Roald Dahl

[Anita Bensoussane]

There's a thoughtful article on this issue in The Independent today, written by Louis Chilton:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment ... 3df4&ei=13

In case it ceases to be accessible (The Independent limits views by non-subscribers), I'll quote a few highlights:

Artists have a right to the creative integrity of their work, even when the work is disagreeable; Dahl and Fleming, both long dead, are unable to consent to the changes. There is an argument to be made that softening the unpleasant edges of these books is an act of erasure, or even historical denialism. Consider, in contrast, the disclaimer that Warner Bros has long shown before outdated episodes of Looney Tunes, which ends: “While these cartoons do not represent today’s society, they are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.”

I've always wondered why there is nothing in place to protect the "creative integrity" of an artist's work. Hats off to Warner Bros for their sensible approach and their respect for history!

Muddying the issue further is the rather inexplicable metric used to determine what is and isn’t suitable for republication. Even those in favour of censoring books for reasons of sensitivity will likely be left frowning at the limp, artless prose amendments – and, in Fleming’s case, by the baffling inconsistencies when it comes to what offensive material will actually be permitted. Some parts are taken out, other instances left in; some of the racism and misogyny is so inextricably woven into the storylines that censoring is impossible.

It is indeed shocking that so many of the amendments to Roald Dahl's books are "limp" and "artless", when he himself wrote with such verve. And yes, it goes without saying that altering a text extensively will introduce inconsistencies because it will prove impossible to change key scenes without demolishing the entire book.

More than this, however, the decision to rewrite passages from Fleming and Dahl’s work attests to a complete unwillingness to engage with problematic art on its own terms. Dahl’s bigotry is not some disposable accoutrement to his writing; it is part of his holistic worldview, something that both informs and contradicts other parts of his work. His books are lauded for their dark and misanthropic stories. Why do we cherish them? What does that say about us? De-fanging his writing of offensive material promises to absolve the reader of these sorts of questions. In the modern era, a piece of art must not simply be good; it must also be morally upright and unproblematic. Art doesn’t work this way. It never has.

Excellent point. Left in its original state, literature tells us a great deal about the author, the era in which it was written, and ourselves (in our response to it). Much of that is lost when it has been rewritten with the aim of reflecting other mindsets and later eras.

[Courtenay]

That's a really good article, Anita — I was able to read the whole thing, despite not having a subscription. I also can't help wondering if the writer is onto something here too:

A cynical mind might also question the timing of the Bond news, just days after the Dahl revelations provoked frantic online consternation. You could hardly contrive a more high-profile marketing campaign than this; the announcement of a new unamended "Roald Dahl Classic Collection" is about as lucrative an act of appeasement as they come.

"Lucrative"... what an excellent word. Am I being too cynical altogether in now wondering if the top brass at Penguin had this "act of appeasement" already up their sleeves beforehand — that they knew these new edited editions would provoke a huge outcry, and then as soon as they have the public's incensed attention, they can now just go "Oh dear, we didn't mean to upset anyone... Look! It's all OK!! We'll keep the original versions in print as well, just so everyone's happy!" And now all of a sudden they've not only grabbed everyone's attention (no such thing as bad publicity, after all) — they've also just doubled the number of Roald Dahl books (already reliable cash cows) they can keep in print, with very little extra effort or expenditure. Genius.

[Boodi 2]

Gosh Courtenay, you may have a point there about a very clever marketing campaign!

[John Pickup]

It's a mad world out there! I saw a short piece about this in my mother-in-law's Daily Mail this morning. What's wrong with the BFG wearing a black coat? How can anyone possibly be offended by that? The answer is of course nobody is offended by it but in the febrile atmosphere of publishing today they can't run the slightest risk.

Excellent post. Just because 1% of the population are offended by something, publisher's have to alter words and text for ridiculous reasons.
I've got a black raincoat, how can that be offensive? The sooner we stop pandering to these whiners, the better.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Gosh Courtenay, you may have a point there about a very clever marketing campaign!

... and if "they" didn't think it up first, Courtenay could have herself a lucrative career in marketing

[Courtenay]

Now there's a thought. Any ideas for which classic author I should persuade "them" to bowdlerise next??

[Boodi 2]

What about George Orwell??? (I'm thinking of some of the scenes depicted in "Animal Farm")

[Courtenay]

With all this kerfuffle, has anyone mentioned whether or not they've edited one of the very few scenes in Roald Dahl with genuinely bad-taste racial references — the part in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator where the US President is trying to phone the President of China and gets someone talking in a silly stereotypical accent ("ten o'clock tlain no lunning today"), followed by a pun about "Wings and Wongs"?? If they've censored out terms like "black" (no matter what it refers to) and "horse face", but left that in, that possibly proves the edits were done by a robot...

[Fiona1986]

That's what I've been wondering, Courtenay. That's one of the bits I would approve of them changing.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It would be interesting to know how that passage has been dealt with.

I wasn't surprised to read a disturbing article in The Telegraph today ('There's only one way to protect yourself from the censors' by Zoe Strimpel), as I'd heard before of books being pulled altogether from Kindle or similar electronic devices (without buyers being given a refund). However, it still sent a shiver down my spine and made me glad that my attachment to physical books has prevented me ditching my collection in favour of electronic versions. The same applies to films and TV series - I'm pleased to have many of my favourites on DVD (though I worry about DVD-players becoming obsolete and I know it's unlikely I'll ever get round to putting the material on pen drives or similar - which themselves will one day be out of date). I'll provide a link to the piece in The Telegraph but will also quote the main paragraphs, as the article may not be available to non-subscribers:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/0 ... t-censors/

...let us not make the mistake of thinking we necessarily own our electronic caches. The songs, films and books we stream or buy and store online are merely leased to us courtesy of an internet connection.

Some Kindle readers discovered this last week. Those who had downloaded Roald Dahl’s books found, in the wake of a publishing-world freak-out about how mean and nasty Dahl’s stories are, that the originals had been automatically updated with new versions stripped of the fattism and sexism. In other words, all the things that were part and parcel of the books’ gleeful, magical, memorable terribleness were creepily replaced with the asinine language of the “sensitivity reader”.

It was a sobering lesson to those of us who lazily assumed we can jettison the world of physical objects for a digital super-store.

As the censorship of vast swathes of the pre-PC past is now underway, more beloved classics are going to be locked in the digital safe. Streaming services have already begun excising films and television programmes deemed “problematic”, or restricting who can watch them – including the likes of Gone With the Wind.

As far as Roald Dahl books are concerned, it's curious that this has happened when the publishers have said that they intend to keep the classic texts in print anyway, alongside the edited ones!

[Lucky Star]

Scary. One more excellent reason to buy actual books and keep them on a shelf.

[Courtenay]

Thanks, Anita. It turned out I could read the article as a non-subscriber, but there's not much more to it than what you've quoted. That is jolly scary and makes me glad, too, that I don't do e-books. That is, I'm not against them on principle but would never use them to replace my collection of printed books.

[Moonraker]

I don't think serious collector would consider selling his classic collection to replace with ebooks - unless maybe he was going into a nursing home. I mainly use my Kindle for free (monthly subscription) one-off books that I don't wish to keep, although I also have books that I have bought. I have no spare bookshelf capacity and I don't want to have numerous books of which to get rid every few weeks. I have had my kindle for too many years to remember, and have never had a book that I have paid for removed.

[Courtenay]

Well, obviously serious collectors (which would include most of us here) would never get rid of their printed books, particularly older ones. But with books that are still currently in print, it's quite disturbing to be reminded that e-book publishers can replace or possibly even outright delete the ones (you think) you owned in digital format.

Of course this is hardly the first time that books for children (or adults) have been edited to remove potentially offensive references. I didn't realise until I picked up an older edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, years ago, that in the original version the Oompa-Loompas were portrayed as dark-skinned pygmies from Africa — when they're first introduced, one of the main characters (I think Charlie or Grandpa Joe) goes so far as to comment "I think Mr Wonka has made them himself, out of chocolate!", before Mr Wonka gives the back story of how he rescued them from their homeland. On seeing that, I wasn't a bit surprised that it had been changed by the 1980s (when I first read the book) to have them come from "Loompaland", with no indication of where in the world that's supposed to be and no reference to their skin colour at all. On top of removing the patronising racial references, the revised text is actually a lot funnier than the original and I assume Dahl himself did the editing — it certainly reads like he did and it definitely happened during his lifetime (he was still around and still writing at the time I first read the book).

I'm not at all upset by that — genuinely problematic text being revised by the actual author, presumably after receiving complaints. But when it happens decades after the author's death, there's no way of knowing whether he or she would have written it differently if writing today. It also suggests readers aren't intelligent enough to recognise that times change and society's standards change, and to think about why that has happened and what brought those changes about. And when the editing is so clumsy and so totally unneeded as these recent changes to Dahl's books, it's just jaw-droppingly stupid.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I don't think serious collector would consider selling his classic collection to replace with ebooks - unless maybe he was going into a nursing home. I mainly use my Kindle for free (monthly subscription) one-off books that I don't wish to keep, although I also have books that I have bought. I have no spare bookshelf capacity and I don't want to have numerous books of which to get rid every few weeks. I have had my kindle for too many years to remember, and have never had a book that I have paid for removed.

I was thinking more along the lines of (for instance) a woman buying electronic versions of the books to share with young relatives (easier than travelling with physical copies if members of the family live some distance apart). The woman might have bought the books a while ago and have read them to various relatives, before returning to the stories at a later date to read them to the relatives' younger siblings or cousins. What a shock for her to find that the books on her device are no longer quite the same, but have been meddled with!

Reading is an intimate affair, and little details often matter very much to readers/listeners. What if the description of the black tractors meant a lot to the woman's family because they had black tractors on their own farm, heightening their connection to the narrative? What if certain phrases that were particularly enjoyed had become part of the family's vocabulary over the years, and the younger listeners were looking forward to hearing them in context? What if the woman had decided to read older books to the youngsters partly because she wanted to expand their vocabulary and help keep old-fashioned words and expressions (such as "chambermaid", "suet-pudding", "denizen" and "matron" - which have been changed to "cleaner", "pudding", "resident" and "nurse") alive? What if a child was interested in Roald Dahl as a person, and wanted to see what books had been chosen for Matilda Wormwood to read because the choices might shed some light on the authors that Dahl himself liked?

Just imagine taking down a book from your bookshelf and finding that words and phrases had been altered throughout! A truly horrifying thought!