
mikrotikker 3y ago
I wonder if its cultural revisionism along the lines of some of those pulled down statues. They don't want people to know how bad it was, so they can't compare it to how good it is now, so they think no progress has been made, thus making more activists.
- dahwolf 3y ago
  Recently, some university in the US came with yet another "inclusive language" update that was widely ridiculed for it tried to replace neutral and even positive words and expressions. Language vandalism. I've seen a theory as to where this is coming from. The particular university, as do many universities, have an inflated administration where some even have more staff than students. A significant part of that staff is DEI and pretty much everybody is to commit to this agenda. So, you have a huge amount of people that continuously need to show evidence that they're committed to the cause. What would be the easiest thing to do? You type in a bunch of bullshit in Word, because that's far easier than working in a soup kitchen. Actually improving the world is hard so instead you do this easy thing that provides the optics, and nothing more. You don't even need to believe it, it's largely driven by fear. It's like an engine that can't be stopped.
  - aintgonnatakeit 3y ago
    You can say Stanford. It’s ok.
    - richbell 3y ago
      HN discussion of that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039816
- nerdponx 3y ago
  Several of the pulled-down statues were excellent candidates for being pulled down. Of all the examples of cultural revisionism to get upset over, that's not a very good one.
Xen9 3y ago
I enjoy old books because their "unique qualities" are likely to change my mind; to alter how I think. Even boring old books are different and add something to my consciousness which I cannot find elsewhere. Editing old books, occasionally even adding a new preface, can harm this kind of rich pleasures, turning them into monotonous blankness. And the "activism" may not even be very effective.
HDMI_Cable 3y ago
It's kind of funny: 21st-century adaptations of older books already exist without having to edit them to remove "offensive material". Consider the movie Bridget Jones' Diary, which is essentially just an (early) 21st century adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which has since become a cult classic. I think its entirely reasonable for media to be adapted for a modern age; these "adapations" are censorship with a thin veil.
wanda 3y ago
Hm, and he was me thinking myself unburdened for not hanging on to paper copies of books, and yet digital copies could be edited surreptitiously or even very obviously to completely change or "sanitise" to prevent offense, while paper copies would be safe in my bookshelf. Guess I'll keep a few physical copies of books after all.
sigseg-v 3y ago
Straight out of 1984, editing literature to seem more favourable to today’s powers.
r2vcap 3y ago
I have longed for America, but not anymore. American culture tainted by ideological warriors is making America lose its soft power.
- lofaszvanitt 3y ago
  David Icke might be right, that some power is killing the US as it is...
lofaszvanitt 3y ago
1984 big time, pig time.
razodactyl 3y ago
Isn't this practically 1984's "Ministry of Truth"?

251 points by CrankyBear 3y ago

I'm finding their examples hilarious, especially considering one of them is Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which the Oompa Loompas were originally African pygmies.

tivert 3y ago
> I'm finding their examples hilarious, especially considering one of them is Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which the Oompa Loompas were originally African pygmies. IIRC, that was done by the original author himself. That's far different than an anonymous committee quietly revising past works to conform to the current political line. I mean that's such a blatant parallel to a famous work of dystopian fiction that they should know better not to do it. Though, I honestly look forward to a revised version of that famous work, revised to conform to modern sensitivities. IIRC, there's some out-of-fashion racial descriptions and the whole disapproving take on doctoring older works has to go.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  I think that it's anti-black to de-racist-ify the past. Take it or leave it, but don't gaslight black people over the experience that they've had for the last century or four in relation to Europeans. As far as I can tell, a major component of woke bowdlerization of the past seems to be finding depictions of black people and either eliminating them or making them conform to the idealistic stereotypes of modern white liberals. That's stacking stereotypes on stereotypes, and the truth of the black experience gets buried even deeper. The way my grandmother spoke would be cut out of a modern novel as a racist stereotype.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    I read an article last week where a DEI expert was angry about the new release of The Little Mermaid because it wasn't nearly racist enough; that 18th-century Caribbean people were friends and kind to each other no matter what their race or sex; it was unconscionable that history should be rewritten to leave out the allegedly horrible experiences being had by BIPOC in that place and time.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      That's a symptom of trying to rewrite white stories and stick black people into them. It's the same process as trying to rewrite male stories with female protagonists. It's the creation of fictional pasts. If all we see is fictional pasts where black people are just white people with tans, and women are just pretty men, what are black people and women complaining about? They should have just tried harder.
      - slg 3y ago
        And the reason we get these stories in this way is not because of anything related to wokeism, progressivism, DEI, or whatever buzzword you wanted use. It is because of risk averse capitalists. Disney knows a Black Little Mermaid is a safer investment than an original story with a Black protagonist so that is the version we get.
        themaninthedark 3y ago
        That is rather racist isn't it?(Not your comment but the attitude held by the corporation)
        slg 3y ago
        No, it is cynical, ignorant, and lazy, but I don't think it qualifies as racist. I would compare it to those people who like to claim they "don't see race". It isn't actually racist because it isn't discriminatory or putting one race above another. It is just ignoring something that often can't be ignored.
  - BenisMaximus 3y ago
    It's like going through life with autism and being called "neurodiverse" as if you haven't lived with an active disability your whole life, you're just a little different from everyone else. Back in the early 2000s I saw someone refer to a wheelchair-bound person as "handicapable". The disabled fellow ran over his foot lol. Point being I think it's best not to minimize people's suffering. Acknowledge it, respect it, and try to move forward together.
    - Aloha 3y ago
      I dont think of Autism (as someone who has it) as a disability - even though it does make me different (normal people and their societal norms are often baffling to me, but I still follow those norms to the extent I am able). I don't want others to think of me as disabled either (though a little understanding might be nice when I fail to mask well enough). Maybe the problem is how we treat the disabled, not the words we use to talk about disability?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    Changing characters and their depictions is a thing that can be argued about, but there's definitely no need to print n-bombs in books printed in 2023. In general, it's (IMHO) not needed to have centuries old books full of stereotypes in modern curricula. There are so many works that have been published in the last decades that provide far better diversity of all kinds than even a "de-racisted" historic book can. Modern authors, modern artists, modern composers and other artists deserve their shine in the spotlight as well - it's ridiculous how much of curricula is spent on stuff that happened or got created hundreds to thousands of years ago. We have to refocus education on modern events if we want a modern society. And if you want something filled with racial or other stereotypes in curricula, ffs print it with commentary like we do with Hitler's "Mein Kampf" here in Germany. That is, coincidentally, the only way one is allowed to do a reprint in Germany due to copyright and anti-Nazi symbolism laws.
    - xg15 3y ago
      > but there's definitely no need to print n-bombs in books printed in 2023. How can a word be a bomb? And I'm still at a loss how in a supposedly post-enlightenment world, a single word can be so evil that you have to resort to code to refer to it, no matter in which context or even when you're quoting. Yes, you shouldn't call people that way - and if you do, that is a clear sign of a racist mindset. But treating the word itself as some kind of forbidden symbol that must be purged from everything is not much better than medieval magical thinking.
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        > But treating the word itself as some kind of forbidden symbol that must be purged from everything is not much better than medieval magical thinking. Nonetheless, the continued reproduction of that word makes it "acceptable" to be used, and every time affected persons have to read that, it's bad for them.
  - civilitty 3y ago
    > The way my grandmother spoke would be cut out of a modern novel as a racist stereotype. That’s nothing new sadly, especially in academia. It used to be considered proper literary form to “translate” how people actually spoke to “proper English” and you can imagine the demographic of the people doing the “translating.” See for example Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" [1] about one of the last living former slaves in the US. It was published a few years ago nearly a century after it was written because the author refused to white wash the subject’s language and couldn’t get it published in her life time. Hell that criticism could easily be leveled at some of the most popular western canon like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracoon:_The_Story_of_the_Last_%22Black_Cargo%22 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracoon:_The_Story_of_the_...
    - quacked 3y ago
      Barracoon is the greatest work of anti-slavery literature I've ever read. It wouldn't have been as effective if they'd removed his dialect. "Sometimes I think I die in my sleep when I dream bout my mama." I had tears in my eyes.
- saalweachter 3y ago
  Except it's never a faceless authoritarian committee in practice. It's one of two things: The copyright holders are publishing new editions edited to modern sensibilities to maximize their profits by selling to a new audience. The works are in the public domain, in which case anyone can edit up a new edition however they like, for fun or profit. What's the alternative? We take away the right of copyright holders to publish new editions of their IP? We disallow people to edit works in the public domain?
  - domador 3y ago
    An alternative: allow copyright holders to publish new editions but only if they 1) clearly label them as new, edited versions that are not the original and 2) make the unedited originals fully and completely available upon request, for a (truly) reasonable fee to anyone who requests access to them for whatever reason. If these conditions aren't met within a reasonable timeframe, then (by law) the original version would automatically become fully (or partially) public domain. ("Partial" public domain would mean than anyone could make or distribute copies of the original version. The copyright holders would temporarily retain the exclusive right to make edited versions, until the work fully becomes public domain when the standard copyright term lapses. At that point anyone could make and distribute the original version or their own, edited versions.)
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      So should Bill Nye be required to keep publishing the original version of his book "Undeniable"? [Between the publication of the hardcover and softcover editions, he changed his views on GMO foods, and updated the relevant chapter.]
      - Pet_Ant 3y ago
        Perhaps as an on-demand title. Add a foreword if he'd like, but yeah.
      - tivert 3y ago
        > So should Bill Nye be required to keep publishing the original version of his book "Undeniable"? [Between the publication of the hardcover and softcover editions, he changed his views on GMO foods, and updated the relevant chapter.] Ideally, yes, but at a minimum he should provide a list of changes and their rationale(s) in the newer editions.
technothrasher 3y ago
Roald Dahl's stories are so full of inappropriate conflict resolution and outgrouping of others that it honestly feels silly to change a few words and call it fixed. I loved Dahl's stories as a kid specifically because it was obvious they were 'naughty' and like a lot of fiction they allowed me to explore darker feelings and desires without actually living them out in real life. However, that said, I don't particularly mind people updating stories to modern sensibilities as long is it is made obvious that it isn't the original edition, and those original editions are archived somewhere.
morkalork 3y ago
Editors have been pulling tricks forever. Taking Roald Dahl as an example, he published stories from his time as a pilot in WWII and one of them being autobiographical and about the time he crashed his plane. The editors didn't think that was exciting enough for their magazine so they changed it to imply he was shot down. Which is not what happened at all!

hospitalJail 3y ago

EDIT: Not sure how to delete, but people didn't understand my point.

COGlory 3y ago
Which fascist things were people pretending to believe in the 90s?
Jtsummers 3y ago
FYI: You can only delete comments within the first couple hours of posting (I'm not sure if it's the same as the edit window or less) and if they haven't been replied to. The other option is to reach out to the HN mods (see "Contact" at the bottom of the page).
onetokeoverthe 3y ago
[dead]

COGlory 3y ago

I'm going to do a very poor attempt at explaining my feelings over this. For a long time I've idolized Teddy Roosevelt. Parts of his story just speak to me: * He was sickly but just worked very hard to compensate and overcome it to live an outdoors-centric life. I suffer from some undiagnosable(word?) arthritis, I work hard to still do my favorite activities (backpacking, hunting and fishing). * He was extremely well learned, thoughtful, and articulate. He kept a detailed journal. I admire those traits and try to emulate them. I pursued a PhD, I keep a journal, I frequently write to relatives and friends. I try to be thoughtful and articulate. * He was a legendary hunter (as I mentioned I love hunting), and conservationist. He is partly responsible for the National Parks, which I enjoy every free day (I live near Yellowstone and routinely pass under his arch). * He was empathetic and progressive for his time [0], despite his unshaking nationalism. He didn't seem to fall for toxic tropes of conservatism (although those political terms don't translate to today, Teddy is universally celebrated by the right). I believe strongly in what I consider to be core unshaking tenets of American national identity, but I also try hard to be empathetic and make sure no one is left behind. I don't believe the answer is exclusion of outgroups, which I think is a common conservative trope today. I have a lot of respect for Teddy (with some important caveats) [1]. * He held himself, and those in government to a higher standard [2]. He believed he was a public servant, and fought tirelessly against corruption. There is nothing that makes me angrier than corruption and entitlement in political office today. I also learned, a couple years ago, he probably would have despised me, had our paths crossed. I'm mostly Italian-American, who he openly viewed as mostly criminals [3], and even went so far as to applaud a lynching of Italian Americans in New Orleans [4]. I think it's important that I learned this. I'm glad it wasn't erased or ignored or left out of the record. I learned a few things from it. I learned (well, I already knew, but it was reinforced) that no one is perfect. No one. And that perfection is the enemy of self-improvement, it is the enemy of progress, and it is the enemy of good. There's no part of me that I'm aware of that's worse for having held TR in such high esteem and tried to emulate the great things I found about him. In fact, his example has improved my life in a variety of ways, particularly my mental health and fortitude, seeing him as an example. Sure, it made me sad to learn that fact about him, but in terms of material affect? It had no change. Words, thoughts, opinions, ideas, are necessarily flawed and incomplete as a direct result of the human condition. Pretending they are not creates two things: 1) An impossible standard 2) A false sense of security and satisfaction I'm better at some things than TR. I don't have Italian Americans (or any minority group for that matter, my understanding was that he had similar feelings about natives). That alone is a major victory. By not having to draw myself against perfect examples, I can foster some feeling of accomplishment, but I can also learn that my idols were flawed and that even if I am flawed in many ways, I can hopefully still do some good. That's an important motivator. A perfect example is one I will never live up to, and in that case, why even try? [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/theodore-roosevelt-mississippi-postmaster/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/theodore-roosevelt-mississ... [1] https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/08/theodore-roosevelt-and-the-case-for-a-popular-constitution/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/08/theodore-roosevel... [2] https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2020/09/14/president-theodore-roosevelt-on-the-importance-of-fighting-corruption/ https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2020/09/14/president-th... [3] https://theamericanmag.com/a-rather-good-thing/ https://theamericanmag.com/a-rather-good-thing/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings

egypturnash 3y ago

21st-century publishers should stop trying to endlessly flog 20th-century books that have severe dissonance with current values, then. There is a point where you just can't serve the old stuff up without a huge "hey it was sixty years ago and this author was a horrible product of Britain's racist, colonialist upper class" disclaimer in the front, or a major re-working. I find it kind of fascinating that this article is fine with the changes made to Ursula K. LeGuin's work, but is up in arms over Dahl and Fleming and Christie getting a de-upper-class-twitification. Why is this particular shit so sacred to the Post's "editorial board"?

quacked 3y ago
I don't share your values, and I don't want you or people like you to have any control over what I read it or how I read it. There are many people who agree with me. It's "sacred" to the Post because the people writing for the Post believe these works have a place in the literary canon. People in society possess systems of morals that directly contradict each other.
causi 3y ago
I find it kind of fascinating that this article is fine with the changes made to Ursula K. LeGuin's work, but is up in arms over Dahl and Fleming and Christie It's a case of changing the meaning of the statement vs translating the vocabulary to more accurately reflect the original meaning. Editing Lord of the Rings so Frodo tosses another bundle of sticks onto the fire doesn't alter the meaning. His example from Death on the Nile is straight-up altering the personality of a character to make her a better person.
- slily 3y ago
  I'd argue that any alteration to the prose is counter to authorial intent. Some people might be fine with that, but I don't want to read a book not knowing whether words were substituted for others because some editor thought that they were too antiquated or difficult for lowly readers. Footnotes exist for a reason (and dictionaries for that matter). Lately I often feel that publishers don't respect consumers' intelligence.

lyu07282 3y ago

This already happened for a long time with translations, I assume because it's easier to get away with mistranslation of originals. It's common to translate a phrase into the most current version of the phrase in the target language and to update the translation regularly. To me this always felt very noticeable, doing this requires an impressive level of entitlement to take a great work of literature and add your own artistry on top of it. I vaguely imagine you should get hard prison time for violating great works of literature like that, but that's just me. It's akin to defacing paintings or statues to hide genitalia which happened in the past.

tivert 3y ago
> This already happened for a long time with translations, I assume because it's easier to get away with mistranslation of originals. It's common to translate a phrase into the most current version of the phrase in the target language and to update the translation regularly. To me this always felt very noticeable, doing this requires an impressive level of entitlement to take a great work of literature and add your own artistry on top of it. Isn't that "impressive level of entitlement" a basic requirement for translation? It does take artistry to make a translation. Even if you're not going for a literary result, there are always going to be meanings that exist (or can be expressed efficiently) on one language but not the other. Then there are idioms and cultural references.
- vidarh 3y ago
  Indeed, to the point where translations are often known relative to their translator because the translator is often part of what makes a given edition of a work.
burnished 3y ago
My understanding was that this is a requirement of translation, specifically because many things do not translate literally? Like wordplay, or idioms, or euphemisms.
watwut 3y ago
> It's common to translate a phrase into the most current version of the phrase in the target language That is correct way of translating and not an violation. If the original author wrote the book with contemporary style, pleasant to read to people at the time, proper translation will produce contemporary text. There is no reason to use archaisms or outdated language in translation if the original author was not using archaisms or outdated language.

slg 3y ago

>But, in general, the best way to respond to language that some or most readers would find inappropriate is not with unexplained revisions but to surround original works with context, in the form of critical introductions as well as annotations in new editions, wherever possible. I agree with this, however at a certain point we have to be pragmatic and avoid the perfect being the enemy of the good. These works are often never put into context. Sometimes that is because a child is reading the work themselves. Sometimes it is because the government is actively trying to make it illegal to provide that context. Therefore I wonder if it is just easier to remove a word here and there when it is mostly irrelevant to the story. Changing "natives" to "locals" or "fat" to "enormous" doesn't change anything material about those works. If anything it makes the original more accessible because it removes a potential distraction for a modern reader. It seems a little weird to me to be so dogmatic about the importance of preserving the exact original text as in many instances those were in flux too. The fact that the article uses Oompa Loompas as an example is especially strange considering the version the article wants to preserve is already a politically correct update of the original in which they were more clearly African slaves.

nemo44x 3y ago
When and where does it end? It's completely arbitrary. Why is the word you find offensive OK to edit but the ones I find not? It all becomes a political thing and everything gets ruined. We all know that controlling language is a form of power and that's the entire point of these revisions. Whoever controls the language controls the masses, it has been said. Destroy whatever was important and sacred to the culture you're colonizing and/or destroying. The first step is to change the meaning of words. And of course, it's "for the children".
- slg 3y ago
  >When and where does it end? It's completely arbitrary. Why is the word you find offensive OK to edit but the ones I find not? It all becomes a political thing and everything gets ruined. I don't buy this slippery slope argument. Where does it end? It ends wherever the rights holders of the books say it ends. If you want them to change a word you think is offensive, try to convince them to change it. >We all know that controlling language is a form of power and that's the entire point of these revisions. Whoever controls the language controls the masses, it has been said. Destroy whatever was important and sacred to the culture you're colonizing and/or destroying. The first step is to change the meaning of words. And of course, it's "for the children". This is a rather hyperbolic claim for changing a few sentences in a story about kids visiting a chocolate factory. No one is "controlling the masses" with Roald Dahl books. This isn't about changing the history books. It is ensuring that stories can still be enjoyed in the same way they were originally without being burdened with either an accompanied history lesson or what we now view as bigotry.

krater23 3y ago

I would love to read the revised non racist version of 'Mein Kampf' to my children...

Freak_NL 3y ago
A historical work like Mein Kampf you would read annotated with scientific insights and commentary (which is exactly what was done in Germany with that book a few years ago), or just straight up as-is if your German is up to it and you have the ability to place it in its proper context. It's a political pamphlet, not a novel.
- hef19898 3y ago
  And one hell of a hard book to read, not because zhe content is awful, but the writting is, apparently, incredibly bad...
B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
> non racist version of 'Mein Kampf' Peter Singer?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

quacked 3y ago

I haven't seen anyone that doesn't like the edits give the real reason that they are so upset about the edits. If the edits were politically slanted in a different direction, the edit-opposers would only oppose edits on principle. "Why, of course I don't support changing words in old works to make the work conform to modern standards, don't be ridiculous." But the edit-opposers are angry because the edits are clearly the work of modern western hyper-progressives, who are simultaneously trying to retain the conquests and achievements of the Old World while erasing any moral belief left over from the Old World. I do not wish to see society remade by the vision of the modern western progressive, and so I don't want progressive edits to books I loved as a child. Edit: Editing books allows progressives to simultaneously avoid the label of "book banning", which they at least claim to detest, while also constructing an incorrect image of the people of the past to aid in the moral instruction of modern children. It is the same story, over and over again, whether it's communists or religious people: "you cannot have access to information that contradicts the moral worldview we wish you to have. This is for your own safety and for the good of your fellow man."

awesome_dude 3y ago

I find this whole argument quite bizarre - we've been 'updating' books for centuries to match the current (at time of update) language, norms, fashions. The original Shakespeare is still available, but most people read/watch adaptations or revisions (partly because Shakespeare's English has long gone). So, as long as the originals haven't been burnt by the good people of Florida, who cares about the updates?

low_tech_love 3y ago
A translation is a translation, a book is a book. Would you agree to retouch some paintings in the Louvre for the greater good? Or, less radically, take the originals down and put retouched versions up?
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  Look at all of those unrealistic beauty standards and white skin. It's time for the Ministry of Truth to put up the correct paintings.
- jankyxenon 3y ago
  I personally wouldn’t touch an updated classic with a 10 foot pole - but there’s a market for sanitized classics. If the publishers think it will help them sell more books, it’s hard to fault them for it.
- awesome_dude 3y ago
  I have a print of the Mona Lisa with sunglasses, a moustache (and goatee), the original is untouched, and unharmed by the print existing.
  - okanat 3y ago
    But you do know that the original one is the one in Louvre and saw a least a detailed photo of it, maybe even the real thing. Racist, misogynist or whatever, the art in its original form is still there. When the books are censored the opposite happens. The original in the people's mind changes and the original nuances of the art is lost. Moreover we lose our understanding of progress. The change of the worldview and the values is an important part of understanding art. If we would like to show the progress we made and our current values, we should create our own classics for generations to read and understand us, rather than muddying the water between us and the previous generations.

acadapter 3y ago

Meh, language changes. 21st-century books will be edited by 22nd century people, that's for sure. And verbatim copies will be free to reprint as they fall out of copyright. Politically motivated changes might sometimes be ridiculous, but there's also the real need to update forgotten words, or words that have drastically changed their meaning. At least it's not done with the same level of fanaticism as Iceland's war against foreign loanwords, for example. The example with "fat" Augustus Gloop becoming "enormous" - that's actually a good thing, regardless of the politics involved! The causes of obesity were poorly understood back then, partially due to the sugar industry's lobbying. There's no need to propagate this misunderstanding to the next generation in a book for young people. Edit: Wow - this is a downvote magnet! Go and try reading Beowulf in the original Old English, or something.

Georgelemental 3y ago
> And verbatim copies will be free to reprint as they fall out of copyright. Far from guaranteed, with today's ever-lengthening copyright terms, and DMCA making it a felony to keep original versions around.
tetromino_ 3y ago
> The causes of obesity were poorly understood back then, partially due to the sugar industry's lobbying. I am fat, and the sugar industry has nothing to do with it. I don't like sugar, or sweet food in general; I eat healthy, old-fashioned home-cooked meals prepared from zero-sugar raw ingredients - they just happen to be consistently bigger meals than a stressed out software engineer with a low physical activity level ought to be eating. So the weight increases. There is a sane medium to be found somewhere between the "fat person = greedy and evil person" trope of 20th century fiction, and today's "fat person = innocent, agency-less victim of the Big Sugar conspiracy" trope.
- quacked 3y ago
  Did you ever find yourself offended by Augustus Gloop?

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

What about remastered movies?

andi999 3y ago
Read my lips: Han. Shot. FIRST.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  Not even that egregious. I often see remasters on top of remasters in 4k HDR for very old films. If these are really a better experience does that mean the original audience had a lesser experience?
  - tehnub 3y ago
    The original audiences saw them projected on film and the resolution was fantastic. I believe the contrast was not as good as an OLED TV or Dolby Cinema though.
    - mavhc 3y ago
      Assuming the film didn't have dust on it, and the projection lamp wasn't turned down to save money, and the audio wasn't good at all
slothtrop 3y ago
Music albums are the greater offenders. Lots of old catalogs from 20th century rock bands are only available in some remaster format.

__alexs 3y ago

If you are the owner of a 20th century IP there is no reason you should not want to rework it for a new market if your motive is profit. It's not wokeism to make Rohl Dahl readable to zoomers, it's capitalism.

TheCoelacanth 3y ago
Yet another reason why copyright shouldn't last for such an absurdly long time.
forgetfreeman 3y ago
I mean, where's the lie?
jimbob45 3y ago
Roald Dahl himself didn’t agree with you. He didn’t try to pass off a censored Cinderella as the original version. He wrote his own and published it under his own name. And you know what? His Cinderella was fucking terrible and I’ve been waiting decades to have a platform to point that out. His original IPs are way better than his retellings. Glad to get that off my chest.
- stubybubs 3y ago
  This comment gave me a solid chuckle. I have things like this as well, but I've been low-key stewing on for years or decades, just waiting for the right moment to let the world know.

kayodelycaon 3y ago

As an author, a lot of this bugs me but not for the reasons listed in the article. Trying to patch over old stories just ends up making them worse most of the time. I'd rather see people retell the story without the stuff they see as problems. Get at the heart of the story and tell it better. (IIRC, this is what happened in Shakespeare's time.) But no one is going to do that. It's more work and everyone is looking to do this as cheaply as possible to make more money.

Aloha 3y ago
Editing is supposed to be a collaborative process - and these people are dead - there is no author to collaborate with - it just makes a worse product in the end (in ever example cited in the article) - a good editor can make a good work great, a bad one can make a great work bad.
marcosdumay 3y ago
> But no one is going to do that. It's more work Actually, most of the refusal is because of copyrights.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  Copyright doesn’t apply to ideas or plots. It’s perfectly legal to take something someone else wrote and write something similar. Otherwise Star Trek Deep Space Nine would have infringed on Babylon 5.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    There are some of us who say that it definitely does, and that it was reprehensible of Paramount executives to sit through a pitch, reject it, and then direct their writers to create exactly the same concept for their own existing franchise. It cost the Babylon 5 makers considerable money and reputation. It was abuse of privileged information.
blooalien 3y ago
> "I'd rather see people retell the story without the stuff they see as problems. Get at the heart of the story and tell it better." Isn't that what happened with the more famous version of "The Princess Bride" (the one that ended up made into a movie)?

linusg789 3y ago

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/aZbLI https://ghostarchive.org/archive/aZbLI

googlryas 3y ago

Children don't need "historical honesty". They need simple tales that help them understand the world around them and spark their imagination. No one is saying to burn all 20th century prints of Dahl books, but I don't really understand why the stories can't be tweaked a little to more aligned with the world we live in now. I can't find much reason to alter Agatha Christie or Ian Fleming though, since those books are intended for adults.

nradov 3y ago
You're projecting, and presenting a false choice. As a child I never needed or wanted such simple tales. Nor did they help me understand the world: rather the opposite. But perhaps your childhood was different.
- googlryas 3y ago
  Boy, speak about projection. Believe it or not, but there was a time when you didn't know everything about the world, and even simple concepts needed to be explicitly taught to you.
Flatcircle 3y ago
It's a line that shouldn't be crossed imho. Even if a work of art features offensive language or ideas, the art should still exist in its original form like the creators intended. To change art based on modern standards has been done before, when the clergy covered up nude paintings by "fig leafing" them, it was later seen for what it was. subsequent conservative social norms interfering with the purpose of the original art. It's absurd, it's tacky, and it won't age well.
- slg 3y ago
  >Even if a work of art features offensive language or ideas, the art should still exist in its original form like the creators intended. Often these edits are about preserving the creator's intent. If an author used a word that was inoffensive a hundred years ago and is now offensive, it is more in line with the author's intent to change the word to the modern inoffensive equivalent than to preserve the offensive one that now conveys something different from what it meant to the author.

OscarCunningham 3y ago

I'm fine with such edits as long as the buyers know what they're getting. Otherwise I'm going to end up in a situation where I'm defending some author whose book wasn't racist at all, not knowing that I read an edited version of the racist original.

crote 3y ago
The problem is that they are almost guaranteed to just be marketed as the "original", and the real original won't be available for sale anymore. Explicitly marketing a book as the "censored edition" wouldn't really go over well, would it?

ggm 3y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_Shakespeare https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_Shakespeare

jihadjihad 3y ago
Oddly this seems to be the same idea that Bowdler [0] had, and in the same year, even (1807). But there is no mention of Bowdlerization on the page! 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler
- ggm 3y ago
  I thought about posting Bowdler. I decided it was too far over the ledge.

coliveira 3y ago

The author claims that literature is not a consumer good, but that's wrong for most of 20th century books. This is exactly why author estates are doing this, to maintain the profitability of their products.

tropdrop 3y ago
Minor gripe: there was no one "author." I found it interesting that this was "authored" by WP's Editorial Board. I sense that they wanted to avoid someone specific being dragged to shreds on Twitter (a lot harder to drag an entire editorial board of a publication than an individual). It is a smart move. And I agree with your point, and that it extends well beyond the 20th century back to the day of patrons and benefactors who would support a creative endeavor.

Georgelemental 3y ago

Copyright is supposed to protect and promote cultural works. When a copyright holder stops doing that, and instead actively makes a work harder to find in its original form, their rights to that work should be revoked.

eesmith 3y ago
I don't think you understand copyright. Let's consider a cultural work. If I make a poem, it's covered under copyright. Suppose the local library posts it on the wall for a season, for anyone to come by and read. Libraries like to promote local culture, so they rotate things out so others get a chance to show their work. At the end of the season, my work comes down. I take it home and file it for later. Perhaps I'm looking for a publisher but it takes a few years to find one. It's now much harder to find in its original form. That withdrawal from the public sphere does not revoke my copyright, nor should it revoke my copyright.

at_a_remove 3y ago

The part of me which holds a very dismal view of human nature is chuckling at this slow-motion Year Zero. Pull these books, edit others. Take these statues down; we start with some Confederates but we should be able to get Jefferson. While we are at it, why not go after the faces on Mount Rushmore.

skinnymuch 3y ago
Sure why not. Why does it matter? There’s unhoused and hungry people in the US and where its military bases are. Instead of worrying about the country being founded by bourgeoisie supremacists whose writing the country still uses as its foundation…let’s worry if Mount Rushmore or Jefferson get “cancelled”. If they aren’t cancelled, what of all the dead victims of the exclusionary foundation of the country?
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  It's what happens after Year Zero. Nobody stops at Year Zero.

bl_valance 3y ago

It is absolutely insane that we are allowing the destruction of culture in this manner. Can people not leave works for what they were? What has happened to today's society that everything has to be sunshine and rainbows, they can't enjoy anything without being enraged by something they don't agree. Should we only consume media that we agree with? What a boring life that is.

mikrotikker 3y ago
It's not all that different to ISIS smashing the Iraq museum to pieces.
- slg 3y ago
  Destroying a one of a kind physical object is in fact very different from releasing a new edition of a book with a few words changed.
  - 6510 3y ago
    But if we change a few words we can have you say something else entirely. By the 4th modification you could be advocating for the destruction of physical objects. Meanwhile people discussing the topic question if the book is improved. This has nothing to do with the topic. Assuming we've change your words, have you say something else, should there be a discussion pondering if we've improved you?
  - hulitu 3y ago
    Are you sure ? Changing only one word is enough to change the meaning of a sentence.
    - Gud 3y ago
      The original work is still there.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]

dahwolf 3y ago

The problem of the idea "updated for a modern audience" is that the updates do not cater to the actual audience, instead a minority of motivated activists that seem to thrive in finding offense and extrapolating it. It's dysfunctional toxic behavior packaged as doing good.

bikenaga 3y ago

I might allow different treatment of stuff for kids and stuff for adults, but I think I prefer to let the unadorned facts (or writings) speak for themselves. Some personal examples: - In The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor Lavalle turns H. P. Lovecraft's most racist story ("The Horror at Red Hook") on its head, retelling it with a black protagonist. The most memorable thing about the book was that Lavalle dedicates his book "To H. P. Lovecraft, with all my conflicted feelings". I wasn't aware when I first read Lovecraft in high school of how deeply racist he was. Anyone who isn't aware, as I wasn't, should read the article by Nnedi Okorafor, who won the World Fantasy Award a few years ago: http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2011/12/lovecrafts-racism-world-fantasy-award.html http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2011/12/lovecrafts-racism-world-fa... The Lovecraft poem quoted there is absolutely appalling. In her article, Okorafor says: "Do I want 'The Howard' (the nickname for the World Fantasy Award statuette. Lovecraft’s full name is 'Howard Phillips Lovecraft') replaced with the head of some other great writer? Maybe. Maybe it’s about that time. Maybe not. What I know I want is to face the history of this leg of literature rather than put it aside or bury it. If this is how some of the great minds of speculative fiction felt, then let’s deal with that... as opposed to never mention it or explain it away. If Lovecraft’s likeness and name are to be used in connection to the World Fantasy Award, I think there should be some discourse about what it means to honor a talented racist." - I've been reading westerns the last few years, and (especially in the older works) see a lot of ethnic stereotyping and racism. I'm currently reading The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie. The writing is brilliant - in the westerns I've read, the only writing as good has been Willa Cather's. Guthrie is a master of free indirect speech, and most of the narration is in that form. So the characters - mountain men of the 1830s - largely tell the story. But I don't have another book (out of over a thousand) where the "n-word" occurs as frequently - an average of maybe once every 3 - 4 pages. However ... there are essentially no black characters. It is almost always used by white characters to refer to other white characters, to Indians, or to themselves (the way we'd say "this guy" or "that guy"). A more general point is how you deal with someone who did good stuff but also held, say, racist views. Within reason, I think you should credit the good things but be honest about the bad. People will differ about what falls "within reason". - I've enjoyed Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays since high school, and still enjoy reading them. He was progressive for his time, and staunchly anti-slavery. But I was disappointed when I saw some of his journal entries in which he denigrates black people, Irish, Indians, and Chinese. - I took a course in existentialism and phenomenology in college. When we started the section on Heidegger, the professor (Izchak Miller, who later became part of the NetHack dev team) began by putting on the screen Heidegger's infamous statement made as rector at Freiburg. Miller said that, as a Jew, he was disgusted by Heidegger's Nazi sympathies, and that someone that smart should have known better. Nevertheless, he said that Heidegger was simply too important to be ignored, and that we would examine his philosophy - and that he left it up to us to think about how we would regard his moral failings.

aimor 3y ago

It's part of the current trend of hyper-moralization. "Moral exactitude is now so important that we examine all art with a fine-toothed comb for any possible transgression." I don't mean that book revisions are unthinkable evils, they happen all the time. Plenty of famous works were revised both by the author and posthumously, often to appeal to a wider audience. After all, authors like money too. And in the digital age I'm not too worried we'll lose access to the Nth edition of anything far reaching (books I mean, I do think other media can disappear). What's interesting is the trend itself, after decades of liberation why are we on eggshells? Is this emergent or a purposeful effort? What is this doing to current art? How much longer will this persist? I suspect it's related to the extreme "partyism" we see today. Moral issues are now political issues. And while our personal lives have been liberated, our politics are both judged harshly and used as our identity. I think new art is suffering, that interesting things don't thrive in a partisan environment: this is the popularity-fueled echo chamber you're probably aware of. I don't want to believe this will last long, I want to say that people are losing interest in their dogma and want to hear new music again. But I'm not confident in that at all, I feel the trend has yet to peak. The quote above ( https://artofericwayne.com/2020/08/01/hyper-moralization-the-art-world/ https://artofericwayne.com/2020/08/01/hyper-moralization-the... ) is talking specifically about people actively removing art, but I see the same hyper-moralization inspiring these book revisions.

boppo1 3y ago
Look up Brad Troemel. Art for our time.

ZoomZoomZoom 3y ago

Changing the text without author's consent is either a cenzorship or a palimpsest, not editing.

duxup 3y ago

The whole thing is weird. Books have some context, the author, the time it was written and so on. It seems bizarre to alter it.

onlypositive 3y ago

I can't wait for the updated version of 1984.

christophilus 3y ago
I vote for Fahrenheit 451.

mikrotikker 3y ago

I wonder if its cultural revisionism along the lines of some of those pulled down statues. They don't want people to know how bad it was, so they can't compare it to how good it is now, so they think no progress has been made, thus making more activists.

dahwolf 3y ago
Recently, some university in the US came with yet another "inclusive language" update that was widely ridiculed for it tried to replace neutral and even positive words and expressions. Language vandalism. I've seen a theory as to where this is coming from. The particular university, as do many universities, have an inflated administration where some even have more staff than students. A significant part of that staff is DEI and pretty much everybody is to commit to this agenda. So, you have a huge amount of people that continuously need to show evidence that they're committed to the cause. What would be the easiest thing to do? You type in a bunch of bullshit in Word, because that's far easier than working in a soup kitchen. Actually improving the world is hard so instead you do this easy thing that provides the optics, and nothing more. You don't even need to believe it, it's largely driven by fear. It's like an engine that can't be stopped.
- aintgonnatakeit 3y ago
  You can say Stanford. It’s ok.
  - richbell 3y ago
    HN discussion of that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039816
nerdponx 3y ago
Several of the pulled-down statues were excellent candidates for being pulled down. Of all the examples of cultural revisionism to get upset over, that's not a very good one.

Xen9 3y ago

I enjoy old books because their "unique qualities" are likely to change my mind; to alter how I think. Even boring old books are different and add something to my consciousness which I cannot find elsewhere. Editing old books, occasionally even adding a new preface, can harm this kind of rich pleasures, turning them into monotonous blankness. And the "activism" may not even be very effective.

HDMI_Cable 3y ago

It's kind of funny: 21st-century adaptations of older books already exist without having to edit them to remove "offensive material". Consider the movie Bridget Jones' Diary, which is essentially just an (early) 21st century adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which has since become a cult classic. I think its entirely reasonable for media to be adapted for a modern age; these "adapations" are censorship with a thin veil.

wanda 3y ago

Hm, and he was me thinking myself unburdened for not hanging on to paper copies of books, and yet digital copies could be edited surreptitiously or even very obviously to completely change or "sanitise" to prevent offense, while paper copies would be safe in my bookshelf. Guess I'll keep a few physical copies of books after all.

sigseg-v 3y ago

Straight out of 1984, editing literature to seem more favourable to today’s powers.

r2vcap 3y ago

I have longed for America, but not anymore. American culture tainted by ideological warriors is making America lose its soft power.

lofaszvanitt 3y ago
David Icke might be right, that some power is killing the US as it is...

lofaszvanitt 3y ago

1984 big time, pig time.

razodactyl 3y ago

Isn't this practically 1984's "Ministry of Truth"?