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I hate when people use the word "sanitize" in this context. For one, it's a weasel word and needlessly moralistic. But, even more than that, when people write e

I hate when people use the word "sanitize" in this context. For one, it's a weasel word and needlessly moralistic. But, even more than that, when people write essays complaining about sanitizing classic stories, most of what they succeed in communicating to me is that they don't actually understand how literature works. Adjusting older stories to reflect contemporary cultural values has been happening for as long as there have been stories. The reason for that is simple: one of stories' major functions is to express things about ourselves - lessons, observations, etc. When an element gets dropped from a story, it's because that element is no longer culturally relevant, plain and simple. Stories, too, need to choose between evolution and extinction. Take an oft-bemoaned example: Disney's version of the Little Mermaid. It's a very good adaptation. Adaptation. It differs from Hans Christian Anderson's in part because the lessons we think are important to teach our kids are different. But also, the medium itself affects things: children's movies don't have to be as graphic to achieve the same excitement level and emotional impact as written stories with few or zero pictures. A movie that didn't change anything from the original version of the story wouldn't have had nearly the same cultural impact, because it wouldn't have been nearly as good.

philosopher1234 2y ago
I agree with what you wrote mostly but I think you are dismissing the criticism of sanitizing stories too easily. It’s a real phenomenon, and it is genuinely motivated by changing cultural precepts. And it is unfortunate, something about ourselves is lost in the process. Is it in the best interests of civilization? It may be. But not always.
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  I think that I couldn't disagree more with this point. Riffing and building on existing cultural artifacts does not erase them. Nobody's telling Hans Christian Andersen to shut up, and nobody's telling publishers to stop publishing him, and readership of The Snow Queen - the original version - is presumably much greater now than it was in 2012. My kids have specifically asked for it, while I wasn't even aware it existed as a child. On the other hand, the implied message of people who complain about modern retellings is that they should not exist. (What else can it be?) And if they have their way, something absolutely would be lost: the ability of these stories to continue to participate in living culture.
  - samatman 2y ago
    > Nobody's telling Hans Christian Andersen to shut up, and nobody's telling publishers to stop publishing him Do Dr. Seuss next.
    - bunderbunder 2y ago
      A commercial decision to bury a set of works, made by the corporation that owns the exclusive rights to Dr. Seuss's creative output, falls into a completely different conceptual category, and bringing it up here is the kind of whataboutism that only serves to muddy the waters. Or, to put it another way, invoking a concrete example of the kind of cultural loss that's an inevitable result of the ongoing erosion of the public domain does not actually function very well as a counterpoint to a defense of one of the primary virtues of having a vigorous public domain.
      - bluefirebrand 2y ago
        > falls into a completely different conceptual category, and bringing it up here is the kind of whataboutism that only serves to muddy the waters Does it though? Seeing several comments in this vein of "it's fine to put your own spin on a classic because the classic still exists" but it's clear that publishers do in fact have the power to stop producing new copies of classics What then? Is it still whataboutism if the publisher says "we're no longer publishing new copies of the original and will only make this new revised (read: sanitized) edition available"? Because it's a fact that over time the originals in circulation will dwindle and it will eventually become a near forgotten work. And we in society will have lost something with it
        bunderbunder 2y ago
        Reminder here that we were originally talking about fairy tales.
        Kamq 2y ago
        The easy solution seems to be to only let a work retain copyright so long as it's obtainable from the holder of the copyright.
- babypuncher 2y ago
  I don't think we really lose anything about ourselves unless we are going back and changing the original work. The Hans Christian Anderson version of The Little Mermaid is still readily available. For thousands of years, stories, myths, and legends were handed down through oral tradition and changed radically over time. The key difference today is that anyone with basic literacy and access to a library or the internet can go back and see old "versions" of these stories.
nottorp 2y ago
I believe the right term is bowdlerise: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Bowdlerise https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Bowdlerise
copperx 2y ago
I understand your point, but you're overlooking who does the adapting. Oral stories were naturally updated with each generation, and I think that's wonderful. However, in this case, we're discussing literature being adapted by a global corporation with shareholders aiming to please a broad audience. If Disney were to adapt The Lord of the Rings in 100 years to reflect new "lessons," I would be relieved to no longer be around to see it.
- sirspacey 2y ago
  The adaptation was by a group of screenwriters, story tellers, and artists. Sure, it lived inside a soulless corporation that imposed limits & expectations. But please don’t do a disservice to the brilliant artists and creatives who make animation.
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    > Sure, it lived inside a soulless corporation that imposed limits & expectations. But please don’t do a disservice to the brilliant artists and creatives who make animation. Just because people are hard working and skilled does not place them above criticism. In fact they should be criticized even more when the stuff they produce is substandard We would never say something trite like "don't do a disservice to the brilliant programmers and techies who make software" when we're criticising bad tech industry security practices
    - lukas099 2y ago
      But they were specifically responding to a point about the identity of the creators, not the quality. And if it were about the quality, well, Disney's Little Mermaid is a classic.
    - kridsdale3 2y ago
      Directors and PMs in multiple FAANG companies that I worked in would commonly say that "a lot of people worked really hard on this" and therefore we couldn't internally criticize an awful implementation or a terrible business plan that caused massive brand / reputation damage that could have been avoided if people outside the org had been able to file complaints sooner in the process.
cm11 2y ago
Good point. It’s just that some weirdness arises as stories (or adaptations) begin to pass as originals, which I think happens by default. More effort to not take the thing at face value, more effort to asterisk every story you tell. Sanitizing is sorta like politeness in its (usually mild) degree of dishonesty. We tend to accept this level and sometimes praise it. Both also usually add slight bias towards the teller’s needs. Even the idea of telling _the_ story of Cinderella vs _a_ story of Cinderella adds a not necessarily warranted suggestion of what people hundreds of years ago moralized and embellishes it with a kind of “time-tested” truth of humans.
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  The thing is, though, that there's no such thing as an "original" when we're talking about folkloric fairy tales. People give way too much deference to the first person who happened to get his own version of a story into print, typically imposing their own middle- or upper-class sensibilities onto it in the process. Those versions deserve respect as literary and scholarly works, but they neither require nor merit actual deference. Rich people using public domain stories as a vehicle for for-profit moralizing in the 18th or 19th centuries is not inherently more laudable than rich people using public domain stories as a vehicle for for-profit moralizing in the 20th or 21st centuries.
  - cm11 2y ago
    Agree there’s no or few “original” stories, and also that that’s not exactly something to bemoan. The quibble I’m making is that the longevity, whether intended by the tellers or not, tends to stick to the story in such a way as to lend not-necessarily-earned historical validity. The story is “time-tested” in an evolutionary sense not “time-tested” as a truth. That is, the story changed to survive, it didn’t hold up against time. Many of the stories take on the latter shine of certainty and legacy—as key selling points. Making it more entertaining to contemporary audiences is fine or normal or whatever.
anyonecancode 2y ago
> I hate when people use the word "sanitize" in this context The term I've seen used is "bowlderize"
austin-cheney 2y ago
Sure, like cautiously removing key words from Huckleberry Finn because words matter and its more important that people consume less Xanax than accurately reflect on the contemporary nature of historical setting in its linguistic context. Really though, its sanitizing. Even sanitize is too nice a word. Why not just call it what it is: selective censorship. Its pulling a Tipper Gore so that you can pretend to be a carefully concerned liberal in full hyper conservative hypocrisy[1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning:_Parental_Advisory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning:_Parental_Advisory
- janalsncm 2y ago
  These are fairy tales we’re talking about. Accurately representing a historical context was never the goal. Telling a compelling story is the goal, and to do that you need to adapt to your audience. The question is whether to choose broad appeal or narrow appeal. Narrow appeal is more salient to a smaller group of people. Most narrow appeal media won’t be profitable enough. So large companies target broad appeal media. It is good, but may be altered to broaden the appeal. For example Red Dawn 2012 changed the enemies from Chinese to North Korean because China has a huge middle class (potential customers) and North Korea does not, despite the fact that a Chinese invasion might be scarier or more plausible.
  - austin-cheney 2y ago
    All the more reason to take historical accuracy seriously. These stories were intentionally written to scare the shit out of little children in immediate graphic horror, to give them paralyzing nightmares. The primary reason was to teach child to stay out out of the forest, or if absolutely necessary, then at the very least stay on the damn road and listen to their parents. The forest was a scary place full of beasts and bandits. People did not have cell phones. If a child got lost and injured in the forest they would probably starve to death, or if lucky, be devoured by wolves. Let's not censor this so Disney can sell cartoons to the sad and ignorant. Instead let's enjoy it for what it was as it was written. People would lose their damn minds if you took the same actions to remove the violence and sexual fantasy out of Shakespeare, which was pale in comparison.
gosub100 2y ago
Am I the only one who sees the irony here that you're triggered by a particular word, which is ostensibly the same reason most of this "sanitization" is happening?

philosopher1234 2y ago

I agree with what you wrote mostly but I think you are dismissing the criticism of sanitizing stories too easily. It’s a real phenomenon, and it is genuinely motivated by changing cultural precepts. And it is unfortunate, something about ourselves is lost in the process. Is it in the best interests of civilization? It may be. But not always.

bunderbunder 2y ago
I think that I couldn't disagree more with this point. Riffing and building on existing cultural artifacts does not erase them. Nobody's telling Hans Christian Andersen to shut up, and nobody's telling publishers to stop publishing him, and readership of The Snow Queen - the original version - is presumably much greater now than it was in 2012. My kids have specifically asked for it, while I wasn't even aware it existed as a child. On the other hand, the implied message of people who complain about modern retellings is that they should not exist. (What else can it be?) And if they have their way, something absolutely would be lost: the ability of these stories to continue to participate in living culture.
- samatman 2y ago
  > Nobody's telling Hans Christian Andersen to shut up, and nobody's telling publishers to stop publishing him Do Dr. Seuss next.
  - bunderbunder 2y ago
    A commercial decision to bury a set of works, made by the corporation that owns the exclusive rights to Dr. Seuss's creative output, falls into a completely different conceptual category, and bringing it up here is the kind of whataboutism that only serves to muddy the waters. Or, to put it another way, invoking a concrete example of the kind of cultural loss that's an inevitable result of the ongoing erosion of the public domain does not actually function very well as a counterpoint to a defense of one of the primary virtues of having a vigorous public domain.
    - bluefirebrand 2y ago
      > falls into a completely different conceptual category, and bringing it up here is the kind of whataboutism that only serves to muddy the waters Does it though? Seeing several comments in this vein of "it's fine to put your own spin on a classic because the classic still exists" but it's clear that publishers do in fact have the power to stop producing new copies of classics What then? Is it still whataboutism if the publisher says "we're no longer publishing new copies of the original and will only make this new revised (read: sanitized) edition available"? Because it's a fact that over time the originals in circulation will dwindle and it will eventually become a near forgotten work. And we in society will have lost something with it
      - bunderbunder 2y ago
        Reminder here that we were originally talking about fairy tales.
      - Kamq 2y ago
        The easy solution seems to be to only let a work retain copyright so long as it's obtainable from the holder of the copyright.
babypuncher 2y ago
I don't think we really lose anything about ourselves unless we are going back and changing the original work. The Hans Christian Anderson version of The Little Mermaid is still readily available. For thousands of years, stories, myths, and legends were handed down through oral tradition and changed radically over time. The key difference today is that anyone with basic literacy and access to a library or the internet can go back and see old "versions" of these stories.

nottorp 2y ago

I believe the right term is bowdlerise: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Bowdlerise https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Bowdlerise

copperx 2y ago

I understand your point, but you're overlooking who does the adapting. Oral stories were naturally updated with each generation, and I think that's wonderful. However, in this case, we're discussing literature being adapted by a global corporation with shareholders aiming to please a broad audience. If Disney were to adapt The Lord of the Rings in 100 years to reflect new "lessons," I would be relieved to no longer be around to see it.

sirspacey 2y ago
The adaptation was by a group of screenwriters, story tellers, and artists. Sure, it lived inside a soulless corporation that imposed limits & expectations. But please don’t do a disservice to the brilliant artists and creatives who make animation.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  > Sure, it lived inside a soulless corporation that imposed limits & expectations. But please don’t do a disservice to the brilliant artists and creatives who make animation. Just because people are hard working and skilled does not place them above criticism. In fact they should be criticized even more when the stuff they produce is substandard We would never say something trite like "don't do a disservice to the brilliant programmers and techies who make software" when we're criticising bad tech industry security practices
  - lukas099 2y ago
    But they were specifically responding to a point about the identity of the creators, not the quality. And if it were about the quality, well, Disney's Little Mermaid is a classic.
  - kridsdale3 2y ago
    Directors and PMs in multiple FAANG companies that I worked in would commonly say that "a lot of people worked really hard on this" and therefore we couldn't internally criticize an awful implementation or a terrible business plan that caused massive brand / reputation damage that could have been avoided if people outside the org had been able to file complaints sooner in the process.

cm11 2y ago

Good point. It’s just that some weirdness arises as stories (or adaptations) begin to pass as originals, which I think happens by default. More effort to not take the thing at face value, more effort to asterisk every story you tell. Sanitizing is sorta like politeness in its (usually mild) degree of dishonesty. We tend to accept this level and sometimes praise it. Both also usually add slight bias towards the teller’s needs. Even the idea of telling _the_ story of Cinderella vs _a_ story of Cinderella adds a not necessarily warranted suggestion of what people hundreds of years ago moralized and embellishes it with a kind of “time-tested” truth of humans.

bunderbunder 2y ago
The thing is, though, that there's no such thing as an "original" when we're talking about folkloric fairy tales. People give way too much deference to the first person who happened to get his own version of a story into print, typically imposing their own middle- or upper-class sensibilities onto it in the process. Those versions deserve respect as literary and scholarly works, but they neither require nor merit actual deference. Rich people using public domain stories as a vehicle for for-profit moralizing in the 18th or 19th centuries is not inherently more laudable than rich people using public domain stories as a vehicle for for-profit moralizing in the 20th or 21st centuries.
- cm11 2y ago
  Agree there’s no or few “original” stories, and also that that’s not exactly something to bemoan. The quibble I’m making is that the longevity, whether intended by the tellers or not, tends to stick to the story in such a way as to lend not-necessarily-earned historical validity. The story is “time-tested” in an evolutionary sense not “time-tested” as a truth. That is, the story changed to survive, it didn’t hold up against time. Many of the stories take on the latter shine of certainty and legacy—as key selling points. Making it more entertaining to contemporary audiences is fine or normal or whatever.

anyonecancode 2y ago

> I hate when people use the word "sanitize" in this context The term I've seen used is "bowlderize"

austin-cheney 2y ago

Sure, like cautiously removing key words from Huckleberry Finn because words matter and its more important that people consume less Xanax than accurately reflect on the contemporary nature of historical setting in its linguistic context. Really though, its sanitizing. Even sanitize is too nice a word. Why not just call it what it is: selective censorship. Its pulling a Tipper Gore so that you can pretend to be a carefully concerned liberal in full hyper conservative hypocrisy[1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning:_Parental_Advisory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning:_Parental_Advisory

janalsncm 2y ago
These are fairy tales we’re talking about. Accurately representing a historical context was never the goal. Telling a compelling story is the goal, and to do that you need to adapt to your audience. The question is whether to choose broad appeal or narrow appeal. Narrow appeal is more salient to a smaller group of people. Most narrow appeal media won’t be profitable enough. So large companies target broad appeal media. It is good, but may be altered to broaden the appeal. For example Red Dawn 2012 changed the enemies from Chinese to North Korean because China has a huge middle class (potential customers) and North Korea does not, despite the fact that a Chinese invasion might be scarier or more plausible.
- austin-cheney 2y ago
  All the more reason to take historical accuracy seriously. These stories were intentionally written to scare the shit out of little children in immediate graphic horror, to give them paralyzing nightmares. The primary reason was to teach child to stay out out of the forest, or if absolutely necessary, then at the very least stay on the damn road and listen to their parents. The forest was a scary place full of beasts and bandits. People did not have cell phones. If a child got lost and injured in the forest they would probably starve to death, or if lucky, be devoured by wolves. Let's not censor this so Disney can sell cartoons to the sad and ignorant. Instead let's enjoy it for what it was as it was written. People would lose their damn minds if you took the same actions to remove the violence and sexual fantasy out of Shakespeare, which was pale in comparison.

gosub100 2y ago

Am I the only one who sees the irony here that you're triggered by a particular word, which is ostensibly the same reason most of this "sanitization" is happening?