When people talk about “woke”, this is exactly the kind of thing they are talking about. People on the left are apoplectic about banning books for kids, yet here they are literally rewriting them. That is every bit as bad as what they claim is happening with banning books. The worst edits IMO are the ones just marked removed
I think you're overestimating the extent to which anyone on the left or right approves of this kind of censorship. This is one bad decision by probably 2 or 3 people in a publishing company. The overwhelming consensus online seems to be that this is bad, and I can't seem to find anyone of any political persuasion who thinks otherwise.
While some of this is questionable the removal of the word 'fat' is an important one.
'Fat' should not be used in kids books as a derogatory, or at all frankly. Fat is an incredibly important and necessary part of a healthy diet and should be treared accordingly. Training people to think of fat in the antiquated notions of bad cardiogy isnt useful.
So while this may have been a move centered around "body positivity", it serves and higher purpose.
Media changes, art is reshaped by new generations. Roald Dahl is dead, the rights to his books have been sold and people are updating them to keep them relevant. This happens to translations (as an example) all the time as the popular lexicon changes. This is how media and art stays relevant. The world changes. The owners of the books have a vested interest in modifying them to continue to be relevant. The tweaks hav…
I understand why the IP holders want to keep the revenue flowing by adapting the works to meet current market demands/expectations (while offering lofty talk of the "timelessness" of Dahl's art). Setting aside the question of what this sort of editing does to his art (though for the record, I think that the transgressive meanness of Dahl is an integral part of his artistry, whether one likes it or not), the fact remains that most art is timeful, not timeless -- even works that "work" very well in their own time are usually consigned to obscurity once the world moves on. I tried to read "King Solomon's Mines" a couple months ago, and it was truly unreadable to me -- it relied upon cultural assumptions that are just utterly alien to me, and I couldn't enjoy it. And that's okay. I don't want to read a version that excises all the cringe-inducing language, because forgetting one story makes space for new ones (I can enjoy Indiana Jones movies if I want adventure, for instance, and they might not have been made if H. Rider Haggard's work had been picked up for an updating and franchising.) And endlessly bowdlerizing the "classics" means leaving little room for new ones to be written, read, appreciated, and canonized.
When you rewrite a book like this, does it reset the copyright? Matilda was set to become public domain in 2060 (70 years after Dahl's death). With the books now owned by a corporation and essentially recreated by them, the copyright extends another fifty years.
> A most formidable female -> A most formidable woman What is the reasoning for this? Not following what is "wrong" in the original.
The new one sounds more like people speak today.
The choice of the word female in the original feels intentional. Using a more clinical term like that instead of “girl” or “woman“ can change the whole feel of the sentence.
Media changes, art is reshaped by new generations. Roald Dahl is dead, the rights to his books have been sold and people are updating them to keep them relevant. This happens to translations (as an example) all the time as the popular lexicon changes. This is how media and art stays relevant. The world changes. The owners of the books have a vested interest in modifying them to continue to be relevant. The tweaks hav…
> so why do people care?
Because we are being lied to about what Dahl wrote, and implicitly, the zeitgeist and sensibilities of his time. This is faking the past to serve Year Zero.
And no, noting that there were some changes in small print, then listing them in some remote document no child will read, does not make it alright.
Censoring old children's books. Yikes. This is frightening in more ways than one. Besides the obvious censorship, and rewriting the past being a bad thing. I can't wait to see what they do to "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". It'll be ironic and sad if they burn the old unedited Roald Dahl books. But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of m…
> But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of magnitude ? Uh... Roald Dahl is one of, arguably the greatest children's author of the 20th century. It's not like we're reprinting old pulp here because we can't write new stuff. Frankly I think your hyperbole is misplaced. Dahl's works are republished, and they're children's literature, so it's not hard to i…
This is not simple republishing.
The editing occurring is censorship because modern sensibilities are different today.
Roald Dahl was notorious about hating people editing his works.
Censorship via stealth editing is just extremely gross maybe even as bad as burning books.
If those works don't meet modern standards, let new books be made.
It certainly is Yikes territory to me and apparently thousands of others on reddit and twitter.
When people talk about “woke”, this is exactly the kind of thing they are talking about. People on the left are apoplectic about banning books for kids, yet here they are literally rewriting them. That is every bit as bad as what they claim is happening with banning books. The worst edits IMO are the ones just marked removed
When people talk about “woke”, this is exactly the kind of thing they are talking about. People on the left are apoplectic about banning books for kids, yet here they are literally rewriting them. That is every bit as bad as what they claim is happening with banning books. The worst edits IMO are the ones just marked removed
I would consider myself somewhere not too far from woke and I don't agree with this 1984 style rewriting of literature at all. This is neither left nor right, this is just wrong.
This is fucking outrageous! This is precisely the sort authoritarianism that I was taught to fear around the time I first read his books. Editing old books to comply with the current regime was one of the things that the bad guys did. That was one of the things our ancestors fought against in two world wars. What would Ronald Dahl say about this? How would you feel if they did this to your writing long after you are…