"Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive" (The Guardian).
Hundreds of changes were made to the original text – and some passages not written by Dahl have been added....
In The Witches, a paragraph explaining that witches are bald beneath their wigs ends with the new line: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that....
References to “female” characters have disappeared. Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a “most formidable female”, is now a “most formidable woman”....
Posts
83 comments:
How long before they rewrite 1984 to make Big Brother the hero?
"remove language deemed offensive"
Our prog overlords never rest, neither here nor there.
Some folks need to read Bradbury's preface to "Farenheit 451" .
More than one way to burn a book.
Shoeless Joe:
Now there's an idea! Title: 2044.
Well, all of you Althouse readers were warned well in advance. Bradbury, Orwell, Burgess, Pournelle and Heinlein just to name a few. To be brief, Franklin answered a question concerning our form of government as a republic, if we can keep it.
Still doesn't remove his non-book-related anti-Semitism, which is many folks actual issue with Roald Dahl.
Thomas Bowdler was not available for comment.
Dahl was sort of an asshole, and didn't really try to hide it. It's what makes his books interesting. And kids get it--they know that there are lots of assholes out there--both adult and child. Seeing the jerk get his or her comeuppance is half the fun.
Mark: "Still doesn't remove his non-book-related anti-Semitism, which is many folks actual issue with Roald Dahl."
Sooooo, you approve of changing Dahl's book content because of his "non-book-related anti-semitism"? Or not?
Shoeless Joe: "How long before they rewrite 1984 to make Big Brother the hero?"
By the time they are done, 1984 won't need to be rewritten because it won't even be available.
Shakespeare is next.
I still buy books that are printed on paper rather than ebooks. I just like having books that I can see and hold. However, there is now another reason for having books that are printed on paper. They can't rewrite the books you physically possess. .
We are living in the end times.
When do we start memorizing books to keep them from the firemen??
Yes, I've made that comment before........but it seems relevant today.
How long before they rewrite 1984 to make Big Brother the hero?
Too late. Human rites, political congruence, progressive prices ("shared responsibility"), DIEversity, cargo cults, redistributive change (e.g. capital diffusion/depletion), a braying fourth estate, wars without borders without cause, and the democratic/dictatorial duality are not only paraded as normal but actually celebrated. All's fair in lust and abortion.
When will abridged become a synonym for enlightened??
If you want to write a book without "offending words" write your own. Leave other people's books alone. It should be illegal to modify an author's words without his permission. If he's dead just don't do it.
They've really learned nothing from the Soviet Union or China, have they? Has any of the approved, correctly coded, non-dissident "art" of the Socialist Paradises ever stood up to either time or international critique?
Leni Riefenstahl might be an exception, though I think positive critiques of her work have more to do with her ability to twist the tools of art into agents of her favorite evil - her craft was a horror but she was a great craftsman, like that.
As soon as you put art codes into place, you kill art. You may avoid offense in some instances (fat kids no longer need to learn anything from Augustus Gloop, though acquisitive kids still get to learn the lesson of Veruca Salt, that nasty little capitalist, don't you know), but you step right the hell into the middle of a massacre.
This is why so many of those of us who criticized Piss Christ didn't demand its removal or destruction; we just questioned its worth as art and pointed out that nobody dares make a Piss Muhammed and do forth. Is it still around, by the way? What happens to really old piss?
Gender neutral as in eunuch? As in a featureless construct? As in an egg preconception?
Progressive world-view is Puritanism, freed from any spiritual mooring in common sense and empowered by big government. We have returned to Cromwell's Commonwealth (who closed the theaters), but now with the 21st Century surveillance technology and a freehold farming class that is a tiny fraction of the population.
On whose authority was the work of a deceased artist re-worked, one wonders? One wonders, because these are the people driving this bus in safe anonymity.
This is like allowing children to fingerpaint on old Masters' artwork in the Louvre. The modern age is ruining centuries of art and literature in very short order.
Preserve what you can, while you can. We're entering a new dark age, and have been for quite awhile.
People paying attention already saw this coming, what with all the "de-accessioning" and the pulping of those nasty old books that nobody reads, these days. Started with the card catalogs, ended with the books themselves. All the footnotes gone, all the context. In a thousand years, nobody will remember that which was, because there will be no Catholic monks to preserve it all. Our monks are actually the ones doing this to us, in the name of political correctness.
It was good while it lasted, but the seeds of our own destruction were sown with our tolerance for the absurd and the outre, which tolerance has been weaponized against us and our culture.
Saw this coming, years ago. They started with the dumbing-down, cutting us off from the Latin and the Greek which informed the Founders. Then, they worked like termites in the stacks, erasing that which supported it all. Today, the children are barely literate, and can be easily led into folly. I don't doubt but that the next few generations will be even more willfully ignorant and proudly stupid.
Well, it's a start. Much more needs to be done. Dickens, Thackeray, Twain: there's a lot of racism and sexism endemic in their works. With proper editing and strategic euphemisms, there's no reason why some of their books cannot be read. It must be done under the supervision of proper teachers, though, and some of their books need to be banned outright.....As far back as Sarah Bernhardt women were playing male Shakespearean roles. They only play the skinny heroic ones though. Why is it that that no woman has ever attempted Falstaff? It's a meaty role. Maybe Melissa McCarthy or Roseanne could give it a go, but the language would have to be edited to exclude any references to her girth.
[body] fat is healthy when shared with a baby... fetal-baby, the hardest choice you will ever love, together.
Excess [body] fat is beautiful, healthy at any weight, is a first-order comorbidity and predictor of disease progression and medical/insurance/government capitalization.
Ugly, voluntarily gender neutral, or involuntarily aesthetically displeasing?
Why not just “big, big”? It was good enough for the Butt sisters.
Or just “bigly” if one is aiming for economy.
Why do the Oompa Loomas want to be gender neutral?
After a night teaching what used to be called Western Civ for six dollars an hour with a Ph.D. in Brandon, Florida, I'd always stop in Gibtown (look it up) and have one scotch in my business suit. The tallest man in the world, Mr. Tomasi I believe, was dead by then, but his wife, the half lady, served drinks at the bar on a skateboard.
Nobody doubted who they were. It was a very civil place.
Nobody cared in Gibtown. Is that woke? They'd laugh their asses off, those who had asses, at this bulllshit.
Perhaps if you change a written work such as Dahl's, you ought to then hold the IP rights to that new work and lose them in the original work.
This reminds me of a sign in front of one of our town’s churches:
“The Greatest Thing: Doing something for others.”
Something, something….., What did Jesus say that something was? And what was it the greatest of?
A woman has played Falstaff at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We used to go regularly for many years, had no problem with their diverse casting, but Falstaff played by a tiny woman was nearly the last straw. Not that they even do much Shakespeare at all anymore.
It's GOOD that we are removing these harmful books.. They bring nothing but pain.
Many people, have debated; which is the better instruction manual?
1984? With its AntiSex leagues, and Telescreens (and ETERNAL WAR with EastAsia (sorry! EurAsia)
Brave New World? with its soma? and pnumatic women?
And, the Answer IS: Fahrenheit 451! Books Are BAD!!!! Thinking is BAD!!! Conformity is GOOD!
Richard said...
I still buy books that are printed on paper rather than ebooks. I just like having books that I can see and hold. However, there is now another reason for having books that are printed on paper. They can't rewrite the books you physically possess. .
People like You, are The REASON we have Firemen!!
Death is life. Sure, why not. We're still viable.
Roald Dahl was always a vicious person. No matter what I read of his, this came through clear as a bell. It always amazed me that people thought Charley and the Chocolate Factory was suitable for their children. Just glance at the plot of the sequel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_and_the_Great_Glass_Elevator
Yuck.
The only thing that ever bothered me about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is why Dahl had such a bug up his ass about chewing gum.
Why not offer the original and bastardized versions, and let the reader decide?
Didn't they so something similar to Dr Seuss a few years ago?!
Hi Drago, thanks for the personal attack. GFY
Re: Paul Zrimsek:
Thomas Bowdler was not available for comment.
I don't know how a journalist could write an article like this without using the word "bowdlerise." There's a word for exactly this practice! But it may be the journalists simply aren't familiar with the term or the long history behind this sort of thing.
Gave up on the Oregon Shakespeare festival long ago.
Although that house of usher update by bradbury
Critical Revisionist Prejudice (CRP)
Mark said...
"Still doesn't remove his non-book-related anti-Semitism, which is many folks actual issue with Roald Dahl."
Still doesn't remove the fact you voted for Biden, but you're still allowed to comment here. Jesus. There must be unicorns in your world.
"By the time they are done, 1984 won't need to be rewritten because it won't even be available."
Sure it will. They'll just move it from "Dystopian Fiction" to "Current Events". Easy-peasy.
"Blogger Wince said...
Why not offer the original and bastardized versions, and let the reader decide?"
No, you should not be allowed to change the content of another person's book. It is not your intellectual property. If you don't like the book, don't read it.
...and Oompa Loompas are gender neutral.
The 1971 Gene Wilder excursion (screenplay by the man himself) used midget actors as the Oompa Loompas. Lately, the political correctness diktat has outlawed midget as "insensitive" (and maybe even Zionist!) and replaced it with the Newspeak jabber, "little people", which (accidentally) exactly coincides with the most insulting and contemptuous label the powerful and wealthy can use in reference to the powerless and poor. Consequently, fashionable opinion decrees Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to be the Sugar Nazis' Triumph of the Will.
Tall or short, Roald dahl's Oompa Loompas were self-actualized persons with opinions and wisdom to share. These bowdlerized chocolatiers are reduced to ciphers with less personality than a ChatGPS automaton.
If the book offends you, don't buy it or read it. How difficult is that?
More stupidity.
Next up, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry come out of the closet and get married.
Augustus Gloop, now "enormous" instead of "fat"...
That's right, my children, the surest way to professional sports glory is to stuff yourself with creme pastries morning, noon, and night.
Dahl was quite good with comedic names, though I believe he owned an unacknowledged debt to P. G. Wodehouse, whose newt-collecting Augustus "Gussie" Finke-Nottle soars in comparison to the earth-bound Gloop. (Dahl was over-fond of double-ohs, which may have been a jab at Ian Fleming, a competitor in the field of broad satire for children.)
Satiric appellations are one of the signal accomplishments of English literature, and it would be a significant accomplishment in the academic study thereof (if it can tear itself away from Foucault and the other postmodernist barbarians) to trace its history from Anglo-Saxon dirty jokes to Monty Python. Laurence Sterne was pretty good at it, as was Mark Twain, But the master was Henry Fielding. The Reverand Mr. Thwackum cannot be surpassed.
So - are They gonna go rewrite the other gazillion books… ? This exercise is fat, ugly, bald, and asinine.
Defund the Victimhood.
1530s, "abnormal" (usually in a bad sense), from Latin enormis "out of rule, irregular, shapeless; extraordinary, very large," from assimilated form of ex "out of" (see ex-) + norma "rule, norm" (see norm), with English -ous substituted for Latin -is. Meaning "extraordinary in size" is attested from 1540s; original sense of "outrageous" is more clearly preserved in enormity. Earlier was enormyous (mid-15c.) "exceedingly great, monstrous." Related: Enormously; enormousness.
Dumb Lefty Mark, earning his title every single day.
Dumb Lefty Mark: "Still doesn't remove his non-book-related anti-Semitism, which is many folks actual issue with Roald Dahl."
2/18/23, 11:34 AM
Drago: "Sooooo, you approve of changing Dahl's book content because of his "non-book-related anti-semitism"? Or not?"
2/18/23, 11:56 AM Delete
Dumb Lefty Mark: "Hi Drago, thanks for the personal attack. GFY"
2/18/23, 2:20 PM
Looks like Dumb Lefty Mark is fully on board with the orwellian rewriting of books to fit the latest lefty political "sensibilities".
This is why so many of those of us who criticized Piss Christ didn't demand its removal or destruction; we just questioned its worth as art and pointed out that nobody dares make a Piss Muhammed and do forth. Is it still around, by the way? What happens to really old piss?
To be clear: "Piss Christ" was not a crucifix in a jar of urine; it was a photograph of a crucifix in a jar of urine. I imagine that both the urine and the crucifix were thrown out decades ago.
An artist now had better have an ironclad contract in place or they will change your work beyond all recognition.
Mark Still doesn't remove his non-book-related anti-Semitism, which is many folks actual issue with Roald Dahl.
I know, right!? Did you see that dress he was wearing? Totally asking for it.
Mark: Still doesn't remove his non-book-related anti-Semitism, which is many folks actual issue with Roald Dahl.
Scratch a liberal, you'll find a fascist. Every time.
P.S. I'm looking at YOU, Mark, you quisling waterboy for jackboots, censors, vandals, and thugs.
Rusty, it's interesting you want to cancel me here.
You always said you were against that sort of thing, but my attempt to comment about Roald Dahl is enough that you wish I could no longer comment here.
Once again you show yourself a pro-cancel culture hypocrite. You are as bad as the people attacking Rowling.
We’re the smartest people who ever lived. Our values are the best, that’s why they’re ours. Because no other is better. (Would we adopt second-best values? Of course not!)
So of course we should make the objects of history comply with our values. We’re just making them better, and who could object to that? Who could be against making things better?
Republicans. That’s who.
Well, considering the amount Netflix paid for the rights to the books, I suppose they can whatever the fuck they want with them, but it is disgraceful to alter them this way.
I guess Drago got his answer- Mark approves of this.
If you don't like a book, don't write it.
Don't forget Hercules Grytpype-Thynne or Lord Valentine Seagoon among Brit inventions.
Questor--I just finished reading Tom Jones. Thwackum and Square. Wonderful!
(I read it on kindle as my read-until-I-fall-asleep book.) Maybe I should get a paper copy as it sounds like it will be in short supply and quite valuable as banned material soon).
As Orwell foretold:
“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. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
gilbar said...
Richard said...
I still buy books that are printed on paper rather than ebooks. I just like having books that I can see and hold. However, there is now another reason for having books that are printed on paper. They can't rewrite the books you physically possess. .
People like You, are The REASON we have Firemen!!
You should go over and check out Book.io.
Everyone on this thread that is not a leftist shitheads fascist should go check it out.
I just minted 2 copies Alice in Wonderland a week or so ago. They are in a wallet no government can track and I can put on a thumb drive. If I have my seed phrase for the wallet I can recreate that wallet anywhere in the world and it can't be traced to any part of my identity. They have a lot of good art added to the titales now too.
If you want to get serious about collecting these books. A Gutenburg Bible will get you a steep discount on minting new books and they are selling for around 240$ right now.
Next up, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry come out of the closet and get married.
Thoroughly disappointing Becky Thatcher.
More seriously, some people have been agitating for decades now to get the n-word out of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. They’re missing something important about the prevailing attitudes of those times in that place, not to mention the evolution of Huck’s attitudes towards Jim in particular, and black people in general. But they’re liberals, of course, so deep themes are a bit beyond them.
Preserve what you can, while you can. We're entering a new dark age, and have been for quite awhile.
The trouble is, the monasteries are effectively gone - "engagement with the world" is now the watchword in Christianity.
I visited a convent in (Catholic) high school with some of my classmates - the School Sisters of Notre Dame, who had a mother house in St. Louis. It was the happiest, most peace-inducing place I had ever been - and these were not cloistered nuns but sisters who planned to spend most of their lives out in the world as teachers. Nevertheless, their mother house was a place of joyful contemplation of God's call. It was mightily tempting. I blame Sister Act (among other things) for eliminating the sense that some amount of separatism is valuable. And now we have nowhere left that's sufficiently institutionally protected to preserve that which is valuable in our society.
Of course the monasteries of old didn't do the best job of preserving heretical texts, but they didn't rewrite them either.
Are we seeing the first hallmarks of Critical Literature Theory? Is this the new emerging battlefield now?
Mark said...
"Rusty, it's interesting you want to cancel me here."
Cancel you! Don't be a drama queen. I don't want to cancel you. I just want to show you for the lying hypocrit you are. So please keep talking and reveal to us all you total lack of morals.
Not that it matters with a generation coming that either can’t or doesn’t read.
Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery. . . .
-- Frederick Douglass "ORATION IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN"
Slavery, DIEversity, and the wicked solution.
To be clear: "Piss Christ" was not a crucifix in a jar of urine; it was a photograph of a crucifix in a jar of urine. I imagine that both the urine and the crucifix were thrown out decades ago.
In all these years, I never realized that the pictures I saw were the actual artwork. Thank you for educating me, Michelle D-T - I am abashed!
Who is asking for this to happen?
We are not burning books, we are just re-editing them.
Somehow, to my mind, burning books is more... dignified.
What perversion! An author's written words cannot be simply changed to reflect another person's point of view. How awful!
There's no argument for copyrights to last longer than patents. Let them alter the text as they like, but after 20 years let others sell the original text.
They've really learned nothing from the Soviet Union or China, have they?
They've learned it's good to be the ones with the clipboards, and not the ones kneeling by the muddy trench.
LLR Chuck: "What perversion! An author's written words cannot be simply changed to reflect another person's point of view. How awful!"
LOL
Oh such irony!! LLR Chuck, just yesterday, was lauding and linking to a lie-filled Jonathan Last article at Bulwark that purposefully and with malicious intent altered an Elon Musk stated and written position that the Starlink system could not be used for Ukrainian offensive operations on Russian soil into starlink could not be used for "offensive operations" period, making it seem as though Musk was disallowing Ukrainian use of the system for offensive operations in their own nation.
This was done to make it look like Musk was catering to Putin which is the coordinated (with another article against Musk in the Bezos Washington Post yesterday) lefty smear campaign being pushed by lefty funded The Bulwark and our own pro-dem LLR Chuck at Althouse.
Not surprising really given LLR Chuck has proudly announced he posts at Althouse to smear his political opponents and anyone who gets in the way of democratical policy victory.
"This is why so many of those of us who criticized Piss Christ didn't demand its removal or destruction; we just questioned its worth as art and pointed out that nobody dares make a Piss Muhammed and do forth. Is it still around, by the way? What happens to really old piss?"
The primary complaint about the Piss pic was that the display was.....funded by the US Government.
Because of course it was.
Dumb Lefty Mark continues to earn his well deserved title:
Dumb Lefty Mark: "Still doesn't remove his non-book-related anti-Semitism, which is many folks actual issue with Roald Dahl."
Rusty: "Still doesn't remove the fact you voted for Biden, but you're still allowed to comment here. Jesus. There must be unicorns in your world."
Dumb Lefty Mark: "Rusty, it's interesting you want to cancel me here."
I do believe Dumb Lefty Mark may suffering from an aggressively moving debilitating cognitive malady separate from his normal everyday complete inability to follow even a simple logical progression.
Idiotic. If the publisher and Dhal's family are so appalled, they should cease publication. But that would mean not profitting from his legacy. Sorry, but some works of art should offend.
"What perversion! An author's written words cannot be simply changed to reflect another person's point of view. How awful!" Is Chuck being ironic? I sure hope so.
A baby... fetal-baby left, sacrificed on a cold, gray metal slab is a work of human ingenuity only viable for presentation in darkness.
Hang onto your paper copies of important books. Do you know that they’re going to make all these changes throughout all published literature electronically. If you keep the older versions you’re going to be in trouble.
Post a Comment