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Post by The Doctor on Feb 18, 2023 21:55:30 GMT
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Post by Pinwig on Feb 18, 2023 22:29:22 GMT
Changes to children's books have happened for a long time for similar reasons. Enid Blyton's books were edited thirty years ago to change things like names - Fanny was one, and I recall a school was called Gaylands that became Graylands. Then ten years ago they started rewriting the actual text to remove outdated stereotypes. Rev. Awdry's railway books have had changes too. Physical punishments given to naughty children were toned down and a use of the n word was (rightly) removed.
Simpler things happen too in reprints. In Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz, published around 1999 if I recall, the main character spends time playing on his N64. Ten years later that had changed to a more current console.
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Feb 19, 2023 5:50:59 GMT
I'd say it's right to do it in young children's editions of books, so that classic works can continue to be read by young children, like TV has always cut offensive language out of films broadcast before the watershed. But they should say "younger children's version" clearly on the cover, and the original versions should remain available to adults, just not in the young children's section of bookshops/libraries.
Otherwise it's rewriting history and giving future generations a false version of how English was used at the time. It would be wrong, for example, to edit the n-word out of the dialogue in non-children's editions of Mark Twain stories. If you did that, future generations would not realise how widely the word was once used, and how white society (even those writers who were admirably anti-racist by the standards of the time) once viewed race. Likewise with historical gender stereotypes.
Martin
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Post by The Doctor on Feb 20, 2023 11:06:04 GMT
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Post by Bogatan on Feb 20, 2023 15:30:32 GMT
Broadly I agree with making the changes, theres nothing lost by removing a link between "dumb" characters or baddies with being over weight. But in other areas I do worry that down playing the racism or bigotry (or physical punishments etc) of a time is not, in the long term, a good idea.
For that reason I agree with Martin making the originals completely unavailable (besides the literally millions of previously printed books) is questionable.
Its the reason Im not comfortable with Disney pretending they never made Songs of the South. I've never watched it (that I remember) and really have little interest in doing so, but pretending it never happened does little to help show the issues of both the films setting and time of its making.
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Post by The Doctor on Feb 24, 2023 15:22:56 GMT
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Post by Bogatan on Feb 24, 2023 15:24:21 GMT
this seems like pretty good take on the topic. link |
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Feb 24, 2023 18:26:29 GMT
That was always going to happen, the cynic in me feels this has been artificially stoked to drive interest for this and sales. |
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Post by The Doctor on Feb 26, 2023 18:43:40 GMT
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Post by legios on Feb 27, 2023 12:56:23 GMT
That was always going to happen, the cynic in me feels this has been artificially stoked to drive interest for this and sales. I do tend to agree. This way they get to manufacture a bit of outrage, then market a different set of the product to people who might be inclined to purchase them so they can "own the libs" and who likely wouldn't have bought them anyway. The capitalist system is very good at weaponising outrage as a marketing tool and it wouldn't surprise me if this is exactly what is going on. Karl |
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Feb 27, 2023 19:15:03 GMT
Making multiple versions available is fine. But we need to be alert to any hint of Newspeak. There's not a big leap from renaming Fat Bastard, the Austin Powers character, as Big-Boned Man Born Out of Wedlock, to calling a war of invasion a Special Military Operation. Martin |
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Post by The Doctor on Mar 28, 2023 14:11:25 GMT
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Nigel
Fusilateral Quintro Combiner
Posts: 5,094
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Post by Nigel on Mar 28, 2023 16:31:56 GMT
Though I was aware of the Dahl changes (but not the Fleming), that Christie article is actually the first I've read on the matter. I would hope that in context, the changes make more sense than they do as standalone sentences that the article uses as examples. The removed, "Such lovely white teeth" certainly doesn't appear offensive in isolation! "Their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses," I assume refers to particularly to African features, so I can see why that could be considered racist but its removal does leave the resulting text rather flat (and grammatically questionable). As for "natives", again, I asssume it's down to context but on the face of it, it doesn't seem to make sense to replace "natives" with "local": I'm native to Wales, I'm not local to Wales.
I see in this article that Puffin is actually continuing to publish the original Dahl versions alongside the modern edits, which seems a sensible approach. The examples here seem rather more nonsensical than the Christie changes. The Witches can no longer be described as having big noses because it's apparently antisemitic; firstly, I don't remember the witches being of any ethnicity and secondly, by extension, does that mean we can no longer say anyone has a big nose, regardless of physicality of their conk? Oompa Loompas are now small people than small men but surely there weren't any female Oompa Loompas?
The James Bond example: the newly-written sentence seems an entirely different meaning to the original. But at least the new editions are using disclaimers to explain the language and attitudes - but apparently also changing the text anyway!
I can understand why publishers are modifying texts but readers really need to be able to comprehend that they're reading something from another time, when attitudes, language and meaning were different. In fact, I find it creates a better understanding to read something from another time, an opportunity to learn how attitudes and language have changed. I well remember reading as an older child either a Narnia or Blyton book that described children going around making love to people, which taught me that the meaning of the expression had changed over time from being friendly to sexual intercourse; it wouldn't surprise me to find that this sentence had been changed in modern editions.
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Post by blueshift on Mar 28, 2023 17:44:45 GMT
I get it for the most part but at the same time some of that bond stuff quoted feels like the editor is trying to write their own bits rather than tweak a word or so
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