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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

#331

Post by boppo1 »

russdill wrote: post #120
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 r…

>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.

How horrifying. This is where you as a parent are supposed to find opportunity for a lesson on evaluating media. "This is an inappropriate joke but the rest of this movie is so good that I'm letting you watch. Don't make fun of peoples' accents." If he's too young for that lesson, he's too young for the movie.

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

#332

Post by itwillcomeout »

gotoeleven wrote: post #247
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

[flagged]

Pretty sure Zuckerberg is working on that videogame as we speak for his metaverse.

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

#333

Post by oska »

jemmyw wrote: post #191
40acres wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JK Rowling built a billion dollar children’s franchise shortly after Dahls death.

True. Although her audience is a little older than I was thinking. Also I didn't think of her because I don't like her writing, I find it boring. The stories are ok but the way she presents it is dull, to me. Obviously that's a minority opinion given her broad appeal.

I don't think it will be a minority opinion, given the test of time. I think HP's star is already waning (and no, I don't mean because of the author's views on certain subjects; I think the faddishness of HP itself is already wearing off).

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

#334

Post by [deleted] »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #194
avazhi wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Turns out a person being something you dislike has no direct bearing on the quality of their writing and storytelling. It turns out that this has a direct bearing on my perception of his writing. For example i don't have to pay for his stories, if the author doesn't like me for the color of my skin or for belonging to people that the author happens to dislike. I am also allowed to say that these are very objectiona…

[deleted]

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

#335

Post by consumer451 »

pessimizer wrote: post #322
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…

Justifying censorship with other censorship is a spiral of doom.

I'm sorry, maybe I don't understand your reply. Did you read my comment as some sort of justification of either the Dahl estate's rewriting of Dahl's work or the state sponsored censorship in happening in Florida?

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

#336

Post by newaccount2021 »

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.

[dead]

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

#337

Post by Sporktacular »

KyeRussell wrote: post #295
gotoeleven wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As much as this is an obvious joke, it’s lazy and dangerous. Quite easily distinguishable from what this post is about. Conflating rewriting history with treating historical fictional works as living documents are two separate things, that deserve separate space for debate.

Spot on. But it's a degree of nuance the anti-woke mob don't want to understand. It's good to see posts that try stamp out the culture war flames.

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

#339

Post by oska »

ajross wrote: post #89
stuckinhell wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not simple republishing. The editing occurring is censorship because modern sensibilities are different today. Roald Dahl was notorious about hating people editing his works. Censorship via stealth editing is just extremely gross maybe even as bad as burning books. If those works don't meet modern standards, let new books be made. It certainly is Yikes territory to me and apparently thousands of others on red…

> This is not simple republishing. The editing occurring is censorship because modern sensibilities are different today. Good grief. That's simply not what censorship means. "Editting" happens all the time. Are journalists being "censored" when the published article doesn't match their words? In fact with translations, "editting" happens every time, by definition. How many times has the Bible been censored by now? If…

This is explicitly censorship. Film censorship boards would demand cuts and sometimes reshoots of particular parts of a film before they would allow its release. Censors of literary works, when those still existed, would do the same. Cuts or rewrites of parts of a literary work that they would not otherwise allow to be published.

Puffin/Netflix are censoring the works they have acquired the rights to. They are not allowing republication of the author's original works (they hold the rights and are the only party allowed to republish). They are cutting and rewriting the original author's book for new editions. The Oxford English Dictionary defines censorship as “the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable or a threat to security”. This is censorship.

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

#340

Post by wyager »

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…

Last time I looked at claims about Florida "book bans", they were actually just hysterical overreactions to removing books from the mandatory public school curriculum - is this more of the same?

I don't really care that much about what's in school libraries, to be honest - almost no one actually gets books from there anymore. What's much more significant, at a societal level, is what publishers choose to (not) put out.

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