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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

#851

Post by Beldin »

chaostheory wrote: post #774
bentcorner wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I replace language that suggests that women are supposed to stay at home and men are supposed to go to work I totally agree - my kids had Berenstain Bear's books (as random gifts and such) and I would avoid reading them because in particular the way they portrayed Papa Bear as a bumbling fool grated on my nerves. He's like a Homer Simpson without the heart. I'm certain mothers also don't appreciate the way Mama Bea…

Why not explain the historical context of these books instead? (That’s I what do with my children.) My children appreciate the transparency and extra discussion. That leads to a better longer term outcome for society than with the ease and convenience that censorship provides. History’s mistakes tend to repeat when society forgets them. We can’t rely on educational institutions doing our job for us since the same tre…

Because there are enough (a veritable deluge of) alternatives that do not require extra work on my part.

Which is probably why the Dahl copyright holders are doing this(1). Not to appease some sort of modern sensibilities, but to make money. Apparently they think the investment will pay off.

(1) a less money-focused reason could be because they truly believe these stories deserve to be shared in the future, and see the things they changed as barriers to that goal while of little import to the message. But again, they think this step will "pay off" - in continued popularity / enduring part of culture then.

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

#852

Post by rootusrootus »

erenyeager wrote: post #849
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…

[flagged]

When did you decide to be heterosexual? Did you experiment at all before making that decision?

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

#853

Post by chaostheory »

Beldin wrote: post #851
chaostheory wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not explain the historical context of these books instead? (That’s I what do with my children.) My children appreciate the transparency and extra discussion. That leads to a better longer term outcome for society than with the ease and convenience that censorship provides. History’s mistakes tend to repeat when society forgets them. We can’t rely on educational institutions doing our job for us since the same tre…

Because there are enough (a veritable deluge of) alternatives that do not require extra work on my part. Which is probably why the Dahl copyright holders are doing this(1). Not to appease some sort of modern sensibilities, but to make money. Apparently they think the investment will pay off. (1) a less money-focused reason could be because they truly believe these stories deserve to be shared in the future, and see t…

Maybe read other books instead of helping destroy classics?

Yeah, I agree that the copyright holders are acting rationally, but long term this will destroy our democracies. A key premise of Fahrenheit 451 is that they end up with sanctioned book burnings because of something boring like political correctness.

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

#854

Post by chaostheory »

chaostheory wrote: post #799
bsaul wrote: post #679

In 50 years from now, some people will pretend racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and male-dominated society never existed, because all symptoms of it will have entirely disappeared, even in classical litterature.

It’s good to know that other people see the same long term danger as I do. This type of censorship helps parents and educators the hard conversations about history that need to happen, all in the name of convenience and maintaining copyrights that should expire.

“This type of censorship helps parents and educators AVOID the hard conversations about history that need to happen”

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

#855

Post by rootusrootus »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #846
wrp wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...some gay character who is essentially 'straight acting'... I often see (edit: readers) mention that a story has gay/straight characters, even when (to me) there is no opening in the plot for characters to express their romantic inclinations. What exactly are you looking at when you perceive a character as $orientation?

"Bewitched" is a classic tale of same-sex marriage, men in the closet, and uneasy gay-straight alliances. "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial" is a classic coming-of-age story of a gay man in the modern world. Dracula by Bram Stoker is the quintessential gay liberation epic.

> "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial" is a classic coming-of-age story of a gay man in the modern world.

I don't know a single actual person who saw the film in that light. I can find references to the hypothesis online, but it seems like an incredible reach to me. More like an excellent demonstration of the human brain's ability to see patterns everywhere, even when they don't actually exist. E.g. conspiracy theories.

> "Bewitched" is a classic tale of same-sex marriage

Same sex? You mean interracial? Fascinating take.

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

#857

Post by AlbertCory »

dang wrote: post #642
AlbertCory wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have any transparency (i.e. a single doc) about your site guidelines? Which ones are downgraded? What about flagging? When does a comment flagged by a user get unflagged, if that happens?

There's no single doc. We keep https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html at the level of principles, not practices, because trying to compile a complete doc would be nightmarishly long and then no one would read it (except maybe the litigious types looking for loopholes). It's for similar reasons that we don't publish a full moderation log. There is tons of information about basically everything we do embedded…

Thanks, dang.

Users flagged the post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on HN.

Moderators sometimes also add [flagged] (though not usually on submissions), and sometimes turn flags off when they are unfair.

I don't know what HN's internal database is, but it seems like it could be a simple query or set of queries to determine if [flagged] is being used by a group of people as a way of censoring comments they don't agree with. After all, they're not required to justify their flag.

Some simple statistics would answer this question. For instance, in "sometimes turn flags off" what percentage of the time does that happen?

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

#858

Post by ryandrake »

unmole wrote: post #833
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with hogwarts legacy is that the minorities who are affected are like 1% of the population. Even if 100% of them loudly proclaimed anything anywhere on any social media platform, it would barely affect anything simply because they’re so small compared to the rest of the population. This is in the same sense that only a minority of the population are severely immunocompromised to the point where Covid is sti…

> The thing with hogwarts legacy is that the minorities who are affected are like 1% of the population. There is not a single person anywhere in the world who is negatively affected by Hogwarts Legacy.

I don't understand the drama around that video game, and at this point, I don't think I want to understand what it's about. I did a few Internet searches and it's totally unclear what's wrong with the game, or what minorities are portrayed badly in it. The best I've come up with is: "The game is based on a fictional world written by an author who tweeted something bad, and even though the author has nothing to do with the game, we're going to boycott the game." Is that really all there is to it?

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

#859

Post by nprateem »

TomK32 wrote: post #730
nprateem wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. If you watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or the Police Academy films, they're so racist that if they were still popular they'd need massive disclaimers. Books are easier to edit so they have.

Police is still is racist around the globe and the Indiana Jones movie was set in the 1930 when the world was a lot more racist. Setting movies in those eras and places without depicting racism wouldn't feel right either?

Police Academy isn't meant to be a documentary :D

And it wasn't the depiction due to the time period the Indy film was set in that made it racist, it's the depiction of Indians as primitives who eat monkey brains and all that rubbish. It was just a trope in the '80s. If they aren't from the West, they must be primitives, etc.

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

#860

Post by nhchris »

ominous wrote: post #782
nhchris wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Without the intent to finger point, as I discuss ideas, not people, see this comment [0]: > there is a difference between white people wanting to stick together and people of color wanting to stick together in a white supremacist society. In this case the white people stick together to maintain their oppression and exclusion, and the people of color stick together to find freedom and respite from their mistreatment.…

In a white supremacist society, who is going to stop whites from sticking together?

It sure is convenient if you get to be the one deciding who is an oppressor and who is oppressed. You can place arbitrary moral limits on the oppressor's behavior, while that same behavior is justified for the oppressed.

Even when it doesn't make a lick of sense. Whites sticking together maintains oppression (I guess Ukraine, being ~99% white, is the most oppressive of all), but people of color sticking together gains them freedom. But those are the same thing. If all the people of color gather on one side of the room, away from the whites, then both whites and non-whites will, by necessity, be sticking with their own.

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