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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

#341

Post by pessimizer »

stuckinhell wrote: post #3

Censoring old children's books. Yikes. This is frightening in more ways than one. Besides the obvious censorship, and rewriting the past being a bad thing. I can't wait to see what they do to "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". It'll be ironic and sad if they burn the old unedited Roald Dahl books. But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of m…

> I can't wait to see what they do to "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984"

You can see it with successive movie adaptations: the decorations are the same, but all the messages get reversed, they focus on action, and they add hopeful endings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451_(2018_film)

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

#342

Post by wyager »

mc32 wrote: post #251
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

People (ok, old school liberals -like the Clintons- as well as libertarians and other freedom loving classes) used to make fun of sects and other religious minorities with uhh, different sensibilities who were too prudish or uptight for their alternative censored versions of popular works --well, the joke's on us! The speed at which history is being colonized to retroactively establish a new reality is pretty astound…

> old school liberals -like the Clintons-

Is this a joke? Or are actual "old school liberals" so "old school" now that liberals by the ten-year-old definition count as "old school"?

"Old school liberals" are people like Friedman and Mises, not the Clintons.

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

#343

Post by Sporktacular »

josephg wrote: post #284
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But why does that bother you, given he's dead For example it can be taken it as a call to others to hate your guts too, and it can play out pretty nasty, if the economy turns bad and if people will start to look out for scapegoats. This is not something entirely abstract, it happened before.

Half my ancestry is Jewish. I'm sure plenty of dead people hate me for one reason or another. But, they're dead and I'm alive. So why should I care? Its kind of a weird move but there's plenty of other ways we can weave meaning out of whats happening here. - We could say "Ha ha - you hate Jewish people but your life's work still involved giving beautiful books for me to enjoy! Sounds like you lose, Dahl!". Taking tre…

If those stories are allegorical or are reinterpreted in future, inspiring a new generation of anti-semites, then the vitality of the author quickly becomes irrelevant.

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

#344

Post by bee_rider »

gedy wrote: post #37

> A most formidable female -> A most formidable woman What is the reasoning for this? Not following what is "wrong" in the original.

In current American English, “female” has shifted to usually being an adjective, woman is a noun. Referring to people by noun-ing one of the adjectives that describes them is something considered reductive by a chunk of the population.

If someone is a fan of “female” as a noun: I’m not going to change your mind. I get that changing language is annoying sometimes. I’m pointing out that “female” as a noun does bother some people, “woman” only bothers people if they know it’s been changed and see it as bowing to PC pressure. Since most people don’t check the diffs from one edition to another when buying books, this is a really easy decision on the part of the publisher, who just wants to quietly make money for the most part.

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

#345

Post by batch12 »

josephg wrote: post #284
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But why does that bother you, given he's dead For example it can be taken it as a call to others to hate your guts too, and it can play out pretty nasty, if the economy turns bad and if people will start to look out for scapegoats. This is not something entirely abstract, it happened before.

Half my ancestry is Jewish. I'm sure plenty of dead people hate me for one reason or another. But, they're dead and I'm alive. So why should I care? Its kind of a weird move but there's plenty of other ways we can weave meaning out of whats happening here. - We could say "Ha ha - you hate Jewish people but your life's work still involved giving beautiful books for me to enjoy! Sounds like you lose, Dahl!". Taking tre…

> Taking treasure from a dragon is more virtuous if the dragon you're stealing from is evil.

This is a good way of phrasing what I haven't been able to put into succinct language. I also find it interesting when performers and writers want to choose who is allowed to enjoy their publicly available work based on whether or not values align.

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

#346

Post by remote_phone »

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?

Yes. Look at the 1619 project. Historical revisionism is exactly what that is all about.

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

#347

Post by nonethewiser »

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.

Dangerous? Go outside

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

#348

Post by PKop »

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.

You're making a general argument against revisionism but you seem to miss the point that the specific critique of gluttony / being fat / "fat shaming" is an aspect of the current morality that is imposing itself in many corners of culture.

It is forbidden to say being fat is unhealthy, undesirable or to pathologize it at all.

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

#350

Post by wyager »

slothtrop wrote: post #276
bko wrote: post #15

Here's a good list of changes. Most are about removing any references to ugly or fat. But also other strange things like changing the author's Matilda likes to read to include Jane Austin and John Steinbeck, not calling people crazy, swapping screeching to annoying, removing brothers and sisters to favor "siblings" and using "folks" instead of "ladies and gentlemen" https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104…

> not calling people crazy Wait until they realize that every single fucking insult in existence is equally "able-ist", by definition, or otherwise offensive in some way. Is the expectation that we slowly disallow insults in culture? No, it's going to be arbitrary whitelisting. Stupid (there I go being ableist). A change like this doesn't work as intended without fundamentally changing the narrative. If a character w…

> Is the expectation that we slowly disallow insults in culture

The current equilibrium seems to be that we're on a sort of vulgar treadmill. The process goes as follows:

1. Decide that previously formal/medical/technical word like "idiot" has developed too many colloquial negative connotations.

2. Invent new formal term, like "mentally retarded", and tell people that they have to use that instead, because the old term is now considered offensive.

3. Because connotation emerges from denotation, the new term develops precisely the same colloquial negative connotations.

4. Rinse and repeat.

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