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"
This is why supporting things like zlibrary is important.
One of the arguments I heard in favour of copyright was to give a financial incentive to preserve and maintain old cultural works. Lol guess that theory is out the window.
This entire debacle is only possible because of the publishers.
It will be interesting when these works as originally written and published enter the public domain, and the altered versions remain in copyright.
I predict that there will be an audience for reading the originals, and a market for brand new updated versions that are more skillfully done (perhaps by a bylined author), but that these specific (and rather ham-handed) publisher-edited versions will be quickly forgotten.
I'd be interested in hearing the most credible/reputable sources speaking out in favor of these changes. I've exclusively seen commentators dunking on this (rightfully so), across the political spectrum. To be clear: I'm wondering if we can find specific people speaking up for this, not an analysis of whose side of the culture war is most culpable for it.
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 third of the way through because every character was some form of LGBT or interracial or something. It made the story seem fake and unrealistic. I think editing classic books is wrong even if it is covering up something like hate or bigotry. History forgotten is history bound to repeat itself.
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.
To me it seems like we have this paradoxical situation where the media want to simultaneously present inclusivity and diversity, but don't dare present any of the real diversity for fear of stereotyping. The end result is some token LGBTQ+ characters who are heteronormative, which is disingenuous.
If it is a choice between no gay character and some gay character who is essentially 'straight acting', I'd choose the former every time.
> I started reading a novel the other day but gave up a third of the way through because every character was some form of LGBT or interracial or something. It made the story seem fake and unrealistic.
Sounds like a great book. Nearly all of my friends are trans, as I like to be around other trans people. It’s nice to be understood without constant questions. I’m an adult and I live in a very queer area. For younger queer people that live in more conservative places, full of people that don’t understand them or are actively hostile, stories of healthy queer community can give those people hope for a better life. 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.
It sounds like the story just wasn’t for you but it strikes me as totally realistic to have a book with primarily or only queer characters. These people congregate in groups because they understand each other better.
> However I feel that it's going to far, for example I started reading a novel the other day but gave up a third of the way through because every character was some form of LGBT or interracial or something. It made the story seem fake and unrealistic.
This is me with TV show and movie diversity. People in real life don’t sit down to dinner with an even proportion of Asians, Hispanics, white people and black people. I’m in an interracial marriage and day to day live involves less diversity than that.
“I think editing classic books is wrong even if it is covering up something like hate or bigotry. History forgotten is history bound to repeat itself.”
I’m afraid that earlier editions will be unrecognizable, and/or signal your values, and/or create such backlash emerging a new culture war
Also a gay man & I disagree that we have "normalised" gay in current pop culture.
We really haven't. It used to be that gay characters were written as overly feminine, by straight writers bc we were being used as a joke. Actual gay writers in the industry now also write...exactly the same femmy characters into stuff (as someone working on theatre/media industry is quite likely to be a more fem gay).
What I want to see more of before I'm happy: young, interesting gay characters that demonstrate their love for one another without it being a Big Deal, that don't get killed off or only play a minor role.
Atm all the gay characters I see are:
* Older men
* All femmy, not just average dudes
* Get killed off/removed from the story quite quickly
* Are labelled as "gay character" but they aren't really shown being gay (making puppy dog eyes at cute guys, or having a boyfriend, etc).
Also lots of shows take shortcuts by having a lesbian character (which is also great to have), but gay men are still far less accepted by society/in media at this point. People would rather see two women kiss on screen than two men.
To be fair: I grew up on Dahl and looked forward to reading his books to my kids. I have cringed and WTF'd quite a bit reading them aloud and ultimately ended up altering it some extemporaneously. He really can be pretty damn extra in some passages.
I sincerely doubt any value was lost in any of these edits the publishers have made.
I recently read a story, and one of the couples in the otherwise bog standard hero fantasy is just casually gay (like, there is no specific mention of it, written like a standard couple, they just happen to both be men). That was great, and I think how it should be normalized.
Straight,conservative guy here. Thank you for offering your opinions. These days I frequently find myself in agreement with gay people offering exactly the same kinds of thoughts (which align with my own).
Perhaps when a little more time passes we'll find new political alliances that can help us (and other like-minded people) win political issues together.
I started watching a tv-show, but turned it off since almost all of the characters were policemen. I found this very fake and unrealistic sine policemen are only a small fraction of the population.
I don't think advertisers and media care if you their consumers are rightist or leftist as long as they consume and the company find out what they are willing to pay for, be it weapons, "organic" food, propaganda t-shirts, survivalist stuff or magic stones.
it's doubtful that advertisers and media would be blamed for Roald Dahl being simply a person of his era, if anything they are taking the risky position by interfering and actively censoring classic work - they risk selling nearly f*ck-all as people just stick to older editions and seek authenticity more and more
I think the current conflict (as evidenced by how headed the discussion is on this thread) is an artifact of copyright law.
I do not believe anyone would have any issues with creating forked/adapted/refreshed versions of literary works. We do it all the time. No one reads the original Grimm tales to kids because the original versions were gruesome. Many would count as horror. We tell kids adapted versions. But since they are public domain anyone can fork these works and create new versions. There is nothing wrong with updating works to reflect current cultural mores. We always did it and will continue to do it.
The issue is that this is done by copyright holders and the new approved version replaces the old version on the bookshelves because copyright gives them a monopoly on distribution. Unless you find it used, you will no longer be able to buy the old version. Some people want the old version because it is the version they know, it is the version they grew up with and it is the version they want to pass forward and because being a authored work (instead of folk) they want the version the author wrote with all of its cultural artifacts preserved.
To make the conflict clearer, imagine that once Windows 11 (or 8, or Vista) was launched, everyone on Windows 10 (or 7 or XP) would have been force upgraded to the new version and the old version would be deauthorized. Or imagine if copyright was infinite in duration and Disney bought the rights to the Grimm tales and now only the Disney versions are authorized for commercial distribution. You would simply not be able to buy the older version.
To me this makes it even clearer that the length of copyright being longer than the life of the author is an absurdity. Culture does not belong to anyone, it belongs to all of humanity.
How are the James Bond stories different than the anti-Russian sentiments we see circulating today?
I think we should read such historical texts precisely so we can gain an appreciation for how those ideas happen — and can examine ourselves doing the same thing.
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.
What was the intent of this change? "Enormously fat" is a subset of "fat". Ostensibly, this would insult more people since there are more fat people than there are enormously fat people.
i can't understand how the educated left don't see the atrocity of what they're initiating with this trend of rewriting classic literature. We've had so many examples of ideology rewriting the past...
Rewriting stories for children to reflect the values and anxieties of contemporary culture has occurred forever.
For instance, see “The Family Shakespeare” by the Bowdlers. Interestingly, critics seemed to pan it for similar reasons to HN’s commentators, but the book sold well:
I’m considerably less dogmatic about this than I used to be. Enid Blyton was a staple of my childhood, but do I really have to explain to my daughter why golliwogs are offensive if I want to give her a copy of the Magic Faraway Tree?
100% agree with the Enid Blyton take. I loved Blyton's books as a kid, to the point I actually developed a British-esque accent from reading them so much (I'm Australian). But if I had children, I would not read those books to them as they are. They're full of racist, sexist and generally outdated language, and were written by someone who was considered overly conservative for the 1930s!!
As long as the original books exist somewhere, I don't really think it matters if we give a cleaned up version to modern kids.
It's actually such an old practice that historians of Rome read ancient texts on the assumption that they have been edited/revised/embellished multiple times.
It really puts into content the people in this thread saying this is the end of free society.
When you rewrite a book like this, does it reset the copyright? Matilda was set to become public domain in 2060 (70 years after Dahl's death). With the books now owned by a corporation and essentially recreated by them, the copyright extends another fifty years.
Yes, but the new copyright only applies to the creative aspects of the changes. And that's an extremely thin copyright. So once the originals enter the public domain, the only thing they would be able to sue over is "you bowdlerized the book in exactly the same way I did".
To me, the whole point of reading imaginative fiction like Dahl’s work is that it transports you to some other place. A different world with different people in it. The author created that whole world with language, and you’re getting it through just words on a page—that has always seemed to be part of the magic to me.
I think we ought to respect that, and treat suggestions to “improve” old literature by “updating” the language with the same mild derision that’s useful on those loons that wanted to paint over the cigarettes in old movies
> “Occasionally, publishers approach us to consult Inclusion Ambassadors when looking to reprint older titles,” says Strick.
I depends how the ambassadors are compensated. It looks like it might be per phrase changed :-)
There is an incentive then to see things that are not there and edit random bits just to point to it say “look at all these wrong phrases we fixed”. Everyone wins - the ambassadors , and those who hired them. Nobody would ever criticize or comment because that’s just inviting being labeled all sort of things.
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 as a general rule his books have good morals and values exhibited in them. They are perfect children's books, not afraid to dip into a little darkness or to poke fun at the adults who run the world, and that's a huge part of why they've been so successful and universally loved.
The mental attitude and sense of self-superiority it must take to feel comfortable taking the knife to something so well loved is really mind-boggling to me. I am very happy that I bought our collection of Dahl's books before this happened.
My OH reading Roald Dahl to our daughter - in the twits she is a horrible person and it shows on her face as she's ugly - but we contextualise this, similarly the way people treat each other "that's not a good way for a husband and wife to treat each other".
I don't think there's a right way to do this, but yeah - life is complex and Roald Dahl's books show people dealing with arseholes, and often winning - the horrible people in these stories need to be horrible, but more context is helpful.
Those of us who grew up near various religious communities in the second half of the twentieth century are familiar with the edited and abridged versions of media made to be more palatable to the morals of whichever community, as well as the scandals over media which were an affront to them for whatever reason.
Obviously, a publisher committed to those communities and who can get the rights to do so will make a “clean” versions for them. For better or worse, it happens all the time.
The only news here is in whose morals are behind expressed in the edits, because we had gotten used to it just being a religion thing and forgot that secular morals can run just as puritanical.
[+] [-] neonate|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bko|3 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104857089
[+] [-] faeriechangling|3 years ago|reply
One of the arguments I heard in favour of copyright was to give a financial incentive to preserve and maintain old cultural works. Lol guess that theory is out the window.
This entire debacle is only possible because of the publishers.
[+] [-] webmaven|3 years ago|reply
I predict that there will be an audience for reading the originals, and a market for brand new updated versions that are more skillfully done (perhaps by a bylined author), but that these specific (and rather ham-handed) publisher-edited versions will be quickly forgotten.
[+] [-] tptacek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] double2helix|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaostheory|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] morbia|3 years ago|reply
To me it seems like we have this paradoxical situation where the media want to simultaneously present inclusivity and diversity, but don't dare present any of the real diversity for fear of stereotyping. The end result is some token LGBTQ+ characters who are heteronormative, which is disingenuous.
If it is a choice between no gay character and some gay character who is essentially 'straight acting', I'd choose the former every time.
[+] [-] TaylorAlexander|3 years ago|reply
Sounds like a great book. Nearly all of my friends are trans, as I like to be around other trans people. It’s nice to be understood without constant questions. I’m an adult and I live in a very queer area. For younger queer people that live in more conservative places, full of people that don’t understand them or are actively hostile, stories of healthy queer community can give those people hope for a better life. 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.
It sounds like the story just wasn’t for you but it strikes me as totally realistic to have a book with primarily or only queer characters. These people congregate in groups because they understand each other better.
[+] [-] rayiner|3 years ago|reply
This is me with TV show and movie diversity. People in real life don’t sit down to dinner with an even proportion of Asians, Hispanics, white people and black people. I’m in an interracial marriage and day to day live involves less diversity than that.
[+] [-] lencastre|3 years ago|reply
I’m afraid that earlier editions will be unrecognizable, and/or signal your values, and/or create such backlash emerging a new culture war
[+] [-] fennecfoxy|3 years ago|reply
We really haven't. It used to be that gay characters were written as overly feminine, by straight writers bc we were being used as a joke. Actual gay writers in the industry now also write...exactly the same femmy characters into stuff (as someone working on theatre/media industry is quite likely to be a more fem gay).
What I want to see more of before I'm happy: young, interesting gay characters that demonstrate their love for one another without it being a Big Deal, that don't get killed off or only play a minor role.
Atm all the gay characters I see are: * Older men * All femmy, not just average dudes * Get killed off/removed from the story quite quickly * Are labelled as "gay character" but they aren't really shown being gay (making puppy dog eyes at cute guys, or having a boyfriend, etc).
Also lots of shows take shortcuts by having a lesbian character (which is also great to have), but gay men are still far less accepted by society/in media at this point. People would rather see two women kiss on screen than two men.
[+] [-] fluidcruft|3 years ago|reply
I sincerely doubt any value was lost in any of these edits the publishers have made.
[+] [-] Aeolun|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RickJWagner|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bazoom42|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alerter|3 years ago|reply
In my experience, the ‘left’ doesn’t want the public sphere to become coddled and inoffensive. Advertisers and media companies do. It’s risk aversion.
Ideally, our shared cultural legacy would not be subject to the whims of corporate executives.
[+] [-] n3storm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muyuu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexvoda|3 years ago|reply
I do not believe anyone would have any issues with creating forked/adapted/refreshed versions of literary works. We do it all the time. No one reads the original Grimm tales to kids because the original versions were gruesome. Many would count as horror. We tell kids adapted versions. But since they are public domain anyone can fork these works and create new versions. There is nothing wrong with updating works to reflect current cultural mores. We always did it and will continue to do it.
The issue is that this is done by copyright holders and the new approved version replaces the old version on the bookshelves because copyright gives them a monopoly on distribution. Unless you find it used, you will no longer be able to buy the old version. Some people want the old version because it is the version they know, it is the version they grew up with and it is the version they want to pass forward and because being a authored work (instead of folk) they want the version the author wrote with all of its cultural artifacts preserved.
To make the conflict clearer, imagine that once Windows 11 (or 8, or Vista) was launched, everyone on Windows 10 (or 7 or XP) would have been force upgraded to the new version and the old version would be deauthorized. Or imagine if copyright was infinite in duration and Disney bought the rights to the Grimm tales and now only the Disney versions are authorized for commercial distribution. You would simply not be able to buy the older version.
To me this makes it even clearer that the length of copyright being longer than the life of the author is an absurdity. Culture does not belong to anyone, it belongs to all of humanity.
[+] [-] Nevermark|3 years ago|reply
I recently read all of Ian Flemming’s James Bond novels.
The identification of race as correlated with strong personality and motive characteristics is pervasive, especially for the enemy in any narrative.
Often negative, but often positive - the enemy is always “different”, but must always be respected, never underestimated.
And foreign characters often team up with Bond, adding their valuable foreign angles. Bond is a cosmopolitan creature.
The pervasive racial and cultural contrast enhancement was clearly entertaining for a less globally aware audience.
Even US vs UK characteristic differences are magnified.
And the subtext is always “live and let live” for general populations.
But I would certainly talk to any young, but ambitious reading, progeny of mine about that aspect of the books
[+] [-] zmgsabst|3 years ago|reply
I think we should read such historical texts precisely so we can gain an appreciation for how those ideas happen — and can examine ourselves doing the same thing.
[+] [-] faeriechangling|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PKop|3 years ago|reply
It is forbidden to say being fat is unhealthy, undesirable or to pathologize it at all.
[+] [-] Animats|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/19487821/thomas-the-tank-engine-...
[+] [-] giantg2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|3 years ago|reply
Perhaps it would be best to not read a book with them.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] newaccount2021|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] emmelaich|3 years ago|reply
- an old Soviet joke (allegedly)
[+] [-] bsaul|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rgmerk|3 years ago|reply
For instance, see “The Family Shakespeare” by the Bowdlers. Interestingly, critics seemed to pan it for similar reasons to HN’s commentators, but the book sold well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_Shakespeare
I’m considerably less dogmatic about this than I used to be. Enid Blyton was a staple of my childhood, but do I really have to explain to my daughter why golliwogs are offensive if I want to give her a copy of the Magic Faraway Tree?
[+] [-] yosame|3 years ago|reply
As long as the original books exist somewhere, I don't really think it matters if we give a cleaned up version to modern kids.
[+] [-] JohnFen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] defrost|3 years ago|reply
"That man looks foreign" is one of many exact quotes from any number of her series.
[1] https://youtu.be/NhGlet1j8EA?t=55
[+] [-] ImaCake|3 years ago|reply
It really puts into content the people in this thread saying this is the end of free society.
[+] [-] whoopdedo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josephcsible|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmeisthax|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] undersuit|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lysozyme|3 years ago|reply
I think we ought to respect that, and treat suggestions to “improve” old literature by “updating” the language with the same mild derision that’s useful on those loons that wanted to paint over the cigarettes in old movies
[+] [-] troupe|3 years ago|reply
Some of the changes to Dahl's books look like the dumb down the language. Is that an effort to sell into a market with smaller vocabulary?
[+] [-] Popeyes|3 years ago|reply
Someone put a list of changes on Reddit.
[+] [-] rdtsc|3 years ago|reply
I depends how the ambassadors are compensated. It looks like it might be per phrase changed :-) There is an incentive then to see things that are not there and edit random bits just to point to it say “look at all these wrong phrases we fixed”. Everyone wins - the ambassadors , and those who hired them. Nobody would ever criticize or comment because that’s just inviting being labeled all sort of things.
[+] [-] agentwiggles|3 years ago|reply
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 as a general rule his books have good morals and values exhibited in them. They are perfect children's books, not afraid to dip into a little darkness or to poke fun at the adults who run the world, and that's a huge part of why they've been so successful and universally loved.
The mental attitude and sense of self-superiority it must take to feel comfortable taking the knife to something so well loved is really mind-boggling to me. I am very happy that I bought our collection of Dahl's books before this happened.
[+] [-] stuaxo|3 years ago|reply
I don't think there's a right way to do this, but yeah - life is complex and Roald Dahl's books show people dealing with arseholes, and often winning - the horrible people in these stories need to be horrible, but more context is helpful.
[+] [-] swatcoder|3 years ago|reply
Obviously, a publisher committed to those communities and who can get the rights to do so will make a “clean” versions for them. For better or worse, it happens all the time.
The only news here is in whose morals are behind expressed in the edits, because we had gotten used to it just being a religion thing and forgot that secular morals can run just as puritanical.
[+] [-] nocoiner|3 years ago|reply