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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

#481

Post by ecshafer »

josephg wrote: post #464
Gigachad wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the success of Hogwarts Legacy shows you can just completely ignore twitter and nothing happens.

Yeah; I don’t know why it’s taken people so long to realise this. I know it seems to people on Twitter that everyone is on twitter, but that’s really not true. About 10% of people in the USA use Twitter daily - which is a huge number of eyeballs. But that still leaves the remaining 90% of people choosing instead to enjoy our short time on this planet. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if the outrage over Hogwarts…

I have seen this a few times even as a dev, where people put way to much focus on twitter. I think its because there is a class of people that use twitter and they think twitter is really really important. But some random person on twitter tweets "@company x is bad" and its taken much more seriously than say an email, slack message, or whatever. Most people don't use twitter ever, most people on twitter rarely use twitter. We need to kill twitter and move on.

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

#482

Post by Kye »

anonreeeeplor wrote: post #446
robswc wrote: post #409

I normally don't care about this stuff... and it seems like a "nothing issue" but it really feels like someone is smoothing off the edges of classic works here. All those changes culminate in an overall reversion to the mean (ordinary). Ordinary is boring... its story books. Shaving off attributes for the sake of what, exactly?

People should not be able to retroactively edit books. Imagine they rewrite lord of the rings and make everyone a woman. How is that ok?

What would be the actual harm? It's no different from Disney rewriting Robin Hood to make everyone animals. All the other takes on Robin Hood still exist.

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

#483

Post by SaltyGoodness »

CyborgCabbage wrote: post #270

Can't really see what all the fuss is about. They shouldn't have made the changes, no doubt, but they're all pretty insignificant. Publisher's exert significantly more influence when the author is alive and writing the book in the first place. The only one that ticks me off is that they added a "dedication to doctors" to one of the books.

I wonder, if it were your favourite childhood author, would you be okay with hundreds of sneaky little cuts and changes being inflicted?

Agreed on the 'dedicated to doctors' being added - that's even more fucked up than the memory holing.

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

#484

Post by jquery »

DanHulton wrote: post #121
aflag wrote: post #113

I'm a non-native English speaker. What's wrong with screeching?

"Screeching" in english (at least North American english) is typically a gendered derogative. You generally wouldn't say a man was "screeching", not unless you also wanted to imply he was effeminate. By avoiding the word, you avoid insinuating the target's gender is part of the issue, and/or avoid insinuating that the target is effeminate when they "should not" be, i.e. you avoid homophobia.

>"Screeching" in english (at least North American english) is typically a gendered derogative.

When HN can't tolerate such an obviously true statement such as this, yet plenty of dog-whistles supporting homophobia and racism and transphobia in this thread stay upvoted, it tells me I probably shouldn't be spending time here anymore. I don't know if I've changed or the community has changed. Probably a bit of both. Maybe it's time to grow up and move on.

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

#486

Post by klipt »

nonethewiser wrote: post #369
kortilla wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s homophobic to assume men being effeminate makes them gay.

It’s off the mark, sure, but you can think being effeminate makes someone gay without being afraid of gay people.

Since it ultimately comes down to policing straight men and telling them they're not allowed to be effeminate, I'd say it's more misandrist than homophobic.

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

#487

Post by Woberto »

lxm wrote: post #391
consumer451 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This just seems to relate to school libraries, but the books presumably would be available through public libraries or Amazon? School libraries by design have a pretty limited selection, generally confined to the topics covered by the curriculum. Or am I wrong in understanding the nature of the ban?

This was not my experience at all. School libraries provided a wide variety of content, books spanning many genres, time periods, etc. I read a little bit of everything and am grateful to have been able to experience that, instead of being constrained to whatever some adults may have thought would have been "good for me".

It's true that I had access to public libraries with this same variety, so what happens when those are the next target? I couldn't afford to buy books on Amazon. Would I just have been forced to read e.g whatever religious or political media that's been approved for my consumption?

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

#488

Post by bentley »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #323
mozman wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lengthy copyright is a big part of the problem here. Another recent censorship kerfuffle was over Dr. Seuss—one of the books in question was published when my grandmother was in diapers, yet the copyright holders have exclusive control today, more than three decades since Seuss’s death, and will retain it for another full decade from now.

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

#489

Post by hackinthebochs »

oska wrote: post #474
hackinthebochs wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the Florida school book ban which applies not just to new editions of one author, but to an entire state's education system. I see no problem with the government determining what information can and can't be made available to children at public school. This isn't the government making certain information verboten universally, it's ensuring that other people cannot indoctrinate your children with information you find…

I see it as a totalitarian measure, rather than leaving it to school librarians to make those choices, while listening to the expressed feedback and requests from the students and their parents at that school.

That's fine until librarians or teachers consistently get it wrong. A school librarian's discretionary power isn't intrinsic, it is granted conditional on its proper use. I'm sure there are many topics that if a teacher or librarian presented to your children you would move to remove their discretionary power. The debate is merely on what topics cross that line.

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

#490

Post by [deleted] »

faeriechangling wrote: post #209

Of every change the ones to Augustus Gloop not being called "enormously fat" and instead being called "enormous" are the most jarring as his story is a moral parable about the dangers of gluttony. Even if you think such moral parables are wrong, the phrasing change isn't simply just aesthetic, it's fundamentally changing the story's narrative.

[deleted]
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