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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

#321

Post by oska »

headsoup wrote: post #129
andrewstuart wrote: post #119

Sounds like George Lucas making all those nausea inspiring edits of the original Star Wars. Vandalism.

I think that would be more like Roald Dahl doing it himself. This is like Disney doing those changes to Star Wars, and you could just imagine that outrage. I think it is sad that people think we must change stories to reflect 'modern contemporary thought.' Let stories reflect the world they were written in. We can have our discussions around them as to what they mean.

> I think that would be more like Roald Dahl doing it himself

And Dahl actually did make some changes in new editions himself. Perhaps the most notable being his changes to the portrayal of oompa-loompas. Dahl commented :

> I created a group of little fantasy creatures.... I saw them as charming creatures, whereas the white kids in the books were... most unpleasant. It didn't occur to me that my depiction of the Oompa-Loompas was racist, but it did occur to the NAACP and others.... After listening to the criticisms, I found myself sympathizing with them, which is why I revised the book. (in Mark West's Trust Your Children: Voices against Censorship in Children's Literature, 1988). [1]

[1] https://www.lrei.org/news-detail?pk=768313

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

#322

Post by pessimizer »

consumer451 wrote: post #283
krona wrote: post #231

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered... Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. - George Orwell

This Dahl situation seems ridiculous and deserving of derision. I would also like to bring your attention to the Florida school book ban which applies not just to new editions of one author, but to an entire state's education system. > Among the titles that have been removed and banned in the course of the vetting in her school district are Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye,’ ‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini, ‘The…

Justifying censorship with other censorship is a spiral of doom.

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

#323

Post by phist_mcgee »

mozman wrote: post #277
koolba wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Fantastic Mr Fox a description of tractors, saying that “the machines were both black”, has been cut. In the new Dahl world, it seems, neither machines nor animals can be described with a colour. And removing any reference to color … for tractors.

This is astounding, I look forward to the time where these types of changes revert back to common sense.

You're going to be waiting for a while then.

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

#324

Post by s1artibartfast »

Sporktacular wrote: post #301
gotoeleven wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's really what you think the wokeness warriors want - historical revisionism?

Well yeah. It already is taken as fact in many circles that the primary purpose and intent of the American legal system and government was the subjugation of minorities.

While I think there is some value and truth in critical analysis of race, gender, or governance that challenge prevailing assumptions, many people have lost the plot and positive context entirely. They mistake the exceptions for the rule and the flaws for the thing itself.

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

#326

Post by ckemere »

Semi-contrarian position here - I've never liked Dahl, and I was always annoyed by how he was pushed on me by the literary types in early school (the same ones that wanted me to read The Great Gatsby and The Stranger eventually). But I think that those people had some goal behind pushing him, and perhaps that goal is consistent with the rewriting? Something about kids who feel like outsiders (maybe???)?

Very different, e.g., than Kipling or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?

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

#327

Post by josephg »

renewiltord wrote: post #281
josephg wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > The Dahl estate owned the rights to the books until 2021, when Netflix bought them outright for a reported $686 million, building on an earlier rights deal. The American streaming service now has overall control over the book publishing, as well as various adaptation projects that are in the works. I suspect they're hoping netflix will make movies based on his books. Netflix seems pretty sensitive…

I sympathize with the view of Netflix bowdlerizing to broaden the audience but they're also the platform with Dave Chappelle - which makes it hard to align them with "pretty sensitive to Twitter opinions" since a bunch of people have declared that fellow persona non grata.

True; but I don't think they paid to have Dave Chappelle produced. They stopped making House of Cards after the sexual harassment thing with Kevin Spacey.

I'm sure they'd rather have less controversy around Dahl's work. And its pretty easy to imagine Dahl's estate making the 'conservative' choice and allowing these edits if there's even a risk of their netflix deal falling apart.

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

#328

Post by ac2u »

jeppester wrote: post #255
Dig1t wrote: post #51

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

Most litterature doesn't last for many centuries until the language is so outdated that laypeople find it difficult to read without translation. It will then be translated, adding a layer of interpretation. All translations have that layer from the very start. Yet the original versions are still around for those who prefer them. Is it not okay to be able to pick a 2023 version, or a 1960s version depending on your ow…

>The only problem I have with changes like this is if there's a lack of transparency, which I would to some degree agree is the case here.

This reads like a side-note tacked onto the end of your thoughts.

To people that have a problem with it, it's the entire goddamn point. I'm fully aware when I'm picking up a greek tradegy I'm reading a translated interpretation. Now the reader is being denied the chance to see how the author wrote and talked straight from their writings. If the author's use of language isn't pleasant or moral by my standards today, I don't want to be misled to think that the new way is how they've always written.

It's immoral to sanitise the past for children and lead them to believe that we've always had today's moralities figured out, to children unaware of the edits, they're being deprived of the fact that society evolves and fights and works these things out.

If they're unaware that society can update it's morals (because some nitwit decided to slyly change language in a book in a way that's not transparent), maybe they'll think they don't have the power to change anything themselves.

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

#329

Post by phist_mcgee »

avazhi wrote: post #179
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #128

It turns out that Dahl was a real antisemite, to me that is more of an issue: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/06/roald-dahl-fam...

Turns out a person being something you dislike has no direct bearing on the quality of their writing and storytelling. If you can’t appreciate the latter on account of the former, that’s your problem.

The boycotters of Hogwarts: Legacy would like a word..

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

#330

Post by neverrroot »

jrmg wrote: post #220
babyshake wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Offensive is probably too strong a word. The reason to replace an aggregate ‘brothers and sisters’ with ‘siblings’, ‘mothers and fathers’ with ‘parents’, or ‘boys and girls’ with ‘children’ is because for all of these the replacement suffices without calling attention to gender when it’s not necessary to do so. There’s also an argument that the ‘X and Y’ phrasing makes the ‘X’ seem more important than the ‘Y’, or mak…

No, it’s not the same thing. Parents it’s plural of parent, “10 fathers” are “10 parents”, so are “10 mothers”. When you want to convey the important point that it’s both mothers and fathers, there is no alternative. Similarly for everything else.

Regarding the first occurrence being conceived as more important, it’s the reason usually females appear named first, a sign of courtesy to them. That was sorted out neatly long ago.

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