Censorship or rewriting ?

We have been discussing Dahl here not Little Black Sambo which I have never read.
I dispute having words changed eg 'black' cloak. I wear black trousers sometimes. What do you suggest changing that to.
Your inference GagaJo that some of us are accepting racism/ antisemitism is not acceptable. You couldn't be more wrong in my case for reasons I don't wish to reveal.

I don't know anyone who reads every book they give their children before buying it, or who buys it then reads it to themselves before reading it to their children - life's too short.
It's reasonable, therefore, to assume that something on sale in the children's section of a mainstream bookshop will be suitable for children, surely? Wyllow that illustration is shocking! I would not have been happy for my children to have a book with that in it, so I'm pleased that someone censored it 20 years before they were born.

Roald Dhal is for quite young children, of an age when parents are likely to want to have an input into what is influencing children. I can't say I worried about mine reading RD, which they did at school, but that doesn't mean that there is nothing wrong with it, and I'm not going to defend it because I didn't pick up on problems at the time, like my own mother used to about Little Black Mambo. She's right that it didn't 'harm' me, but I didn't want my children reading that sort of thing. If this generation of parents don't want their kids reading about someone being 'enormously fat', or tractors being menacingly black-looking', that's fine with me.

I've seen the autocorrect but I meant the book referred to in the post that crossed with this one. I'm not going to repeat the corrected word.

Anyway, if anyone is interested, when they were small, I used to get my children books from Letterbox Library as we lived in a very 'white' middle class town, and I wanted them to be aware, even at second hand, that there were children with different lifestyles from theirs. I knew I could trust the books not to be offensive (although I haven't seen them for a long time, and that may no longer be true - I don't know their stance on gender, for instance). They didn't push a political point of view at all - they just had very ordinary stories featuring children who were cared for, or who had two mums, or were dual heritage, or whatever. It wasn't always Daddy who went to work, and not everyone lived in large houses with gardens. Otherwise the stories were not about race or sexuality etc - they just normalised different lifestyles with no fuss or attempts to influence things.

My goodness...how quick to censor funny books but how slow to censor the disgusting and appalling stuff that many young people read on the internet.

Skydancer

My goodness...how quick to censor funny books but how slow to censor the disgusting and appalling stuff that many young people read on the internet.

I agree. The internet is more harmful to young minds than Dahl's books could ever be.

And it is minorities that always always suffer the most when control of speech becomes acceptable.

Freedom of speech is essential in a civilised society.

My son writes children’s books for Penguin/Puffin. A couple of years ago he was given a ‘sensitive editor’ who absolutely watered down his fast moving adventure story. He was so upset and made a complaint that her edition of his book totally ruined it. He clearly got through to them how he felt and his usual editor took over and it was restored to its original form. What a relief for us all.

He says if great authors like Anthony Horowitz can be censored no one is safe.

Bowdlerisation. I think it’s been done to get us to buy more books and scrap the “inappropriate” and “offensive” texts.
They should be as the author wrote them. They are of their time.
If the words are controversial then discuss it with the reader (or listener). If the language is not acceptable today, then they will not be read and we will move on.
Some of the proposed changes affect the literary devices Dahl used (eg ferocious female changed to ferocious woman) Some ruin the deliberately “naughty” language Dahl chose and which children love. Some changes make the previously colourful language just plain boring.
It’ll be self defeating anyway and probably speed up the decline in Dahl’s popularity.

If you were paid to look for ‘sensitive’ phrases and passages in books you would find them.

NanKate

My son writes children’s books for Penguin/Puffin. A couple of years ago he was given a ‘sensitive editor’ who absolutely watered down his fast moving adventure story. He was so upset and made a complaint that her edition of his book totally ruined it. He clearly got through to them how he felt and his usual editor took over and it was restored to its original form. What a relief for us all.

He says if great authors like Anthony Horowitz can be censored no one is safe.

I'm glad your son got his original work published.

GagaJo

It seems to me that some on this thread are skirting somewhat close to wishing for a return to the 'good old days' where rampant racism, anti semitism, sexism and downright bigotry were allowed and part of everyday life under the guise of freedom of speech.

A person telling a racist/rape/anti semitic joke is showing who they really are.

Dahl wrote racist and anti semitic caricatures because he was an anti semite and a racist. I don't want my grandchildren growing up thinking those attitudes are acceptable.

If we don't teach anti racism and we allow children to read racist/sexist books and watch it on TV/in movies, it becomes their reality. The reality of a 60/70/80 year old grandparent is very different to that of a 10 year old child. The books we read with them should reflect modern attitudes. Not a racist past.

It's not the case that people want a return to the "good old days" and I think that anyone telling racist etc jokes should not get away with it. One might lose a few friends in the process but would you still want to be friends with them?

We used to receive emails from someone we knew that were decidedly racist (this was since moving to France in 2009). My DH responded politely and said we didn't want to receive such emails. We never heard anything further and, if we saw him in the supermarket he would ignore us.

During the next two months our local cinema will be showing broadcasts from the Royal Ballet of Cinderella and The Sleeping Beauty. These are considered by some people to be sexist. Do you think that they are? I can see where they are coming from but don't think that they should be cancelled/banned.

"The reality of a 60/70/80 year old grandparent is very different to that of a 10 year old child. The books we read with them should reflect modern attitudes. Not a racist past."

I take issue with this statement. I saw Disney cartoons, went to pantomimes and the circus, had a gollywog, read Grimms Fairy Tales etc etc. Because I am 76 does not mean that I still have the ideas/morals/opinions that I had when I was a child. Most of us change throughout our lives.

In the late 60s we had a Guyanan friend from whom we bought dope. He and we referred to certain others of the same skin colour using the playing card euphemism. It was common parlance then and we weren't being racist but the word fell out of use fairly quickly.

Times change and most of us move with the changes. That does not mean that we should obliterate everything that came before.

Any form of re-writing or censorship of any author's work - whether you like that work or not - is nothing less than what the Nazis were doing, so therefore a kind of fascism. What next, book burning?

Fanny
You changed the word slut shame on you 😥 it’s one of my favourites. I often use it to friends and family. Not in the sense it’s usually used in. 😄

Yes. I thought that ‘slut’ was archaic.
So I changed it to ‘slag’
(Oh, what have I said!)

Yes. I thought that ‘slut’ was archaic

It used to mean someone who didn't scrub her doorstep with a donkey stone.

You know, her along the road

Like so many words, its meaning has changed over the years.

Language evolves and the English Language is a thing of great beauty.

Some youngsters call anything great/good bad I assume literature will not be altered to accommodate this.

Yes I know it’s ridiculous, but so is altering an authors words/work.

I’ve been a bit bothered by the use of ‘woke’ as a derogatory term in this thread, so I’ve asked dictionaries and wikepedia.
A dictionary definition of woke is alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination
The phrase stay woke emerged in the 1930’s often referring to an awareness of the social and political issues affecting African Americans. Following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Alabama, Black Lives Matter used the phrase seeking to raise awareness about police shooting African Americans.
The term spread after it increasingly was used by white people, often to signal support for BLM
by 2020 many right wing activists and commentators in western countries were using woke in an ironic way, as an insult for perceived leftist ideologies. So in turn woke became perceived as an offensive term with negative associations to those who promote political ideas involving identity and race

Proud to be woke.

The Dahl Foundation no longer own the copyright to Dahl's work - Netflix does. Enough said.

Better to put a disclaimer on books, as they do on films and radio shows, etc, that the language used was from a different era. They could do a post-script to detail how differently we view some of these ‘offensive’ terms and ask them to discuss them with parents/teachers/friends.
The changes they’ve suggested are fairly mad. Enormous instead of fat?

As doodledog said earlier, Shizam, Augustus is not described as ‘enormous’ instead of fat, but is described as 'enormous' instead of enormously fat.

My first words on reading the article were OMG. - I think most of you have said what I feel, but having followed US politics ever since the egregious Trump was elected and all that followed, I’m now horrified watching Ron DeSantis banning books all over Florida - I pray this so called ‘wokeness’ is not going to creep into the UK …. Statue breaking and now ‘sensitivity’ editing etc etc, are ridiculous - each were ‘of their time’ and we should be teaching the young the history and to discuss WHY certain things now derided were then lauded, and what their opinions are - not just alter things, break things and pretend they never existed! No wonder no one learns from History!

Ridiculous - i don't agree with censorship.

The French publishers of Dahl's books aren't changing anything.

suelld

My first words on reading the article were OMG. - I think most of you have said what I feel, but having followed US politics ever since the egregious Trump was elected and all that followed, I’m now horrified watching Ron DeSantis banning books all over Florida - I pray this so called ‘wokeness’ is not going to creep into the UK …. Statue breaking and now ‘sensitivity’ editing etc etc, are ridiculous - each were ‘of their time’ and we should be teaching the young the history and to discuss WHY certain things now derided were then lauded, and what their opinions are - not just alter things, break things and pretend they never existed! No wonder no one learns from History!

I pray this so called ‘wokeness’ is not going to creep into the UK

The books that DeSantis wants to ban are those that would be more likely to appeal to "woke" individuals. This is not 'wokeness' - it is out and out censorship. Groups like "Moms for Liberty" are not trying to change attitudes towards racism, sexism, etc... they are endorsing them!