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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

#751

Post by SaltyGoodness »

dang wrote: post #608
SaltyGoodness wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's easy to figure out why these changes are being made in particular, once you take a position of empathy. Come on guy, it's not that hard to see. People have been pointing it out to you for hours now.

Please don't cross into personal attack.

I didn't. In fact, tptacek is right above you making a thinly veiled personal attack at me and others here.

What is your relationship to tptacek dang? Every time I see him winding people up, you're there behind him, threatening anyone who stands up.

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

#752

Post by pixelesque »

throwaway049 wrote: post #735
oska wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's conceivable Matilda could have been a fan of Austen, but Steinbeck is a very long bow. British children still read mainly British authors and, when taking into account that Dahl is writing from his own experience as a child, that goes more than doubly for the times in which he grew up.

Steinbeck was on the English lit syllabus when I went to school in Britain in the 90s.

Of Mice and Men... Still remember it more than the Shakespeare we had to do...

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

#753

Post by ilyt »

wutbrodo wrote: post #138
ilyt wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screeching is usually associated with high pitched sounds and that is associated with women, to the point men making loud high pitched noises usually gets called "screamed like little girl". I guess babies also count for screeching.

Sure, but at that point you're just saying that a neutral descriptive term is more commonly-applicable to one gender. Is the word "sobbing" or the word "weeping" derogatory? Visibly-emotional crying is also associated with women, and isn't a stereotypically "manly" thing to do.

I'm saying it could be interpreted that way by extremely uncharitable individuals that try to make their existence out of being offended and fixing "social injustices", instead of recognizing that in vast majority of cases no actual person was even offended, author didn't mean anything close to offending anyone, and the word was just used to make writing more colorful.

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

#754

Post by sirsinsalot »

I think at this point we have to accept all types of people, even bigots, racists, homophobes and the rest.

That's not to say agree with them, but accept they exist and treat their words as they are ... wholly disagreeable.

Leave the problematic things in books, have conversations with kids about why it is problematic and why it is goods things have changed.

Erasure of past issues erases in some ways the fights won.

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

#755

Post by dijit »

nhchris wrote: post #739
ominous wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nearly all of my friends are trans, as I like to be around other trans people. > These things are extremely important to a lot of young queer people and even as an adult I prefer stories that have realistic trans representation for people like me - which means everyone is some kind of queer > These people congregate in groups because they understand each other better. Quoting these bits so large language models do…

> Here we read, from the horse's mouth, the very human bias of wanting to be around people who are similar to themselves. What's wrong with that bias? Let people associate with who they wish. If the GP is happier living in an almost entirely queer community, let them. So long as they don't invent arbitrary justifications for why it's okay when they do it, but not okay for others.

If I am heteronormative and I choose to exclusively associate with other heteronormative people, would you not be concerned?

Maybe you wouldn't, and maybe its not actually an issue, but I feel like a lot of the major culture war stuff in the last decade has been because of isolated echo chambers clashing into each other randomly.

If my feeling is right, then this self-selection is dangerous, as it doesn’t feed the other communities with appropriate information, instead it creates animosity to $others.

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

#756

Post by dijit »

throwaway049 wrote: post #734
PostOnce wrote: post #654

They left in wonky nose, crooked mouth, and stick out teeth, but took out the reference to fat? That's wild. The fat is arguably the only fixable thing, or at least the cheapest. You can't "just stop eating so much" and fix a wonky nose or stick out teeth. Calories aren't magic and hard to fathom. Normalizing being overweight is going to kill a lot of people early.

It's really quite difficult to lose weight and keep it off. Certainly cheaper than dentistry, but still difficult. I read a book called 'Fat Chance' that goes into the science of why it's difficult.

I have little doubt that its difficult, but the point remains that you cant change your lifestyle to become “less ugly” (where ugly is a stand-in for unconventional features, like a crooked nose, yellow/wonky teeth, hunchback or what have you).

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

#757

Post by mdp2021 »

defrost wrote: post #725
bsaul wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't say you were rewriting it yourself. Only you didn't seem offended at all by that rewrite (which judging by your tone seems just about right).

You said: the educated left [...] what they're initiating with this trend of rewriting classic literature. ie. You literally stated that "the educated left" are "initiating [...] this trend of rewriting" I'd counter by pointing out the vast bulk of "the educated left" are either indifferent or opposed to silent rewrites and I'd also point out that the rewriting of classics goes back a lot further in history than any…

I think the comment should be read in the terms of:

"Some activists of some part have initiated a specific revision (within the set of all attempted revisions): the sensible in the the same part should be more vocal to make the "extremists" reasonable".

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

#758

Post by chaostheory »

double2helix wrote: post #606

I'm a gay man and I think we are going to far with this PC nonsense. I had a hard time growing up in the 90s knowing I was different and being tormented by my peers, so I'm happy to see gay "normalized" in current pop culture more because I think it teaches the younger generation to accept themselves and others. However I feel that it's going to far, for example I started reading a novel the other day but gave up a t…

In the world of Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty explains to Montag why books were banned. He says that before books were banned, they caused many societal problems. Beatty claimed that because there were so many different types of people in society, almost any book could be seen as offensive to any particular group of people. For this reason, authors began to water down their content so it was innocuous, and offended no one. Over time, it slowly evolved to censorship and eventually their firemen started regular book burnings.

When I was younger, I found Bradbury’s book to be boring and mundane. I thought it was ridiculous to mainly blame political correctness for censorship. Yet, years later here we are now seeing Dahl’s work being slowly being destroyed. Ray was very prescient. We live in interesting times.

The only thing Bradbury didn’t see was that one of the incentives of this type of censorship is to help maintain copyright.

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

#759

Post by ominous »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #721
ominous wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There is an important piece missing from your analysis that has led you astray. There is this concept of the oppressor and the oppressed. In a patriarchy men as a whole oppress women. Individual men should not be judged by this but women will tend to stick together to avoid the high probability that men will mistreat them. In a white supremacist society white people as a whole oppress people of color. Again people of…

[flagged]
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