The woke brigade mucking about with Roald Dahl

[Twit 2]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-to-remove-language-deemed-offensive

Hmm. Think this is a very bad idea. Surely they should just have an explanatory preface for this: "This book has attitudes and language from a different time which you may not agree with." Give context and let people make their own minds up. Rewriting stuff like this is paternalistic and censorious.

And besides, children engage with the glee of stuff like "Mr Twit was a rancid unwashed cunt who liked to abuse monkeys."

Roald-discuss.

[Kankurette]

The absolute worst is Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, it is racist as fuck but the best thing to do is just explain to kids that this was written in a time when casual racism was more acceptable than it is now.

I find it pretty patronising tbh. Just leave them as they are. Tell your kids not to make personal remarks.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

The absolute worst is Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, it is racist as fuck

I remember something in that about the US President and a phone call to some dimwitted, pidgin-speaking Chinese official that would be very dodgy nowadays.

[Kankurette]

I can understand the author themselves doing it, like Anne Fine editing books like The Granny Project because the grandma in it used the word 'piccaninnies' and made a comment about a black family being behind the door when G-d ironed the hair out, and while the kids in the book find it funny, nowadays it would come across as racist. They're her books, she can do what she likes. But I dunno, someone editing words like 'fat' out of Roald Dahl books bothers me. It's not on a par with editing golliwogs or the n-word out of Enid Blyton books.

[BlodwynPig]

Tales of the Expected

[Mr Vegetables]

The idea of a sensitivity group looking at the Oompa Loompas, a group of people from abroad who are now indentured workers paid in beans – but it is okay, because they like it – and thinking "they need to be gender inclusive" is, well, it feels like it's missing the dicey bit of it all

[Pink Gregory]

Book sales slowing down then, eh Puffin?

Maybe you could invest in some other talent that can write *new* stories for children?

Who on earth would think this was a good idea, made to fit for the culture war, maybe that's the point.

Will the editors be credited?  Who owns Dahl's writing?  Is this just for publicity?

Hang about...the source is a report from the Telegraph.  Is it even true?

[bgmnts]

What I've always wanted to know is who actually wants this strange censorship?

[Pink Gregory]

What I've always wanted to know is who actually wants this strange censorship?

presumably Dahl's writing had garnered a bit of a reputation and seeing as he's both worm food and a bestselling writer his stuff is a bit of a cash cow, so Puffin are trying to keep the sales going?

I would question who's buying new Roald Dahl books, surely they're in every library and charity shop and bookshelf up and down the land?

Funny what you can explain by 'woke culture' you can also explain better by capitalism.

[Dr Rock]

Hang about...the source is a report from the Telegraph.  Is it even true?

Best to assume it's not.

[bgmnts]

presumably Dahl's writing had garnered a bit of a reputation and seeing as he's both worm food and a bestselling writer his stuff is a bit of a cash cow, so Puffin are trying to keep the sales going?

I would question who's buying new Roald Dahl books, surely they're in every library and charity shop and bookshelf up and down the land?

Funny what you can explain by 'woke culture' you can also explain better by capitalism.

Honestly my conspiracy brain goes are they just deliverability making it as stupid and annoying as possible to then equate this to actual meaningful progressive change. It's just too stupid and pointless otherwise.

And I suppose this is coming from someone fat and ugly, so I guess I'm the kind of person who should be finding it offensive? Fuck knows.

Do hate this shit though.

[Dayraven]

The idea of a sensitivity group looking at the Oompa Loompas, a group of people from abroad who are now indentured workers paid in beans – but it is okay, because they like it – and thinking "they need to be gender inclusive" is, well, it feels like it's missing the dicey bit of it all

The Oompa Loompas have been edited once already — they were black in the original text and illustrations, changed to hippie-ish and white later on, which had the effect of making them more abstract fantasy people rather than the much more direct caricatures they were originally. (The change came after the original film, which also did something similar.)

[Bennett Brauer]

Hang about...the source is a report from the Telegraph.  Is it even true?

The story's true - it's in the Telegraph just because it was their staff that were the first to bother trawling through every 2001 edition to compare them with the new ones.
There's a list of all the changes in every book of the new Puffin editions in this article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/17/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-offensive-matilda-witches-twits/#the-twits but you have to register for free to read it - unless someone knows how to mirror it.

[Pink Gregory]

The Oompa Loompas have been edited once already — they were black in the original text and illustrations, changed to hippie-ish and white later on, which had the effect of making them more abstract fantasy people rather than the much more direct caricatures they were originally. (The change came after the original film, which also did something similar.)

I just read that it was A - during his lifetime and B - with his consent (or maybe even his decision)

Interesting if so.

[Mister Six]

I generally disagree with changing an author's text without their permission/involvement - even more so when they have a voice as unique as Dahl's. Unless maybe the original version remains available too.

Mind you, when I read Matilda to Mrs Six last year (look, she never got bedtime stories as a kid, all right?), I did edit some of the excessive fatphobia/mean-spirited stuff about Matilda's mum on the fly.

They should probably do the same with JK Rowling's Harry Potter books, of course, which turned into a limp imitation of Dahl whenever a malevolent fatty loomed into view.

All that said, if they are going to start mucking with the books, maybe they can import the subplot about the rival sweetie-makee from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film into the book, because the original novel is shapeless, boring shit without it.

[Swift]

Awful, awful stuff. I can understand removing overtly racist stuff from kids books (my default preference would be to leave books as they are, but I'd probably end up self editing them myself if reading to a kid) but all of the changes here are nonsense. The oompa loompas are all men? Gotta make sure they're gender neutral now says some no name knobhead.

As for who's asking for this? I was surprised to see a post on here this week wishing for an edited version of Airplane with the dodgier jokes removed. There are people out there.

[Dayraven]

The oompa loompas are all men? Gotta make sure they're gender neutral now says some no name knobhead.

That one does seem to be more of a modern-usage edit, for what it's worth, as it's less common now to use 'men' to refer to a group with both men and women.

[Mister Six]

I wonder if this is just a false flag thing, and they'll "bow to popular demand" by restoring the originals after a bit, like Coco Pops pretended to do with the faux rebranding to Choco Puffs or whatever it was.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Best to assume it's not.

Exactly.

Although would anyone really have noticed the changes (if they have happened) if they hadn't been pointed out? The intent of Dahl's text surely remains the same. Telling me that Matilda read (and, presumably, enjoyed) Jane Austen rather than Rudyard Kipling doesn't exactly shatter the book's message.

[madhair60]

my favourite response to this was someone saying "keep the text the same but add a disclaimer saying that he was a cunt"

[RetroRobot]

I mean maybe taking fatphobia out of kids books isn't a bad thing at all????

[RetroRobot]

I mean maybe taking fatphobia out of kids books isn't a bad thing at all????

I'd probably agree with folks here if it wasn't a book for children who are famously impressionable and also terrible, I dunno. Teaching kids to hate or mock people that are unlike them doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Sorry.

[Noodle Lizard]

Honestly

All that said, if they are going to start mucking with the books, maybe they can import the subplot about the rival sweetie-makee from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film into the book, because the original novel is shapeless, boring shit without it.

Yeah, I'd never read the book until reading it with my stepson and was shocked that the ending is basically "you're the last one standing, good job, here's a chocolate factory". It needs Slugworth! The Tim Burton adaptation also felt it necessary to add something in there to justify the ending, but that bollocks with Wonka and his dad was somehow even worse than nothing at all.

More pertinently to the thread, I was also a bit surprised to find that the Oompa-Loompas in the books were basically just pygmies rather than fantasy orange men, but I don't think that really registers to a child unless you point it out and explain it. I do wonder if sometimes it's better not to highlight things like that when it's not related to imitable behaviour, but I dunno. My instinct is always to leave original works alone regardless, and "hiding" things doesn't quite send the right message.

[Brundle-Fly]

Do disclaimers in print always work though? They are a bit like Terms & Conditions. Hardly anybody ever reads them.

[Bennett Brauer]

You have to see the full list of differences to see that some are harder to understand than others.

In The Witches, the section where Dahl is talking about what makes a witch and who a witch might be, "Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman" has been changed to "Even if she is working as a top scientist or running a business".

First, women are still the majority of cashiers in supermarkets, and probably the majority of PA/secretaries who type letters for men are women too. Is the amendment implying that those are demeaning jobs? But anyway, the point of that part of the book is to say that women can be secretly witches when they are in innocuous and unremarkable jobs. The new version seems to change that meaning for no good reason.

[PlanktonSideburns]

the warning should be

"Much like today, some people were TWATS in the past, bear that in mind when you read this cunts book"

[Kankurette]

And what's wrong with working in a supermarket?

[Bennett Brauer]

Exactly. As far as I can see it's only been changed to say to girls that they don't have to settle for low status loser jobs, they're better than that. Patronising, and irrelevant to the context.

Anyway, I'm not really Team Dahl so here's Kingsley Amis talking about the old sod in his memoirs. The last line still makes me laugh.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Exactly. As far as I can see it's only been changed to say to girls that they don't have to settle for low status loser jobs, they're better than that. Patronising, and irrelevant to the context.

Anyway, I'm not really Team Dahl so here's Kingsley Amis talking about the old sod in his memoirs. The last line still makes me laugh.

This line makes me laugh too!

Never mind, the little bastards'd swallow it.'

[Mister Six]

Exactly. As far as I can see it's only been changed to say to girls that they don't have to settle for low status loser jobs, they're better than that. Patronising, and irrelevant to the context.

Anyway, I'm not really Team Dahl so here's Kingsley Amis talking about the old sod in his memoirs. The last line still makes me laugh.

Proper guffaw at the end of that. Nicking this for the middlebrow books thread.