[HN Gopher] Roald Dahl: Rishi Sunak joins criticism of changes t...
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Roald Dahl: Rishi Sunak joins criticism of changes to author's
books
Author : sonabinu
Score : 56 points
Date : 2023-02-20 16:48 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| arooaroo wrote:
| 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.
| FrontierPsych wrote:
| Sounds great.
|
| Now when are we going to change and rewrite the Bible, the Quran,
| Hindu texts, the Avesta, and so many other "holy" books that are
| offensive to me and so many other people?
|
| As a small little bit of stuff I want to remove (but there's so
| much more):
|
| *Slavery, yum*
|
| Timothy 6:1-2 Christians who are slaves should give their masters
| full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be
| shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for
| being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you
| are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths,
| Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them.
|
| Ephesians 6:5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect
| and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.
|
| Exodus 21:20-21 "When a man strikes his male or female slave with
| a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be
| punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is
| not to be punished, since the slave is his own property."
|
| Colossians 3:22 Slaves, obey your human masters in everything,
| not only when being watched, as currying favor, but in simplicity
| of heart, fearing the Lord.
|
| I always agreed with these texts about women:
|
| 1 Timothy 2:11-15 Women should listen and learn quietly and
| submissively. I do not let women teach men or have authority over
| them. Let them listen quietly. For God made Adam first, and
| afterward he made Eve. And it was the woman, not Adam, who was
| deceived by Satan, and sin was the result. But women will be
| saved through childbearing and by continuing to live in faith,
| love, holiness, and modesty.
|
| 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 As in all the churches of the holy ones,
| women should keep silent, for they are not allowed to speak, but
| should be subordinate, as even the law says. But if they want to
| learn anything, they should ask their husbands at home.
|
| Sirach 9:2 Give no woman power over you to trample upon your
| dignity.
|
| Deuteronomy 22:28-29 If a man is caught in the act of raping a
| young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of
| silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because
| he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.
| [make the rape victim marry the rapist...]
|
| Exodus 21:7 When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will
| not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.
|
| Ecclesiastes 7 26 I find more bitter than death the woman who is
| a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains. The
| man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will
| ensnare. 27 "Look," says the Teacher, "this is what I have
| discovered: "Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme
| of things 28 while I was still searching but not finding -- I
| found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman
| among them all.
|
| Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a
| quarrelsome wife. Proverbs 21:9
|
| Of course, so much good stuff:
|
| Psalms 137:9 Happy those who seize your children and smash them
| against a rock.
|
| Hosea 13:16 They will be killed by an invading army, their little
| ones dashed to death against the ground, their pregnant women
| ripped open by swords.
|
| Isaiah 13:15-18 Anyone who is captured will be run through with a
| sword. Their little children will be dashed to death right before
| their eyes. Their homes will be sacked and their wives raped by
| the attacking hordes. For I will stir up the Medes against
| Babylon, and no amount of silver or gold will buy them off. The
| attacking armies will shoot down the young people with arrows.
| They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no
| compassion for the children.
|
| Isaiah 14:21 Make ready to slaughter his sons for the guilt of
| their fathers
|
| And we wonder why christians are killing people - it is the base
| philosophy of the judeo-christian world. Ukraine v Russia -
| christians killing christians, same with WWII, WWI and so many
| other wars. Plus christians going throughout the world and just
| slaughtering so many non-christians as well.
|
| Malachi 2:3 - "Behold, I am going to punish your offspring, and I
| will spread shit on all of your faces, the shit of your feasts;
| and I'll throw you on top of the pile of shit and you will be
| carted away in disgrace in your pile of shit.
|
| Quran
|
| "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from
| where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or
| unrest] is worse than killing... but if they desist, then lo!
| Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no
| more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with
| Allah] and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let
| there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun(the
| polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)"
|
| "And as for those who disbelieved, I will punish them with a
| severe punishment in this world and the Hereafter, and they will
| have no helpers."
|
| "We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve for
| what they have associated with Allah of which He had not sent
| down [any] authority. And their refuge will be the Fire, and
| wretched is the residence of the wrongdoers."
|
| "They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would
| be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they
| emigrate for the cause of Allah . But if they turn away, then
| seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take not from
| among them any ally or helper."
|
| "The Jews say, 'Ezra is the son of Allah'; and the Christians
| say, 'The Messiah is the son of Allah .' That is their statement
| from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who
| disbelieved [before them]. May Allah destroy them; how are they
| deluded?"
|
| "And when We intend to destroy a city, We command its affluent
| but they defiantly disobey therein; so the word comes into effect
| upon it, and We destroy it with [complete] destruction."
|
| "So do not obey the disbelievers, and strive against them with
| the Qur'an a great striving."
| pavlov wrote:
| What stops you from publishing the version of the Bible or the
| Quran with your edits? Nothing. Maybe nobody wants to read it,
| but that's your marketing problem.
|
| If copyright were shorter, we could similarly have Dahl in any
| number of edits and adaptations. And personally I don't see any
| problem with that.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Now when are we going to change and rewrite the Bible
|
| There have been many altered Bibles published over the years,
| from just modernizing the language to more extreme changes like
| the Jefferson Bible.
|
| But the one thing all of those versions do is make it very
| clear that they're altered versions. Even the one that many
| people think of as THE Bible is such an altered version and is
| clearly labelled as such: The King James version.
| jstarfish wrote:
| ChatGPT wouldn't sanitize it.
|
| > I apologize, but I cannot comply with your request to remove
| offensive content from the provided text. The original text
| contains offensive language and derogatory statements towards
| women, among other things. It is not appropriate to promote or
| perpetuate such harmful content. It is important to be mindful
| of the impact our words can have on others and to strive to
| promote kindness, respect, and empathy towards all individuals.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| I'm sorry, Reddit is --> thataway.
| sys32768 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| panxyh wrote:
| Mad world
| sorokod wrote:
| I wonder what the future holds for CS Lewis and Narnia stories.
| version_five wrote:
| 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...
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think the Bowdlers would be proud of what we see happening.
| JohnFen wrote:
| 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.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Everything old is new again.
| Symbiote wrote:
| 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?
| JohnFen wrote:
| 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.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| Surely Sunak could just buy the publisher and force them to
| change it back.
| noobermin wrote:
| Having read the actual changes in the article, these are rather
| miniscule, which leaves me wondering why this is a big story.
| mock-possum wrote:
| 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.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| 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.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| The estate of the author does not have legitimate authority
| to change a dead authors work to increase its commercial
| appeal. They can legally do so, but I don't accept the
| legitimacy of this. The only exception is when it's
| implicitly or explicitly clear the author would have
| supported doing this, and even then I wouldn't suggest it
| but I wouldn't automatically call it illegitimate and would
| have to consider the context.
|
| If I write some great novel and then my asshole grandson
| decides to stop distributing the original and starts
| distributing a rewrite he feels will sell more copies I'll
| haunt his ass. I refused to watch the C.S. Lewis film
| adaptions because they were against the authors explicit
| wishes and there's a difference between having the legal
| right to do something and the moral right to do something.
|
| I recall that Roald Dahl LOATHED the changes to his story
| in the film version of Willa Wonka and refused to sell the
| rights to the sequel so I wouldn't at all take it for
| granted that he would have supported such extensive edits.
| If there's doubt if an author would have supported you
| editing their book, you should play it safe and not edit a
| dead authors book! If you must change it - you must
| continue distributing the original or make the original
| public domain to retain any SEMBLANCE of legitimacy.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| My take would be that once you are dead, you no longer
| have any say, but that is probably a minority position. I
| would like to see copyright shortened way up though. He
| died over 30 years ago now.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Regardless of whether or not you should have a say, it
| seems clear to me that telling the world someone wrote
| something they didn't write is morally dubious at least.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I recall that Roald Dahl LOATHED the changes to his
| story in the film version of Willa Wonka
|
| And he was right. As much as I love the movie, and I do,
| it's very inferior to the book.
| croes wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| faeriechangling wrote:
| People regularly crap on authors for changing their own
| work, "Han shot first" is an outright meme, and I'm going
| to predict there's an overlap between people who don't want
| authors to change their own work and people who don't want
| other people to change author's work post-humously.
|
| It's just especially egregious to change a work when you
| aren't the author because fundamentally any such editor is
| somebody who isn't good enough to make their own classic
| but is arrogant enough to think they can improve an
| existing one. People see how people are abusing their legal
| right to something that's part of the culture in the
| interest of their own greed and narcissism and see that as
| particularly egregious.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > or Neil Gaiman was wrong for changing his own book.
|
| I'd argue so. Given enough edits, you've written the Book
| of Theseus.
| prepend wrote:
| I think an artist making a derived work from their own work
| is totally different than a company changing an artists'
| work to purely make more money.
|
| Also, there are multiple versions of American Gods in print
| and readers can choose which one to read. They are clearly
| marked. In this case the publisher is changing the only
| versions in print and no longer making the original
| versions.
|
| I think that people changing artists work is usually wrong.
| If a mural artist changes their mural, that's very
| different from McDonalds deciding to add in milkshakes.
| That doesn't mean that changing art is categorically wrong.
| It just means that the latter case is wrong.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > it was changed by the author, which seems perfectly
| acceptable.
|
| Yes. It's the author's work, and the author has every right
| to say what is the "definitive" form of their work. Nobody
| else has that right.
|
| I think it's fine to alter and publish other people's work
| (setting aside copyright issues), as long as it's clear
| that the work isn't what the author intended.
| polotics wrote:
| 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...
| faeriechangling wrote:
| 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.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > the correct solution is to not read the book, not to have
| some hack edit it.
|
| I'd even be OK with the existence of a hacked-up version,
| as long as it was made clear that it was a derivative work
| and not the original.
| JohnFen wrote:
| 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.
| someNameIG wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Convolutional wrote:
| Glad he's doing important work.
| switch007 wrote:
| Tories just can't resist a wading in to a culture war. Anything
| to distract from the NI/Brexit shambles
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