I imagine people (aka customers) were getting uncomfortable reading their kids children’s books that talked about how Willy Wonka enslaved the Oompa-Loompa tribe and shipped them over in packing crates. While people will portray this as censorship, what I see is a for-profit company relentlessly optimizing for book sales at any cost.
No: I am not defending it. I am just explaining it.
Of course there is always the simple and obvious (it was a marketing stunt dummies):
>"The rise in demand has been even more extreme at Wob, an online seller with a reported catalogue of two million. It has seen a 600 per cent surge in sales of Roald Dahl compared to the week before, while the author accounts for eight of the 10 top-selling children’s books since Saturday. Not bad for someone who died more than three decades ago."
No, I am actually explaining it. Publishing houses want to make money. You make money on popular children’s books that parents have nostalgia for. Parents want children’s books to be safe and unproblematic. There is always going to be a financial temptation to make these goals align, even at the cost of tampering with classic literature. Not sure why this is even surprising.
> Parents want children’s books to be safe and unproblematic.
No. All these books were fine for countless decades until the woke fad. By your own logic they would simply switch to trendy "unproblematic" books instead of continuing to sell classics -- but that would mean having actual principles. Also it would also mean going broke.
There are no masses of people getting bent out of shape about Oompa-Loompas demanding edits. Everybody knows and agrees those candy midgets had it coming.
This woke "fad" apparently began in 1973 when Dahl re-wrote the book to recast the Oompa-Loompas in a less racist manner. I don't know how old you are, but it's likely that the "classic book most people read as a child" is actually the rewrite. https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Roald_Dahl_and_Philo...
You're showing a lot of recency bias. There's no "woke fad as we know it". There have always been people advocating for social issues, just because the latest wave is the one that's the most prominent in your mind doesn't make it any more special than the others.
Please stop saying "cope". It's a meaningless ad hominem, you're accusing GP of living in denial of something and trying to "cope" with it. Very dismissive.
Sorry, just to be clear, the thing you're responding to isn't a troll proposigin a hypothetical, the Oompa-Loompa story got edited several times decades ago, in the decade after release. The edition you read growing up is an edited edition. This actually literally happened already.
It's fine if you retroactively disagree with this and wish you had time traveled back to undo the SJWs of the 1970s before they could start. I am not personally interested in litigating whether or not publishers should edit books. I don't care about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it wasn't a book I read often growing up and I don't care for either movie. I care least of all about what you think of a book. You do you, random stranger on the internet.
Your own link: Dahl found himself sympathizing with their concerns and published a revised edition -- that's great. His book, he can do what he wants.
Publishers editing books of their own accord after the author is dead to please imaginary mobs -- something else entirely. Not great. Bad. Very bad. Regardless of the type of edit or politics involved.
> Publishers editing books of their own accord after the author is dead to please imaginary mobs -- something else entirely.
In what sense? The ownership of the copyright is the ownership of the right to create derivative works and refrain from publishing the original. That's the law and the whole of the law.
I'm sorry but I want history to be safe and unproblematic. The 1860s and slavery are very upsetting to me, it is best not to discuss such things even in allegory or as something to learn from - We must erase the things I find upsetting from the history books and only reference them in the manner which I can cope with.
> it's a reflection of the fact that the stories we tell children change to reflect our values.
Great, as a parent you are free to read whatever books reflect your values to your children.
If the plight of the fictional Oompa Loompas (I don't recall slavery being justified in the book, but hey, your interpretation is as good as any, that's the wonderful thing about books) is upsetting to you -- do not read or expose your kids to it.
Expose them to books that reflect your values. Or even write new ones if you have any talent.
Editing existing books in this manner is never necessary or justified.
At the end of the day, my opinion of the content, and yours, are irrelevant to the publisher. We're drops in the bucket.
Sales are relevant, and sales are down. Another version that sells better has no impact on the copy on your shelf.
(... and if they can goose sales by generating market buzz via controversy, more power to them. A tip of my hat to playing folks like us against each other to put coin in their pockets. ;) ).
No: I am not defending it. I am just explaining it.