Roald Dahl: Rishi Sunak joins criticism of changes to author's books

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-64702224

by sonabinu • 3 years ago

74 57 3 years ago

bbc.com

Convolutional• 3 years ago

Glad he's doing important work.

panxyh• 3 years ago

Mad world

noobermin• 3 years ago

Having read the actual changes in the article, these are rather miniscule, which leaves me wondering why this is a big story.

mock-possum• 3 years ago

Think of it as the other side of the coin from book banning or book burning - why should readers be prevented from reading objectionable material in the first place? The decision rests with the reader, and no one else.

amanaplanacanal2• 3 years ago

I would think the author might have something to say about it, or in this case the author's representative since the author in question is dead.

croes• 3 years ago

Many small changes add up to big changes over time.

Beside the fact that changing books is just wrong, except for life threatening data.

kelseyfrog• 3 years ago

This is overly reductive. For example, I just read American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition, a version changed from its original. Using this reductive model, that's wrong. However, it was changed by the author, which seems perfectly acceptable. Those two things are in contradiction. Either changing books isn't categorically wrong, or Neil Gaiman was wrong for changing his own book.

Taking a bit of a detour, is it wrong to engage in death of the author style interpretations of text?

polotics• 3 years ago

Well come on it's not a big story, it is a "fat" story obviously... The disconnect between the reality of kids being subjected to shaming like never before thanks to social media, and the desire to remove the word "fat" and replace it by "enormous", makes my head spin. So this is a fat story because it teaches that hiding issues behind euphemism is the way, instead of confronting problems and helping fat people turn into fit ones...

faeriechangling3• 3 years ago

I don't much care if people don't want to read stories where fat children are put into humiliating situations and portrayed as greedy animalistic cretin's, but the correct solution is to not read the book, not to have some hack edit it. Many fine and underrated children's books have come out since 1964 which are smothered by the popularity of a few classics which arguably teach children the wrong lessons.

It's fine to not want to read such a book or read such a book to children. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is rather mean and dark for a children's book, that's a huge part of the appeal, I would just prefer a mean dark book to remain a mean dark book instead of trying to water down the story to cash in on it's existing commercial value while trying to make it blander and tolerable by more audiences. It's hardly just Augustus Gloop who is treated in a cruel way either, it's just that he by far seems to be getting the most sympathy from the editors, but the book doesn't really teach one to be kind to say... rich spoilt children either.

Changes like “But Augustus was deaf to everything except the call of his enormous stomach” to “But Augustus was ignoring everything” takes the punch and wit out of the story while not actually making it so children can't read between the lines. You're replacing a line that'll make children laugh at a fat character with one that just won't make them laugh at all and calling it an improvement.

JohnFen9• 3 years ago

Changing the work of an author and passing it off as the author's work is despicable and, I think, harmful. The extent of the changes don't alter the principle.

At the very least, it's lying.

If this is accepted practice, it means we can no longer trust that just because a work has the same title and author listed, that it's what the author actually wrote. It means that if you want to read the author's work, you can't just buy it. You'll have to engage in research to see if it had been altered at some point and identify when the alteration happened so that you can know which printings really reflect the author's intentions.

lern_too_spel2• 3 years ago

Publishers frequently make changes in subsequent printings unless the author explicitly require that they do not. The authors are generally OK with whatever the publisher thinks makes the most money. https://www.hp-lexicon.org/differences-changes-text/

The subsequent changes to the Harry Potter books, made both by the author and by the publisher, are not clearly marked.

sys32768• 3 years ago

Obligatory 1984 quote:

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

someNameIG• 3 years ago

I really don't know why anyone thought this would be a good idea. Even in very left and "woke" circles I've seen very little support of this.

prepend3• 3 years ago

The company will make more money this way.

I’m guess Dahl books were selling less due to some groups not wanting to read about fat characters and whatnot so the estate and publisher wanted to make more money and stay on those reading lists.

Dahl has been dead for 30 years, it’s messed up that copyright is so long that his works have decades more until in public domain.

I don’t think this is woke, this is monopoly copyright maximizing for profit.

I’m sure if Michaelangelo’s David was under copyright, they would add on a fig leaf to maximize sales.

I think the quote that the family of Dahl should be ashamed is most apt. The publisher is some lame company, but there’s some nephew or other relative somewhere that wanted 5% more profit and defaced their relative’s art for a bit more money.

mensetmanusman• 3 years ago

No they wont, but they probably don’t care about making money if they paid for a committee of over-educated elite to suggest these changes in the first place.

trieste922• 3 years ago

I don’t think this is woke, this is monopoly copyright maximizing for profit.

A corporation redacting a work of art that they have a monopoly over to sell more copies?

I mean, it's legal. At least until the government punishes Penguin for monopolistic behavior

If Penguin wants to light their own public reputation on fire by sabotaging a work of art then so be it.

I can't trust them for historically accurate sources after this, with this book or any other

earthboundkid• 3 years ago

Surely Sunak could just buy the publisher and force them to change it back.

version_five2• 3 years ago

It's good to see real societal pushback against this kind of insanity, and I hope it spreads.

A fun fact I remembered this morning - even in 1984, Kipling is allowed to remain in party sanctioned literature (albeit altered)

  I have been able to recall one possible ... indiscretion ... We were producing a definitive edition of the poems of Kipling. I allowed "God" to remain at the end of a line.

This is Winston's colleague Ampleforth speculating as to why he was arrested.

Orwell was an optimist as they say...

skinnymuch6• 3 years ago

I wonder how Orwell would feel about Rishi Sunak. I’m sure a socialist bordering on anarchist who fought against the right wing in Spain’s civil war would think anything positive of UK’s current govt. Doubt he would want his work associated with what right wingers do.

tonfreed• 3 years ago

He was also highly critical of the Soviets. I doubt he'd have a problem with agreeing on something with the other side of the aisle.

IngSoc was even a socialist party, he was perfectly aware of the authoritarian streak in his own ideology.

Hell, in Road to Wigan Pier he talked about how he understood why a lot of the people oppose socialism, even though he thought it'd be a no brainer to support it. He wasn't one of the poorly read, middling IQ graduates yelling about socialism we see out in force today.

version_five2• 3 years ago

A lot of historical (fictional) criticism of the Right has been criticism of authoritarianism rather than conservatism per se, because the extant or expected instances of authoritarianism were on the right. V for Vendetta is a great example.

To a large extent, it's probably more about the right (however you want to define it) being the historical establishment. In 2002, V for Vendetta made a lot of sense.

With the left as the current establishment and vector for authoritarianism, the same criticisms apply to them.

So I don't think it's really helpful to get caught up in the political alignment, it's more about where the power is.

8f2ab37a-ed6c2• 3 years ago

I would be perfectly happy if they wanted to release a separate, clearly labeled version of this book that is adjusted for modern politically correct tastes.

The issue is when you rewrite history and pretend it had always been like that. That's in 1984 territory.

mc32• 3 years ago

I think the Bowdlers would be proud of what we see happening.

8f2ab37a-ed6c2• 3 years ago

Everything old is new again.

JohnFen9• 3 years ago

Although even when Thomas Bowdler bowdlerized Shakespeare, he made it clear his was a derivative work. He didn't try to pass it off as the way Shakespeare wrote it.

Symbiote• 3 years ago

Would you like the first edition, where the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are African pygmies, labelled differently to subsequent editions where they are white-skinned with golden hair?

JohnFen9• 3 years ago

That was a change Dahl himself willingly made, so I don't see a serious problem with the fact that the altered text wasn't labelled differently.

It's his work, he can do with it whatever he likes and it remains his work. The "definitive" version is whatever the author says it is. It'd be a totally different thing if the change was made by others without his permission.

sorokod• 3 years ago

I wonder what the future holds for CS Lewis and Narnia stories.

switch007• 3 years ago

Tories just can't resist a wading in to a culture war. Anything to distract from the NI/Brexit shambles

dTal3• 3 years ago

"Politician chimes in on the overwhelmingly more popular side of an internet pitchfork mob"

Nothing to see here folks.

arooaroo• 3 years ago

A couple of things jump out:

1. Dahl had already made changes to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The early editions had African pygmies as his free labour. I don’t think the world was “woke” back then.

2. This is being done by a corporate publishing house in order to maximise the revenue of one of its key IP assets. It’s not mandated by government/regulation; there is no viral social media furore or press campaign. It’s not censorship nor anything like 1984 where works are being revised and all traces of the previous version cease to exist.

serf• 3 years ago

like 1984 where works are being revised and all traces of the previous version cease to exist.

in our e-book future that's simply not the case; older editions or 'per-correction' editions are hard to find, and often-times impossible without resorting to pirate channels.

This type of thing is already happening, but it's not raising red-flags for people because it's not being done in an overtly malicious way as in '1984', it's being normalized via things like electronic-only distribution of media, and it's being explained and OK'd via 'corporate revenue' as an excuse -- but what's really happening is that older media is being thrown away at an alarming rate, and not only for the sake of correctness or moral balancing.

catiopatio• 3 years ago

1. The author changing his own work is in no way comparable to posthumously changing an author’s work.

2. How is this material?

You don’t know the motivations of the people making this change, and there’s no evidence that editing via “sensitivity readers” actually increases revenue.

There is, however, plenty of evidence of the ideological basis for these types of actions.

As for censorship ala 1984? The previous version will no longer be sold and will gradually disappear, and for new readers, the previous version will have effectively ceased to exist.

Never mind the potential automatic updating of ebooks.

dTal3• 3 years ago

Regarding 2 - I think we need to regard these things with a holistic eye on centralization in general, rather than narrowly focusing on government / not government. True, government didn't order the change - however, government does forbid acquiring a copy from anyone except this single entity, through copyright law. The practical effect is the same - a small and unelected entity gets to unilaterally fiddle with shared culture, and I can't legally obtain or distribute an unmolested copy. That's censorship.

Really, the core issue is copyright law again. There comes a point where something is so enmeshed in our culture that it can't be said to be "owned" by anyone anymore.

NoPicklez• 3 years ago

If I (Netflix) purchased a book brand, which is what Roald Dahl is and I wanted to make a TV series about it, which would likely push kids into reading those books. It does make sense to me that I might want to modify aspects of the books to make them fit for today and potentially remove things that would be considered offensive in today's world.

This is simply a company trying to maximise their revenue from their purchase by taking a brand and fitting it into today's world. This isn't some government conspiracy to suppress thought or push an agenda.

To me it's not too dissimilar from movies doing remakes and changing the narrative, character and language used.

I myself, would prefer the originals to be reproduced so that they remain Dahl's stories.

trieste922• 3 years ago

Seeing a bunch of people here saying Penguin is "perfectly within their rights" to do this

Likewise, the government is perfectly within their rights to punish Penguin for other, unrelated monopolistic behavior

For any other book, how do you know that Penguin hasn't "corrected" it? A publishing company with this little regard for historical accuracy doesn't deserve to exist

Roald Dahl: Rishi Sunak joins criticism of changes to author's books

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