Being aware of content shown to children is fine (although by the time they're a young adult, I would argue most content is appropriate literature).
Encouraging the sort of thought police present here sets off all sorts of alarm bells.
I would argue this idea is fundamentally contrarian to a true liberal value set.
Being liberal (in the traditional sense) means being willing to engage with all sorts of content - especially content that you might not agree with.
Simply disagreeing with content is a poor, poor excuse for removing it from the public space. Instead it should be countered with a compelling set of ideas that help the public understand why you don't agree with it.
Basically - policing books like this is WRONG. It's exactly the same thought process that leads to people calling for the ban of books they don't like. It's an authoritarian thought process that doesn't actually provide a compelling argument against an idea to win - instead it claims victory by removing any trace of the argument in the first place.
It's whitewashing in the extreme. It's the good intention that paves the road to Fahrenheit 451. It's a fucking disgrace of an approach.
If you don't like what those books say... buckle up and explain that to your kids. Don't hide it from them. You aren't doing them any favors that way.
>Encouraging the sort of thought police present here sets off all sorts of alarm bells.
What is the difference between "thought police" and simple editing?
For example, if I wrote a book and used a word like "gypped", I would appreciate an editor saying "Change this word to something like 'swindled'. 'Gypped' is derived from 'Gypsy' and is inherently an insult to the Romani people." Is that the editor being the "thought police" or them doing their job well?
Is the objection to the Dahl changes simply that this is happening after the books were already published?
After having read some of the changes, it seems to me more about language policing than offense reduction. For example,all references to black and white have been removed. The BFG no longer wears a black cape. The color of the cape wasn't removed because how could a black cape possibly offend? It was removed because of the ongoing Mao-styled cultural revolution.
And why did the Cloud-men become Cloud-people? Why is it sexist to call a group of men men? Why was the Trunchbul's description changed from horse face to just face? How does that help? Some people are ugly. It's a byproduct of the genetic lottery.
Overall I think sensitivity training is nonsense. All it does is force people to censor themselves before speaking at the risk of getting canceled. From your example: I'm not a gypsy, but even if I was don't you think the correct reading of that would be something akin to, "Gypsies in the past used to swindle, but now we can be cognizant of that behavior and not do it, thus being a better version of ourselves." I don't see why offense would necessarily be taken. Getting offended by reminders of the past that we didn't even live seem like nonsense to me.
>I'm not a gypsy, but even if I was don't you think the correct reading of that would be something akin to, "Gypsies in the past used to swindle, but now we can be cognizant of that behavior and not do it, thus being a better version of ourselves."
I'm not going to go through every example you mentioned because this comment shows the exact problem with that. You are putting the origin of the term on some fault with the Romani people. Have you examined why that is? Are you sure that they did actually swindle people more than other groups? If they did, why did they do it? Was that a byproduct of their position in society? I admittedly don't know much Romani history, so I can't speak to it directly. However I know Jewish people were similarly thought of as swindlers because they were often bankers, and they were often bankers because that was one of the few jobs non-Jewish society would allow them to have. The fault doesn't lie with the Jews, it lies with the rest of society.
That same concept applies elsewhere. Like white generally being used to represent good and black bad. That is such a fundamental aspect of our culture that it seems silly to try to change it, but the silliness originates in a lack of examination of the origin of those standards.
> I'm not going to go through every example you mentioned because this comment shows the exact problem with that. You are putting the origin of the term on some fault with the Romani people. Have you examined why that is? Are you sure that they did actually swindle people more than other groups? If they did, why did they do it? Was that a byproduct of their position in society? I admittedly don't know much Romani history, so I can't speak to it directly. However I know Jewish people were similarly thought of as swindlers because they were often bankers, and they were often bankers because that was one of the few jobs non-Jewish society would allow them to have. The fault doesn't lie with the Jews, it lies with the rest of society.
My point is exactly that by not washing out these words, we allow ourselves to have conversations about and raise exactly those points you mentioned. It allows us to think about the root causes of these terms and reflect on our own behavior.
> That same concept applies elsewhere. Like white generally being used to represent good and black bad. That is such a fundamental aspect of our culture that it seems silly to try to change it, but the silliness originates in a lack of examination of the origin of those standards.
Have you considered that the white/black differentiation of not about color but about what humans can perceive? To me it seems as if it would have been established because humans can see during the day vs. can't do so well at night. There are many reasons outside of race where light/dark, black/white make sense.
>My point is exactly that by not washing out these words, we allow ourselves to have conversations about and raise exactly those points you mentioned. It allows us to think about the root causes of these terms and reflect on our own behavior.
Why do we assume that these books are always accompanied by these conversations and these conversations wouldn't happen without these books? Many times kids read these books alone and no one ever talks to them about these words. Other times they are read in specific classes in school in contexts that aren't ideal to address these issues. An English teacher shouldn't have to spend all their time teaching history to keep these things in context. Let those conversations happen in social studies and history classes.
>Have you considered that the white/black differentiation of not about color but about what humans can perceive? To me it seems as if it would have been established because humans can see during the day vs. can't do so well at night. There are many reasons outside of race where light/dark, black/white make sense.
Yes, but whether the origin lies in racism or not isn't necessarily the only deciding factor. Just the question of whether it originates in racism is often enough to distract from a book. Like an editor might suggest an author change phrasing to avoid an unintentional rhyme or pun, sometimes a word should be change to avoid distracting the reader with considerations about whether a term is racist or not. The obvious example is the word "niggardly"[1]. Its etymology has nothing to do with race, but editors will still warn you against using it because the distraction is causes makes it a poor word choice in most situations even if the word itself is inoffensive.
The value of a book is that you experience the world through a viewpoint that is different than your own.
That viewpoint may not be pretty, or fun, or something you agree with. Honestly - most of the books that I value challenge me by exposing me to something raw and unfiltered that I have not experienced myself.
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That editor also doesn't have the experiences of the author, and changing word choice is changing the world that author is speaking about.
If the author's goal is to actually tell a genuine story that they connect with - to expose the world to their own thoughts and feelings and history - then changing those things is not trivial.
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I don't want to read a bland mash of "editor approved" stories. I want to read stories that are told by individuals, with all their quirks and intricacies.
I want to hear their opinions and words. Not some filtered, white washed, toned down version of them.
I want to make up my own mind about whether that story was valuable, or touching, or compelling, or horrible, or repelling. I don't want to never hear it in the first place because an editor decided they didn't like it and struck it out.
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Basically - if the author doesn't give a shit and is just trying to sell the most books... fine. Go with the editor's picks for the words. Let them control the narrative and story. They have the most experience with selling books and their advice is probably decent.
If the goal is to write down a story that is meaningful to the author... don't change the author's words.
>Easy - I started by not fucking changing the words they wrote down, because I assumed they intended to write them down.
But this is fundamentally what editing is which brings me back to the original question of how is "thought policing" different from editing. In what situations is it acceptable to edit words that someone wrote?
>I'm struggling to tell if your comment is satire or not, because it's pretty dense (and not in the "filled with words" kind of way).
I'm just trying to understand your position by asking questions.
> In what situations is it acceptable to edit words that someone wrote?
When the author is present and engaged in the process.
Would Dahl care about these changes? We don't know. And that's the problem. It's no longer his book - it's the diluted version.
Alternatively - if the author is gone... when the story is no longer bound by copyright seems a sane approach. If you want to edit his words, make them compete with the original versions (or other folks edits). If the edits are genuinely better - they will win out.
>When the author is present and engaged in the process.
Does this mean you would be fine with this process if it involved the author even if they approved of changes to a book decades after it was originally released?
>Would Dahl care about these changes? We don't know. And that's the problem. It's no longer his book - it's the diluted version.
>Alternatively - if the author is gone... when the story is no longer bound by copyright seems a sane approach. If you want to edit his words, make them compete with the original versions (or other folks edits). If the edits are genuinely better - they will win out.
Does this mean that in situations in which the author is dead and the books are still under copyright that you are ok with a publisher that decides to stop publishing the book, basically the Dr. Seuss situation?
Is it authoritarian? What "authority" is stepping in here? Isn't it the rights holder making this decision?
That's what I'm not getting; this isn't an external entity, it's the people who own the rights. Shouldn't they be allowed to do what they want with their property, even if you disagree with it?
Ah yes - ownership of ideas and thoughts and stories. Fun aspects of capitalism.
This book should be public domain. The author has been dead for 33 years. I honestly don't give a flying fuck about who "owns the rights" to this story at this point.
But my broader point is salient outside of this - I think you're removing value from stories by trying to remove ugly parts. The world is ugly, hiding that and papering over it doesn't do anyone any favors. It's also beautiful and wondrous. How can we experience the highs without the lows? The good without the bad?
How can we know what the past was like when we change it to suit our mood? When we wash it away and drown it out. When we cannot to learn from it, because we have no idea what it even was? When we have nothing but a caricature of it hanging out to dry, with the complexity and nuance tossed aside, wrung out from it like it was a rag to be cleaned.
I don't think there's a ton of value in calling a little girl "ugly and beastly" instead of just "beastly", but if you do think that, it sounds like you can still show your children how to call people names, and that's my point.
Nothing is being taken away here, only new things are being added. That's what I don't understand; why would you be upset about that?
If you want to write a book that doesn't call folks ugly, go knock yourself out. I'm all here for that and I support you. You may or may not find success, and that's life.
If you want to edit the words of a story because you find them unpleasant... if you want to censor an author after his death because you might sell more books... Then I find you ugly. You are willing to throw away content you disagree with, instead of tackling it head on, so both ugly and cowardly.
Where does it stop? What content is "you approved" in a way that we can all live with?
If we happen to live in a spot where those words are also owned, and we've decided that I don't have the rights to copy and distribute the original words because of the greed of Disney... then I find you both ugly and authoritarian in ways that are uncomfortable. I strongly dislike you.
You're allowed to think of me as ugly, not like me, call me names, all of that's totally fine! What I'm confused about is, when the original work remains completely available such as what the article we're talking about says, why you would care about me also wanting to have access to a less offensive version of the work?
You retain access to the original work, and I get a watered down version that's easier for me to read to my kids at bedtime. Feels like a win/win?
Why don't I have the same freedom of expression in your mind that you seem so intent on protecting on behalf of a dead guy?
> when the original work remains completely available
Does it? If a library has a copy of the offensive censored one, they might not buy the original. There's only a limited amount of money available, every censored copy purchased means one less good copy.
...yes you do? The title of the article literally includes, "Original books to be kept in print".
Also, you can currently purchase every single Roald Dahl book on Amazon for at most ~$10, so in so many ways it's incorrect to say you lose access to Roald Dahl's original works.
Encouraging the sort of thought police present here sets off all sorts of alarm bells.
I would argue this idea is fundamentally contrarian to a true liberal value set.
Being liberal (in the traditional sense) means being willing to engage with all sorts of content - especially content that you might not agree with.
Simply disagreeing with content is a poor, poor excuse for removing it from the public space. Instead it should be countered with a compelling set of ideas that help the public understand why you don't agree with it.
Basically - policing books like this is WRONG. It's exactly the same thought process that leads to people calling for the ban of books they don't like. It's an authoritarian thought process that doesn't actually provide a compelling argument against an idea to win - instead it claims victory by removing any trace of the argument in the first place.
It's whitewashing in the extreme. It's the good intention that paves the road to Fahrenheit 451. It's a fucking disgrace of an approach.
If you don't like what those books say... buckle up and explain that to your kids. Don't hide it from them. You aren't doing them any favors that way.