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[News] Roald Dahl being updated for modern times
- Thread starter Is it PotG?
- Start date
- Aug 8, 2005
- 27,237
So will we be changing the wording in Mein Kampf?
Surely books, by their very nature are a view into the past. How that person felt about the world there and then. Changing them in whatever form is just distorting history. Yes you can say they are just childrens books, but they are still a part of history. You can't wipe out everything that happened in the past just because it isn't nice.
Surely books, by their very nature are a view into the past. How that person felt about the world there and then. Changing them in whatever form is just distorting history. Yes you can say they are just childrens books, but they are still a part of history. You can't wipe out everything that happened in the past just because it isn't nice.
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I know what I identify you as.Yes, but he - sorry, they - will identify it as a ....?
Coldeanseagull
Opinionated
So, fat blokes and ugly women? Sounds like the average night down the hungry years in the seventies
Nobby Cybergoat
Well-known member
- Jul 19, 2021
- 8,628
Well yeh, but children reading it today aren't reading it as a history lesson. I read all these books to my lads when they were age approx 5 to 7 and they would have been oblivious to whether the text is 100 years old or brand new. The kids just want the story.
TomandJerry
Well-known member
- Oct 1, 2013
- 12,323
I'm sorry but that's a disgusting comment.
JJ McClure
Go Jags
As long as Boggis, Bunce and Bean are still getting tanked up on cider its fine by me.
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
Any publicity is good publicity, eh?
aolstudios
Well-known member
Seems like a fair solution...
clapham_gull
Legacy Fan
- Aug 20, 2003
- 25,877
Quite racist in truth. Their description was updated in a new edition (by the author himself) in that "politically correct" year of 1972.
Roald Dahl has long been controversial and updated before.
MattBackHome
Well-known member
- Jul 7, 2003
- 11,876
Yeah this isn't a culture wars debate; it's just a shite idea, executed in a hilariously shite way.
It doesn't attend to any of Dahl's horrendous views (worse, it absolves them, by omission) and lots of the changes don't make sense.
I say this as someone who LOVED RD as a kid, and has recently reread most of his childrens' oeuvre and found it all a bit hit and miss. The first half of The Twits is just about as good as any book could ever be, IMO. Fantasic Mr Fox, Dirty Beasts, Enormous Croc and Revolting Rhymes, all incredible. James and the Giant Peach is tosh, Charlie... has also lost it's lustre.
Anyway, as Huxley said of Brave New World in the decades after it was first published "best to leave ill and well alone, and think about something else."
It doesn't attend to any of Dahl's horrendous views (worse, it absolves them, by omission) and lots of the changes don't make sense.
I say this as someone who LOVED RD as a kid, and has recently reread most of his childrens' oeuvre and found it all a bit hit and miss. The first half of The Twits is just about as good as any book could ever be, IMO. Fantasic Mr Fox, Dirty Beasts, Enormous Croc and Revolting Rhymes, all incredible. James and the Giant Peach is tosh, Charlie... has also lost it's lustre.
Anyway, as Huxley said of Brave New World in the decades after it was first published "best to leave ill and well alone, and think about something else."
Pavilionaire
Well-known member
- Jul 7, 2003
- 31,273
Watch out Shakespeare then. From Shakespeare scholar Emma Smith:
"Fat, dodgy, cash-strapped, self-interested Falstaff. In inventing this anti-hero, Shakespeare had launched a cultural phenomenon that he milked in two further plays: the success of 1 Henry IV was the success of Falstaff.
So what made Falstaff so compelling? Why did Elizabethans recognize Falstaffs in the world around them, when they did not, for example, see Hamlets? Why did this character come alive for audiences in a way that no other Shakespearean character did? Crucial to Falstaff ’s characterization is his morbid obesity. Hal’s first words to him in the play’s second scene call him ‘fat- witted’ (1.2.2), and there is constant banter about his appetite for food and drink. Other names for Falstaff reiterate his size: ‘fat- guts’ (2.2.31), ‘whoreson round man’ (2.5.140), ‘fat rogue’ (2.5.548), ‘a gross fat man’ ‘as fat as butter’ (2.5.517). ‘How long is’t ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee?’ goads Hal, as Falstaff blames sighs and griefs for blowing him up like a bladder (2.5. 330– 31).
"Fat, dodgy, cash-strapped, self-interested Falstaff. In inventing this anti-hero, Shakespeare had launched a cultural phenomenon that he milked in two further plays: the success of 1 Henry IV was the success of Falstaff.
So what made Falstaff so compelling? Why did Elizabethans recognize Falstaffs in the world around them, when they did not, for example, see Hamlets? Why did this character come alive for audiences in a way that no other Shakespearean character did? Crucial to Falstaff ’s characterization is his morbid obesity. Hal’s first words to him in the play’s second scene call him ‘fat- witted’ (1.2.2), and there is constant banter about his appetite for food and drink. Other names for Falstaff reiterate his size: ‘fat- guts’ (2.2.31), ‘whoreson round man’ (2.5.140), ‘fat rogue’ (2.5.548), ‘a gross fat man’ ‘as fat as butter’ (2.5.517). ‘How long is’t ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee?’ goads Hal, as Falstaff blames sighs and griefs for blowing him up like a bladder (2.5. 330– 31).
There is a word for it - bowlderisation. This dates back to Thomas Bowlder who in 1807 first published a 'family' version of Shakespeare with all the nasty bits removed. So it's not a new phenomena, the only difference being is that it always used to be viewed as being a bit of 'off': taking a piece of someone else's art and editing it to meet your own values and prejudices. Now it's accepted, even seen as 'progressive'.
As you can probably tell I'm opposed. No one has the right to edit Dahl's work without his permission, and as he's dead that won't be forthcoming. I accept that times and values change, and if his work is offensive then let it drop out of print (as Philip Pullman has suggested) and replace it with new books written by modern authors who are more in tune with the times.
PS: Whilst I'm opposed to retrospective censorship I never liked his work - or him.
As you can probably tell I'm opposed. No one has the right to edit Dahl's work without his permission, and as he's dead that won't be forthcoming. I accept that times and values change, and if his work is offensive then let it drop out of print (as Philip Pullman has suggested) and replace it with new books written by modern authors who are more in tune with the times.
PS: Whilst I'm opposed to retrospective censorship I never liked his work - or him.
not really , they cost the NHS billions and its unfair on kids . Everyone has a choice. It shouldn't be encouraged. Digressing off the thread though
JamesAndTheGiantHead
Well-known member
“References to colours have also been changed - the BFG's coat is no longer black; while Mary in The BFG now goes "still as a statue" instead of "white as a sheet"
Greg Bobkin
Silver Seagull
- May 22, 2012
- 16,062
I can't work up the energy to even think about why people are bothered about this. In a world where people are struggling to heat, feed and cloth themselves with their own money – while, at the same time, acknowledging that people can worry about more than one thing at a time – I simply couldn't give a shite about some words being changed in a book.
The people who are 'offended' by the changes are probably the least likely to every pick up a RD publication anyway! And if they are that bothered, order an old one online – they've been out for decades, I'm sure there will be loads available. Maybe from the people who don't like the original words.
The people who are 'offended' by the changes are probably the least likely to every pick up a RD publication anyway! And if they are that bothered, order an old one online – they've been out for decades, I'm sure there will be loads available. Maybe from the people who don't like the original words.
- Aug 8, 2005
- 27,237
Perfect post. This isn't about whether you agree or disagree with his views. This is about fairly representing his works. He is a world famous author, has sold millions of books. Who are we to re-write them? It's not right. As others have said if the publishers want to put a forward in to say when the books were written and the context of that time then fine, but don't re-write them. It isn't right.
There is so much frothing of the mouths from white, 50+ right wingers that the PM has made a statement on the editing. Rather than concentrating on the Northern Ireland protocol, he knows how to play to the sort of people who’ll be voting for him. They are much more concerned with the word ‘enormous’ replacing the work ‘fat’ in Dahl’s books than holding the government to account for its absolute failure in almost every area it touches.
Fanning the culture war is the only way the Tories can get back in.
Fanning the culture war is the only way the Tories can get back in.