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Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#111

Post by babyshake »

bitwize wrote: post #110
bko wrote: post #15

Here's a good list of changes. Most are about removing any references to ugly or fat. But also other strange things like changing the author's Matilda likes to read to include Jane Austin and John Steinbeck, not calling people crazy, swapping screeching to annoying, removing brothers and sisters to favor "siblings" and using "folks" instead of "ladies and gentlemen" https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104…

Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling wrote favorably about colonialism; they were replaced with more agreeable authors. Use of gendered language is marginalizing to nonbinary people. It's easy to figure out why these changes are being made in particular, once you take a position of empathy.

> Use of gendered language is marginalizing to nonbinary people.

References to brothers or sisters, or mothers or fathers, is offensive to nonbinary people? In all seriousness, not trying to start a flame war, why is that? Is a reference to hair offensive to a bald person?

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#112

Post by flandish »

bitwize wrote: post #110
bko wrote: post #15

Here's a good list of changes. Most are about removing any references to ugly or fat. But also other strange things like changing the author's Matilda likes to read to include Jane Austin and John Steinbeck, not calling people crazy, swapping screeching to annoying, removing brothers and sisters to favor "siblings" and using "folks" instead of "ladies and gentlemen" https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104…

Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling wrote favorably about colonialism; they were replaced with more agreeable authors. Use of gendered language is marginalizing to nonbinary people. It's easy to figure out why these changes are being made in particular, once you take a position of empathy.

For sure. Just remember though, without changes the work can “simply” retire and the story approached by those who go into it “in the know.”

But … retired stories don’t sell and don’t get turned into remakes, ticket sales, etc…

Rewritten stories are fine, I like lots of them (the new ghostbusters, I adored..) but this, to me, seems like prep work for a lazy hollywood..

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#114

Post by zepolen »

a2tech wrote: post #40

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 agree, while we're at it, let's repaint the Michelangelo paintings in the Vatican, way too much nudity and those clothes are way out of fashion and let's rewrite 1984, it used to describe a scary future dystopia, but now it seems like just a regular day in society.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#115

Post by bitwize »

jemmyw wrote: post #24
stuckinhell wrote: post #3

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 Where is the next Dahl? Why is there no modern Beatrix Potter? Kids still love those stories and style of writing, which is less trite than most of the modern children's books. It does feel like stagnation, with lots of content being churned out but none of it with great staying power. Instead the ol…

Careful what you wish for. The best candidate for a modern Beatrix Potter would probably be J.K. Rowling.

And we all know what the deal is with her now.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#117

Post by gpanders »

bitwize wrote: post #108

The alternative is what the Seuss estate did: remove the books from print entirely. As a friend of mine said about the Seuss books, if you cannot understand why this is being done, you are part of the problem.

>if you cannot understand why this is being done, you are part of the problem.

Seems like a quick and condescending way to shut down any critical thinking or debate.

“Agree with me, or suffer the same fate”.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#118

Post by mpalmer »

bitwize wrote: post #110
bko wrote: post #15

Here's a good list of changes. Most are about removing any references to ugly or fat. But also other strange things like changing the author's Matilda likes to read to include Jane Austin and John Steinbeck, not calling people crazy, swapping screeching to annoying, removing brothers and sisters to favor "siblings" and using "folks" instead of "ladies and gentlemen" https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104…

Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling wrote favorably about colonialism; they were replaced with more agreeable authors. Use of gendered language is marginalizing to nonbinary people. It's easy to figure out why these changes are being made in particular, once you take a position of empathy.

I can be (and in fact am) empathetic. At the same time, I still take the position that non-binary people and other cultural minorities can simultaneously enjoy non-edited older fiction and understand that it may not have been written with them in mind (and may even be mocking or a little mean).

Write new books. Make them as inclusive or exclusive as you want. I just think it's very telling that you hear so much about "erasure" and yet changing an author's words and intent like this is celebrated.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#120

Post by russdill »

agentwiggles wrote: post #47

Wow. This is so gross. I was a bit put out by the Dr. Seuss controversy a few years back, but at least in those cases, they just stopped printing the books (and, to be fair, the caricatures of various ethnic groups in If I Ran The Zoo are pretty bad). It feels much more disturbing, though, to just silently update the language in the books to be more in line with modern sensibilities. Dahl was a man of his time, and a…

It can be a hard choice with young children. I grew up watching Christmas Story every year. My son is two and I'm very hesitant to continue that tradition when he's a bit older. I don't want him to think that mocking people for their accents is something to be encouraged. It'd be nice to have a version of the movie where that scene is modified or redubbed because the movie is a creative treasure.

Of course, once he reaches an age where he's old enough to better understand explanations of racism in media, etc, that's a different story. All cultural history has attitudes that may have changed or that we may even view as repugnant. It's important that people learn about the past and what people were like in the past (or still today).

Maybe this type of thing would go off much better if parents were given a choice, and have the opportunity to confront these things with their children when they think they are ready.

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