The Flat Earth Society
Other Discussion Boards => Philosophy, Religion & Society => Topic started by: Roundy on February 20, 2023, 11:55:53 PM
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https://www.cnn.com/style/article/roald-dahl-censored-gbr-scli-intl/index.html
I agree with Rushdie, and everyone else that has spoken out against this. If the books offend, don't publish them. According to the article words that have been removed include "fat" and "ugly". That is, indeed, absurd.
Beyond that it's just not right to monkey around with the language used by the original author. Honestly, sometimes this trend towards wokeness really does go too far.
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https://www.cnn.com/style/article/roald-dahl-censored-gbr-scli-intl/index.html
I agree with Rushdie, and everyone else that has spoken out against this. If the books offend, don't publish them. According to the article words that have been removed include "fat" and "ugly". That is, indeed, absurd.
Beyond that it's just not right to monkey around with the language used by the original author. Honestly, sometimes this trend towards wokeness really does go too far.
Wokeness definitely goes too far. However, this is not the first time the books have been revised. This all started back in the early seventies. For example, Dahl himself changed the origin of oompa-loopas as originally published back in the early 70's from African pygmies Wonka "smuggled in crates" back to his factory to small white people who happily joined him. Revisions have been ongoing ever since.
As well, in an interview, he said he was a self-proclaimed "anti-zionist and anti-semite". In the same he added, "Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.” I had no idea how controversial he was until this story popped up a few days ago.
The Dahl Company/Family has been apologizing for some of his views for decades. Point being, this is not just 2023 wokeness, these types of revisions have been going on for ages.
Probably doesn't help matters that Netflix bought the rights to Dahl's entire catalog for $500 million a few years back.
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Wokeness definitely goes too far. However, this is not the first time the books have been revised. This all started back in the early seventies. For example, Dahl himself changed the origin of oompa-loopas as originally published back in the early 70's from African pygmies Wonka "smuggled in crates" back to his factory to small white people who happily joined him. Revisions have been ongoing ever since.
How exactly is an author censoring himself comparable to someone else decades later removing references to "fat" and "ugly" and "mother" and "father" in literature? Revisions to Willy Wonka have not "been going on ever since", making corrections to the original work. It's not a living document.
If Dahl wanted to sanitize his own work, fine. But correcting the works of another author to promote your ideology is over the line.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/20/what-are-the-words-removed-from-roald-dahls-books/
“Fat,” “ugly,” “crazy” and even “female” — these are some of the words that have been controversially scrubbed from Roald Dahl’s famed children’s books by so-called sensitivity experts.
The move to remove or alter references to gender, race and physical appearance in newer editions of the beloved books quickly sparked outrage, with many accusing the publisher, Puffin Books, of censorship.
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Mothers and fathers
Where possible, gender neutral terms are also now being used throughout Dahl’s books.
For example, “mothers and fathers” has become just “parents” in newer versions of “Matilda” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
Also, the Cloud Men characters in “James and the Giant Peach” are now Cloud People.
In “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” references to male and females have been scrubbed. The descriptions of “tiny men” and “a hundred women” now just say “people” instead.
Absurd. This is just another bullet point in a long line of liberal governments and organizations trying to redefine concepts and language for the benefit of the LGBT.
Feb 2019 - The Sun - French schools ban words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ and replace them with ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’ to stop discrimination of same-sex couples (https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8452767/french-schools-ban-mother-father-discrimination-same-sex-couples/)
Jan 2021 - Western Journal - Pelosi, House Dems Move To Ban 'Father, Mother, Son, Daughter' and Other 'Gendered' Words (https://www.westernjournal.com/pelosi-house-dems-move-ban-father-mother-son-daughter-gendered-words/)
Aug 5, 2021 - American Medical Association Recommends Removing Sex From Birth Certificates (https://www.them.us/story/american-medical-association-recommends-removing-sex-from-birth-certificates)
Feb 14, 2023 - Telegraph - Use 'egg-producing' not 'female', say scientists in call to phase out binary language - Experts say other terms that could be problematic include man, woman, mother and father as well as 'survival of the fittest' (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/14/words-male-female-should-banned-science-enforce-idea-sex-binary/)
Can you actually support the removal of gendered words like mother and father from society, or were you just pretending that there is a legitimate controversy here?
Will you actually attempt an argument in favor of removing mother and father in all society and literature? I doubt it.
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Sometimes Tom just happens to be right.
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Wokeness definitely goes too far. However, this is not the first time the books have been revised. This all started back in the early seventies. For example, Dahl himself changed the origin of oompa-loopas as originally published back in the early 70's from African pygmies Wonka "smuggled in crates" back to his factory to small white people who happily joined him. Revisions have been ongoing ever since.
How exactly is an author censoring himself comparable to someone else decades later removing references to "fat" and "ugly" and "mother" and "father" in literature? Revisions to Willy Wonka have not "been going on ever since", making corrections to the original work. It's not a living document.
If Dahl wanted to sanitize his own work, fine. But correcting the works of another author to promote your ideology is over the line.
Wow, I didn't mean to strike a nerve. I mean I opened up with "Wokeness definitely goes too far." I guess I need to be clearer. I think it's just kind of dumb for the estate and publisher to sanitize the work. It seems pretty obvious in this case, their idea was to make the works more "accessible" (read: $) for the times. Especially considering the Netflix deal. The skeptic in me is sure that the intent to do so was by no means noble but more about dollar signs.
As far as a "living documents", I agree, they are not in principle. But I guess how these things work is that the copyright owners can do whatever they want. It's kinda like how every few years some group wants the n-word removed from Huck Finn.
I wonder too if Rushdie has an axe to grind. From a 2016 New Yorker article, And, in 1989, Dahl, who had no trouble waxing indignant about attempts to ban his own work, denounced Salman Rushdie as “a dangerous opportunist” after the fatwa was issued against him.
I kinda think this sort of thing happens all the time in media. Movies have words bleeped out or overdubbed, deleted scenes, alternate endings. Music too. Whether the original writer, director, songwriter or whatever, approved or not. But again, in principle, should that ever happen in the arts, I say no. I even thought the whole Tipper Gore demanding parental advisory labels on "offensive" records/CD's was way over the line. So yeah, I'm in your camp on this one.
In short, I agree, changes to the original text should not have happened. But so be it. I guess authors should put in their wills or whatever that the future copyright owners of their works are not allowed to alter anything. Perhaps a lessen to be learned.
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I can understand altering words to make it make sense to current child audiences.
Like changing "he was acting gay" to "he was acting happy" for books written when gay meant happy and not homosexual.
But beyond reading comprehension for children, I don't see the need to edit.
They're products of their time and its important for people to read and see how others were thought of in the past.
They need to critically think about race, for example, and these books help with that.
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I can understand altering words to make it make sense to current child audiences.
Like changing "he was acting gay" to "he was acting happy" for books written when gay meant happy and not homosexual.
But beyond reading comprehension for children, I don't see the need to edit.
They're products of their time and its important for people to read and see how others were thought of in the past.
They need to critically think about race, for example, and these books help with that.
Gay doesn't mean happy? It has been synonomous with happy for as long as I remember.
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As usual, I agree with Tom and Action80. The whole point of literature, at every level, is to be challenging, to broaden the mind, and promote further learning.
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I kinda think this sort of thing happens all the time in media. Movies have words bleeped out or overdubbed, deleted scenes, alternate endings. Music too. Whether the original writer, director, songwriter or whatever, approved or not.
Censoring common words like mother and father is not something that "happens all the time" in media. You are equating mother and father to profanity. Since when was there a widespread concern that those words should be censored?
There is no widespread social debate on whether gendered words like mother and father should exist in literature. This is a radical LGBT ideology that only few hold. It is entirely unjustifiable, and you are having to make ridiculous comparisons to the censorship of profanity to defend the indefensible.
In short, I agree, changes to the original text should not have happened. But so be it. I guess authors should put in their wills or whatever that the future copyright owners of their works are not allowed to alter anything. Perhaps a lessen to be learned.
"But so be it." "A lesson to be learned?" Yeah, this is clearly mostly the author's fault and not the fault of the radicalists trying to make changes to children's literature to suit the ideology they are trying to push onto children. ::)
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I can understand altering words to make it make sense to current child audiences.
Like changing "he was acting gay" to "he was acting happy" for books written when gay meant happy and not homosexual.
But beyond reading comprehension for children, I don't see the need to edit.
They're products of their time and its important for people to read and see how others were thought of in the past.
They need to critically think about race, for example, and these books help with that.
Gay doesn't mean happy? It has been synonomous with happy for as long as I remember.
It is but its hasn't been primarily used that way for several decades now. So a 10 year old may be confused and use the current meaning instead of the one we know. Which will give the wrong idea.
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Gay doesn't mean happy? It has been synonomous with happy for as long as I remember.
Sure, in the same way that "queer" has been used as a synonym for "strange".
But that's very antiquated now, no-one uses those words that way any more.
TL;TR - the meaning of words changes over time. And I don't think it's unreasonable to change text to reflect that - especially in kids' books where the language should be easy to understand. But changing words whose meanings haven't changed for fear of offending the perpetually offended is ridiculous.
Unusually, Tom is right on this one.
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Is this the first, non-thork is terrible thread where everyone agrees?
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Is this the first, non-thork is terrible thread where everyone agrees?
It is.
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Sometimes Tom just happens to be right.
This isn’t that time. It’s really easy to justify not using the words Mother and Father in some contexts. When it is irrelevant which gender the parent is, including same sex couples is a better choice. Nothing is lost and something is gained.
In regards to the editing of Dahl’s books I’m not the biggest fan. It appears this wasn’t a unilateral move by the publisher, it was a 4 year project by the rights holder of the works, the publisher and a company that specializes in this sort of thing. There might be more at work than the top line story and I’m open to learning about that but if there isn’t more context then this is an example of progressive values gone too far.
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I kinda think this sort of thing happens all the time in media. Movies have words bleeped out or overdubbed, deleted scenes, alternate endings. Music too. Whether the original writer, director, songwriter or whatever, approved or not.
Censoring common words like mother and father is not something that "happens all the time" in media. You are equating mother and father to profanity. Since when was there a widespread concern that those words should be censored?
There is no widespread social debate on whether gendered words like mother and father should exist in literature. This is a radical LGBT ideology that only few hold. It is entirely unjustifiable, and you are having to make ridiculous comparisons to the censorship of profanity to defend the indefensible.
In short, I agree, changes to the original text should not have happened. But so be it. I guess authors should put in their wills or whatever that the future copyright owners of their works are not allowed to alter anything. Perhaps a lessen to be learned.
"But so be it." "A lesson to be learned?" Yeah, this is clearly mostly the author's fault and not the fault of the radicalists trying to make changes to children's literature to suit the ideology they are trying to push onto children. ::)
Wow, you'd think that the Dahl estate was murdering children or something. I don't see anywhere where mothers and fathers are being forced to buy Willie Wonka or James and the Giant Peach. If enormously fat mothers and fathers are that concerned by these radicalist's influence, there are probably 1 billion versions on the market they can get instead that don't include such modern revisions.
Dr. Seuss Enterprise went through the same process a few years ago, altering some illustrations (ex., removing the yellow skin tone from from a chinese character) and instead of revising text they chose to just stop publishing 6 books they deemed questionable. Suess died in '91.
A slightly different example as the actual artist made the revisions, not someone else, "Mister Rogers, in the later seasons of his show, would sometimes go back and re-record segments of earlier shows. He’d put on the episode-appropriate sweater and erase the mistake of assuming that an unknown person was a he, or that a woman was a housewife."
Like I said, I don't think they should revise anything. I don't think Dahl should have succumbed to pressure and change the oompa-loopas back in 73' or whenever it was either. I'm all for 'it is what is is and leave it be.' But I'm also not going to get my panties all bunched up in a knot because some copyright owners decided to change something. People can do what they want and buy what they want and whether a social debate is widespread or not is neither here nor there. And it may be unjustifiable to you, but you're not the arbitor as to what is and isn't for others, especially those who have ownership over something.
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https://www.npr.org/2023/02/21/1158347261/roald-dahl-books-changed-offensive-words
The character Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is no longer called "fat." Instead he is described as "enormous," The Telegraph reports.
Instead of being called "small men," Oompa-Loompas are now "small people," the article says.
Further, the changes to these books include adding language not originally written by Dahl. In his 1983 book The Witches, he writes that witches are bald beneath their wigs. According to The Telegraph, an added line in new editions says, "There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that."
i too am super mad about this censorship. and that's definitely what it is. anytime anything changes, that's censorship. i hate censorship!
it's just super important to me (and to the story!) that gloop is called fat instead of enormous. the story doesn't even make sense now. how am i supposed to explain this to my children?
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https://www.npr.org/2023/02/21/1158347261/roald-dahl-books-changed-offensive-words
The character Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is no longer called "fat." Instead he is described as "enormous," The Telegraph reports.
Instead of being called "small men," Oompa-Loompas are now "small people," the article says.
Further, the changes to these books include adding language not originally written by Dahl. In his 1983 book The Witches, he writes that witches are bald beneath their wigs. According to The Telegraph, an added line in new editions says, "There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that."
i too am super mad about this censorship. and that's definitely what it is. anytime anything changes, that's censorship. i hate censorship!
it's just super important to me (and to the story!) that gloop is called fat instead of enormous. the story doesn't even make sense now. how am i supposed to explain this to my children?
If it is not a big deal, then why the bother of changing it in the first place?
If trying to convey a message different from the original work isn't censorship, then what is censorship? Should we just call it spindoctoring instead? Would that appease your child-like attempt to mock the thread?
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I mean, it was a weird place for sarcasm, because this is obvious censorship by the literal definition of the word.
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Probably because this isn't good olde fashioned censorship, it's radicalized LGBTQ liberal hyper-woke censorship. Think of the children.
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If it is not a big deal, then why the bother of changing it in the first place?
i said it's not important to the story.
If trying to convey a message different from the original work isn't censorship, then what is censorship? Should we just call it spindoctoring instead? Would that appease your child-like attempt to mock the thread?
which new message deviates from the original work? can you be more specific?
i think censorship is about suppression/repression of ideas, coercion, force, that sort of thing. let's look at the actual chain of events. so basically no one was saying anything about the roald dahl books or asking them to change anything. then the people who own and publish the books voluntarily chose to work with a non-profit organization to change a small amount of the books' language to "ensure Dahl's wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today."
where exactly is censorship taking place? if that is censorship, then i would submit that the word no longer has any meaning. at least no meaning beyond "anytime anyone does something i personally would not have done."
also as an aside to the whole thread, this is not a fucking sacred text, written by god, where no word can be changed lest we incur The Wrath of the Dahl. lmao my brothers and sisters in christ, they're children's books. i love them too, but they're children's books. and the idea that making them slightly more inclusive by changing words like "fat" to "enormous" is some egregious violation of our collective childhoods is...i'm sorry, but it's fucking stupid lol. relax.
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i said it's not important to the story.
That's a way of saying it's not a big deal. I don't think that's relevant to the thread topic. People have a problem with the censorship itself, not the importance or lack thereof regarding it.
which new message deviates from the original work? can you be more specific?
You already quoted that.
i think censorship is about suppression/repression of ideas, coercion, force, that sort of thing. let's look at the actual chain of events. so basically no one was saying anything about the roald dahl books or asking them to change anything. then the people who own and publish the books voluntarily chose to work with a non-profit organization to change a small amount of the books' language to "ensure Dahl's wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today."
Certain words have certain meanings. Other words have other meanings. How is nuking certain words from the story and replacing them not censorship of the idea of the original word? When I say a person is fat, that means something specific (that they have an overabundance of fat). If I say they're enormous, that is much more vague. It could be that Augustus Gloop is a powerlifter. You don't know anymore because the new word is more vague. That's the whole point of changing it.
where exactly is censorship taking place? if that is censorship, then i would submit that the word no longer has any meaning. at least no meaning beyond "anytime anyone does something i personally would not have done."
Please, Gary, you're smarter than this.
also as an aside to the whole thread, this is not a fucking sacred text, written by god, where no word can be changed lest we incur The Wrath of the Dahl. lmao my brothers and sisters in christ, they're children's books. i love them too, but they're children's books. and the idea that making them slightly more inclusive by changing words like "fat" to "enormous" is some egregious violation of our collective childhoods is...i'm sorry, but it's fucking stupid lol. relax.
You making this post is fucking stupid. Mocking people for having a problem with censorship, even if you don't think it is important, is not okay. If you have a problem with the thread then you can proceed to fuck off and leave the rest of the people discussing the topic alone. The world does not revolve around Gary's List Of Important Things Gary Takes Seriously.
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Whatever...
The work of artists is always being messed with. This is just one particular type of example.
What about all the works where sex, violence, car crashes and explosions and cursing have been added to the writer's work. It's ridiculous, Zefarelli added a sex scene to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
How about when they have to add content to the story so a movie can get a PG rating instead of a G. Whether content is added or taken away, conservatives are going to complain. It's what they do.
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Whatever...
The work of artists is always being messed with. This is just one particular type of example.
What about all the works where sex, violence, car crashes and explosions and cursing have been added to the writer's work. It's ridiculous, Zefarelli added a sex scene to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
How about when they have to add content to the story so a movie can get a PG rating instead of a G. Whether content is added or taken away, conservatives are going to complain. It's what they do.
This is roaming around the point without actually addressing it. Saying "this happens a lot" or "it's always been this way" is not a discussion point (and is, ironically, very conservative). How about explaining why you do or don't have a problem with changing someone's work instead of pointing out that it's a thing that happens. No one was discussing this as if it's the first time this has ever happened. Why bring it up that way?
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Whatever...
The work of artists is always being messed with. This is just one particular type of example.
What about all the works where sex, violence, car crashes and explosions and cursing have been added to the writer's work. It's ridiculous, Zefarelli added a sex scene to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
How about when they have to add content to the story so a movie can get a PG rating instead of a G. Whether content is added or taken away, conservatives are going to complain. It's what they do.
I’d suggest the motive for the change is a factor. Adding things for spurious reasons is silly too.
I don’t have any particular issue with changing words where the meanings have genuinely changed, for the sake of clarity. So queer/strange, gay/happy, fine. Especially in a children’s book when kids are not going to understand the old meaning. But the change here is not for that reason, it’s pandering to the terminally offended. I’m not a fan of slippery slope arguments but this could be one. As Ricky Gervais says, just because you’re offended, that doesn’t mean you’re right.
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The arguments in this thread are essentially "so what" and "people do things", a ridiculous form of argument which does not directly argue in favor of these changes.
Why must children be influenced and experimented on, exactly, to deny gender?
BBC.com - The parents raising their children without gender (https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220929-the-parents-raising-their-children-without-gender)
These parents are experimenting on their children, and the article admits that the impact is unknown.
"Unknown impacts
Since gender-neutral parenting remains a relatively recent and limited phenomenon, researchers don't yet know much about its long-term impact, including how it is affecting both children and wider society."
So mother, father, and gender differences should be erased from society and literature because some LGBT feel that it should be.
Are mothers and fathers bad for society?
Is there a compelling argument here, or is the situation simply that a few people don't like the concept of genders so all of society must change to suit their ideology?
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So mother, father, and gender differences should be erased from society and literature because some LGBT feel that it should be? Is there a coherent argument here other than that some people are gay and trans and think other people's children should be raised in the gay and trans-gender way they see fit?
Is gender neutrality specific to raising kids in the gay and trans-gender way?
Refer to the Mr Rogers example. Back in the 90's was his reshooting of earlier segments by removing the "he" assumption of an unknown person's gender or removing "housewife" in reference to a woman considered raising a kid in the gay and trans-gender way?
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I can understand altering words to make it make sense to current child audiences.
Like changing "he was acting gay" to "he was acting happy" for books written when gay meant happy and not homosexual.
But beyond reading comprehension for children, I don't see the need to edit.
They're products of their time and its important for people to read and see how others were thought of in the past.
They need to critically think about race, for example, and these books help with that.
Gay doesn't mean happy? It has been synonomous with happy for as long as I remember.
It is but its hasn't been primarily used that way for several decades now. So a 10 year old may be confused and use the current meaning instead of the one we know. Which will give the wrong idea.
Why should we allow ten year olds to be blind to proper use of language within context?
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Gay doesn't mean happy? It has been synonomous with happy for as long as I remember.
Sure, in the same way that "queer" has been used as a synonym for "strange".
But that's very antiquated now, no-one uses those words that way any more.
TL;TR - the meaning of words changes over time. And I don't think it's unreasonable to change text to reflect that - especially in kids' books where the language should be easy to understand. But changing words whose meanings haven't changed for fear of offending the perpetually offended is ridiculous.
Unusually, Tom is right on this one.
You know what Dahl meant...I know what Dahl meant...All God's children know what Dahl meant...
Next, crackpots will start labeling David and the Mona Lisa as pieces requiring revision.
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That's a way of saying it's not a big deal. I don't think that's relevant to the thread topic. People have a problem with the censorship itself, not the importance or lack thereof regarding it.
no, it's a way of saying that no idea, opinion, or plot device present in the story has been removed. my big-picture viewpoint is that the coercive suppression of ideas is a necessary component of censorship. it could be similarly helpful for one or more of you to define what you think censorship is instead of just asserting that it's obvious.
which new message deviates from the original work? can you be more specific?
You already quoted that.
i quoted changes in adjectives. descriptions. you said that the revisions push a new message that is different from the original. can you elaborate on the old and new messages and how they differ?
Certain words have certain meanings. Other words have other meanings. How is nuking certain words from the story and replacing them not censorship of the idea of the original word?
so again it seems that your definition of censorship is just "change." i think that's too vague to be useful. "nuking certain words and replacing them" happens literally every time any written work is edited by anyone.
what controls for me is the use of coercion and the suppression of ideas and opinions. sure, you can say "every word relates to an idea," but i don't think it's useful to call all forms of editing censorship.
When I say a person is fat, that means something specific (that they have an overabundance of fat). If I say they're enormous, that is much more vague. It could be that Augustus Gloop is a powerlifter. You don't know anymore because the new word is more vague. That's the whole point of changing it.
whether or not an edit causes confusion for the reader really doesn't have anything to do with the question of "is this edit censorship."
where exactly is censorship taking place? if that is censorship, then i would submit that the word no longer has any meaning. at least no meaning beyond "anytime anyone does something i personally would not have done."
Please, Gary, you're smarter than this.
feel free to elaborate. i made it clear what i think censorship entails and why this doesn't fit the criteria. "i am obviously right" doesn't interact with what i said at all.
You making this post is fucking stupid. Mocking people for having a problem with censorship, even if you don't think it is important, is not okay. If you have a problem with the thread then you can proceed to fuck off and leave the rest of the people discussing the topic alone. The world does not revolve around Gary's List Of Important Things Gary Takes Seriously.
i'm not mocking anyone for having a problem with censorship. if the roald dahl books were actually being censored, i'd probably agree with you all.
i'm mocking you lot for sounding like a bunch of 14-year-olds who say bedtime is fascist.
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That's a way of saying it's not a big deal. I don't think that's relevant to the thread topic. People have a problem with the censorship itself, not the importance or lack thereof regarding it.
no, it's a way of saying that no idea, opinion, or plot device present in the story has been removed. my big-picture viewpoint is that the coercive suppression of ideas is a necessary component of censorship. it could be similarly helpful for one or more of you to define what you think censorship is instead of just asserting that it's obvious.
which new message deviates from the original work? can you be more specific?
You already quoted that.
i quoted changes in adjectives. descriptions. you said that the revisions push a new message that is different from the original. can you elaborate on the old and new messages and how they differ?
Certain words have certain meanings. Other words have other meanings. How is nuking certain words from the story and replacing them not censorship of the idea of the original word?
so again it seems that your definition of censorship is just "change." i think that's too vague to be useful. "nuking certain words and replacing them" happens literally every time any written work is edited by anyone.
what controls for me is the use of coercion and the suppression of ideas and opinions. sure, you can say "every word relates to an idea," but i don't think it's useful to call all forms of editing censorship.
When I say a person is fat, that means something specific (that they have an overabundance of fat). If I say they're enormous, that is much more vague. It could be that Augustus Gloop is a powerlifter. You don't know anymore because the new word is more vague. That's the whole point of changing it.
whether or not an edit causes confusion for the reader really doesn't have anything to do with the question of "is this edit censorship."
where exactly is censorship taking place? if that is censorship, then i would submit that the word no longer has any meaning. at least no meaning beyond "anytime anyone does something i personally would not have done."
Please, Gary, you're smarter than this.
feel free to elaborate. i made it clear what i think censorship entails and why this doesn't fit the criteria. "i am obviously right" doesn't interact with what i said at all.
You making this post is fucking stupid. Mocking people for having a problem with censorship, even if you don't think it is important, is not okay. If you have a problem with the thread then you can proceed to fuck off and leave the rest of the people discussing the topic alone. The world does not revolve around Gary's List Of Important Things Gary Takes Seriously.
i'm not mocking anyone for having a problem with censorship. if the roald dahl books were actually being censored, i'd probably agree with you all.
i'm mocking you lot for sounding like a bunch of 14-year-olds who say bedtime is fascist.
Anytime you change the writer's original words, that is censorship.
We get banned for shit like that when we do it here.
Tell you what, next time you get published, I'll change the words you write, not only post-publication but post-mortem.. Or would you rather a work you submit for publication, subsequently approved, be released as you submitted it? The "editing that happens all the time," as you put it, happens pre-publication, with any subsequent revisions approved by the author.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
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So mother, father, and gender differences should be erased from society and literature because some LGBT feel that it should be? Is there a coherent argument here other than that some people are gay and trans and think other people's children should be raised in the gay and trans-gender way they see fit?
Is gender neutrality specific to raising kids in the gay and trans-gender way?
Refer to the Mr Rogers example. Back in the 90's was his reshooting of earlier segments by removing the "he" assumption of an unknown person's gender or removing "housewife" in reference to a woman considered raising a kid in the gay and trans-gender way?
Evidently you are not too familiar with Mr. Rogers.
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I can understand altering words to make it make sense to current child audiences.
Like changing "he was acting gay" to "he was acting happy" for books written when gay meant happy and not homosexual.
But beyond reading comprehension for children, I don't see the need to edit.
They're products of their time and its important for people to read and see how others were thought of in the past.
They need to critically think about race, for example, and these books help with that.
Gay doesn't mean happy? It has been synonomous with happy for as long as I remember.
It is but its hasn't been primarily used that way for several decades now. So a 10 year old may be confused and use the current meaning instead of the one we know. Which will give the wrong idea.
Why should we allow ten year olds to be blind to proper use of language within context?
"He was a delightful and gay young fellow..."
I'm pretty sure todays youth would default to, "He was a delightful and homosexual young fellow..."
"He ventured off to grab a faggot and then was headed back to the cabin to start a fire and cook some stew..."
I'm guessing here too the youth of today would not default to a bundle of sticks.
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So mother, father, and gender differences should be erased from society and literature because some LGBT feel that it should be? Is there a coherent argument here other than that some people are gay and trans and think other people's children should be raised in the gay and trans-gender way they see fit?
Is gender neutrality specific to raising kids in the gay and trans-gender way?
Refer to the Mr Rogers example. Back in the 90's was his reshooting of earlier segments by removing the "he" assumption of an unknown person's gender or removing "housewife" in reference to a woman considered raising a kid in the gay and trans-gender way?
Evidently you are not too familiar with Mr. Rogers.
I don't know what that means.
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So mother, father, and gender differences should be erased from society and literature because some LGBT feel that it should be? Is there a coherent argument here other than that some people are gay and trans and think other people's children should be raised in the gay and trans-gender way they see fit?
Is gender neutrality specific to raising kids in the gay and trans-gender way?
Refer to the Mr Rogers example. Back in the 90's was his reshooting of earlier segments by removing the "he" assumption of an unknown person's gender or removing "housewife" in reference to a woman considered raising a kid in the gay and trans-gender way?
Evidently you are not too familiar with Mr. Rogers.
I don't know what that means.
It means your take on Mr. Rogers is not accurate.
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So mother, father, and gender differences should be erased from society and literature because some LGBT feel that it should be? Is there a coherent argument here other than that some people are gay and trans and think other people's children should be raised in the gay and trans-gender way they see fit?
Is gender neutrality specific to raising kids in the gay and trans-gender way?
Refer to the Mr Rogers example. Back in the 90's was his reshooting of earlier segments by removing the "he" assumption of an unknown person's gender or removing "housewife" in reference to a woman considered raising a kid in the gay and trans-gender way?
Evidently you are not too familiar with Mr. Rogers.
I don't know what that means.
It means your take on Mr. Rogers is not accurate.
How so?
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Anytime you change the writer's original words, that is censorship.
We get banned for shit like that when we do it here.
Tell you what, next time you get published, I'll change the words you write, not only post-publication but post-mortem.. Or would you rather a work you submit for publication, subsequently approved, be released as you submitted it? The "editing that happens all the time," as you put it, happens pre-publication, with any subsequent revisions approved by the author.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
I wonder how bible revisions were approved by the author.
How dead authors are ''writing'' new books (https://ew.com/article/2001/05/01/how-dead-authors-are-writing-new-books/)
Publishing houses are using famous names from Robert Ludlum to V.C. Andrews to sell product
”It’s a sad time in the life of any publishing house when one of their franchise authors bites the dust, and I mean sad in the fiscal sense,” says another editor. So publishers have a tradition of keeping their bestselling authors alive long after their deaths.
Rae Lawrence was hired to rework a ”Valley of the Dolls” sequel from a first draft Jacqueline Susann had handwritten in 1968. This June, Crown will include Lawrence’s name on the cover, but will title the book Jacqueline Susann’s ”Shadow of the Dolls.” ”When people come into bookstores, they’re not going to ask for a book by Rae Lawrence,” says Lawrence. ”They’re going to say, ‘Give me the Jackie Susann book.”’
Seems like this is sort of a thing.
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I can understand altering words to make it make sense to current child audiences.
Like changing "he was acting gay" to "he was acting happy" for books written when gay meant happy and not homosexual.
But beyond reading comprehension for children, I don't see the need to edit.
They're products of their time and its important for people to read and see how others were thought of in the past.
They need to critically think about race, for example, and these books help with that.
Gay doesn't mean happy? It has been synonomous with happy for as long as I remember.
It is but its hasn't been primarily used that way for several decades now. So a 10 year old may be confused and use the current meaning instead of the one we know. Which will give the wrong idea.
Why should we allow ten year olds to be blind to proper use of language within context?
Because language changes.
The proper use of language also changes with the time. And its always great to teach kids about older usages of a word or phrase, but unless they ask (and why would they if they know the word) they'll just make assumptions. Which isn't what you want when they read.
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Tell you what, next time you get published, I'll change the words you write, not only post-publication but post-mortem..
lol dig my corpse up and carve swastikas in it for all i'll give a shit. i'll be dead. lmao i love that apparently i shouldn't be concerned with offending living humans, but i should be deeply concerned about offending the sensibilities of dead people. pick a lane fam.
but to your point, if i die and my estate voluntarily decides to change some words in some shit i wrote because they feel like it, i don't think that's censorship. honestly even if my estate were like "we hate gary, fuck him, we're not publishing his idiot writings anymore and we're burning every copy we own," i still don't get how that's censorship. the fact that i personally wouldn't want that to happen changes nothing.
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Anytime you change the writer's original words, that is censorship.
We get banned for shit like that when we do it here.
Tell you what, next time you get published, I'll change the words you write, not only post-publication but post-mortem.. Or would you rather a work you submit for publication, subsequently approved, be released as you submitted it? The "editing that happens all the time," as you put it, happens pre-publication, with any subsequent revisions approved by the author.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
I wonder how bible revisions were approved by the author.
They don't need to be. They are always translations. Sometimes translations are updated to reflect changes in language.
If someone were to update the original ancient Hebrew or Greek to make it more politically correct and say this is what the Bible says from now on you can be sure as shit people would have a problem with it.
The arguments you people are coming up with to try to justify the censorship are at least as absurd as the censorship itself, I literally can't even.
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Anytime you change the writer's original words, that is censorship.
We get banned for shit like that when we do it here.
Tell you what, next time you get published, I'll change the words you write, not only post-publication but post-mortem.. Or would you rather a work you submit for publication, subsequently approved, be released as you submitted it? The "editing that happens all the time," as you put it, happens pre-publication, with any subsequent revisions approved by the author.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
I wonder how bible revisions were approved by the author.
They don't need to be. They are always translations. Sometimes translations are updated to reflect changes in language.
If someone were to update the original ancient Hebrew or Greek to make it more politically correct and say this is what the Bible says from now on you can be sure as shit people would have a problem with it.
The arguments you people are coming up with to try to justify the censorship are at least as absurd as the censorship itself, I literally can't even.
"Political correctness" is not the only driver of 'censorship'. I'm pretty sure the original ancient Hebrew or Greek language has been updated a gazillion times, not just 1-for-1 translated, considering the gazillion versions of the bible. Language altered, softened, whole chapters/gospels removed over the ages. One only has to look as far as the Jefferson Bible.
Bible aside, kind of my extreme example anyway, it's not really a "justification" for censorship so much as does it really matter? Authors self-censoring due to publisher pressures, estates/owners of material with every right to do whatever they want, and the fact that no one is putting a gun to anyone's head to even buy or read any of this stuff. If someone finds an original text offensive, don't read it. If someone finds an alternate version of a text offensive due to revisions made to remove what an owner deemed was offensive, don't read it.
I agree that it's a slippery slope at best with razor thin lines of interpretations. Real troublesome "censorship", for me, is when people who don't have have the legal/ownership authority to revise something demand that something be revised.
All that said, what's more problematic here is that I'm guessing the motivation for this case is that Netflix spent half a billion dollars on the Dahl catalogue and for the 'Mathilda' musical they are working on they want to make sure the supporting book versions match up with their desired sanitized/modernized visual version.
If the Dahl estate was simply doing this out of the goodness of their hearts then whatevs, do what you want. However, this whole thing is about $ at the end of the day and moving more product. It's a win-win: People pissed at the revisions will buy the old books and people embracing the revisions will buy the new books. It's kinda devilishly genius in a way.
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I am still waiting for an explanation for why the words mother and father should be censored.
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I am still waiting for an explanation for why the words mother and father should be censored.
I suspect you'd have to ask the Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC). And they would determine whether you're deserving of an answer or not.
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no, it's a way of saying that no idea, opinion, or plot device present in the story has been removed. my big-picture viewpoint is that the coercive suppression of ideas is a necessary component of censorship. it could be similarly helpful for one or more of you to define what you think censorship is instead of just asserting that it's obvious.
If I only censor things a little bit instead of a lot, that's okay in your world? This sounds like you just think censorship isn't a big deal unless it happens at some larger scale (and, to the point, it is happening on this scale in many other publishers).
i quoted changes in adjectives. descriptions. you said that the revisions push a new message that is different from the original. can you elaborate on the old and new messages and how they differ?
I already did. Do I need to explain the definition differences of precisely every word to you? Why are you doing this? Just to be obtuse or annoying?
so again it seems that your definition of censorship is just "change." i think that's too vague to be useful. "nuking certain words and replacing them" happens literally every time any written work is edited by anyone.
Changing something for the purpose of altering the message is literally a form of censorship... and yes, editors can censor some ideas and amplify others. That's the purpose of some editing. Editing when done to emphasize a message and delete another one is censorship.
what controls for me is the use of coercion and the suppression of ideas and opinions. sure, you can say "every word relates to an idea," but i don't think it's useful to call all forms of editing censorship.
The difference between simple editing and censorship is intent, not coercion.
whether or not an edit causes confusion for the reader really doesn't have anything to do with the question of "is this edit censorship."
Funny, I didn't say anything about confusion and you knew that when you wrote this. Again, why are you doing this? Are you just deliberately trolling at this point?
feel free to elaborate. i made it clear what i think censorship entails and why this doesn't fit the criteria. "i am obviously right" doesn't interact with what i said at all.
"I am obviously right" is more-or-less what you've been doing this entire thread, which is why you start off with aimless mockery instead of points. You basically came in here to tell us all that you don't want to read the thread, you don't care about the topic and that you think everyone is 14 years old for talking about it at all. If you're going to keep doing this, can you just, you know, go away? If you want to condescend to people in a thread, you could at least have the courtesy of not bothering the people in it.
i'm not mocking anyone for having a problem with censorship. if the roald dahl books were actually being censored, i'd probably agree with you all.
i'm mocking you lot for sounding like a bunch of 14-year-olds who say bedtime is fascist.
At this point it's just splitting hairs. If you don't think editing something for the purpose of changing the message is censorship, then I don't see why we should continue the discussion. You think changing the works of an author to remove "bad words" isn't censorship and totally fine. I think it is censorship and it isn't fine. Boom, discussion done. One of us would have to change our opinion and that obviously isn't going to happen without you continuing your "lol everyone who thinks differently than me is simply immature!" tirade.
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I am still waiting for an explanation for why the words mother and father should be censored.
I suspect you'd have to ask the Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC). And they would determine whether you're deserving of an answer or not.
None of those people are in this thread. You are the one coming up with justifications for this censorship here. Usually if you are defending something it's good to have some sort of coherent defense. Admitting that there is no good reason for censoring common words, but people sometimes censor profanity, is a rediculous argument.
We should see a good argument for why mother and father should be censored on the level of profanity. You have yet to produce it, or even attempt to argue that point. Your argument is that censorship of profanity sometimes happens, yet have neglected to show why mother and father should be censored like profane words.
In truth, these are unjustifiable edits which support a radical ideology which wants to erase gender in society. References to 'men' and 'women' were also censored. There is no defense for this other than a few people are confused about their gender so everyone else should be too.
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There's no hope of ever editing Roald Dahl's works into becoming something pleasant or politically correct by today's standards. Dahl's nastiness is baked right into his books, and that's a big part of why kids have always loved them. You can't go through them line by line and edit everything problematic out without the end result feeling nothing like Dahl at all. If they want to keep publishing him, the best solution is probably just to include a preface in each book that warns parents about the language and encourages them to discuss with their children what is or isn't considered appropriate nowadays. The usual suspects would probably still throw a fit about "cancel culture," but there's no helping that.
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Dahl's nastiness is baked right into his books
Please explain what is nasty about the words mother, father, man, woman.
the best solution is probably just to include a preface in each book that warns parents about the language
Considering that you guys can't express what is wrong about these words, it is clearly the censorship which is at fault.
The words father, mother, man, woman are not nasty words. Someone is pushing their anti-gender ideology here.
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Anytime you change the writer's original words, that is censorship.
We get banned for shit like that when we do it here.
Tell you what, next time you get published, I'll change the words you write, not only post-publication but post-mortem.. Or would you rather a work you submit for publication, subsequently approved, be released as you submitted it? The "editing that happens all the time," as you put it, happens pre-publication, with any subsequent revisions approved by the author.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
I wonder how bible revisions were approved by the author.
They don't need to be. They are always translations. Sometimes translations are updated to reflect changes in language.
If someone were to update the original ancient Hebrew or Greek to make it more politically correct and say this is what the Bible says from now on you can be sure as shit people would have a problem with it.
The arguments you people are coming up with to try to justify the censorship are at least as absurd as the censorship itself, I literally can't even.
"Political correctness" is not the only driver of 'censorship'. I'm pretty sure the original ancient Hebrew or Greek language has been updated a gazillion times, not just 1-for-1 translated, considering the gazillion versions of the bible. Language altered, softened, whole chapters/gospels removed over the ages. One only has to look as far as the Jefferson Bible.
Bible aside, kind of my extreme example anyway, it's not really a "justification" for censorship so much as does it really matter? Authors self-censoring due to publisher pressures, estates/owners of material with every right to do whatever they want, and the fact that no one is putting a gun to anyone's head to even buy or read any of this stuff. If someone finds an original text offensive, don't read it. If someone finds an alternate version of a text offensive due to revisions made to remove what an owner deemed was offensive, don't read it.
I agree that it's a slippery slope at best with razor thin lines of interpretations. Real troublesome "censorship", for me, is when people who don't have have the legal/ownership authority to revise something demand that something be revised.
All that said, what's more problematic here is that I'm guessing the motivation for this case is that Netflix spent half a billion dollars on the Dahl catalogue and for the 'Mathilda' musical they are working on they want to make sure the supporting book versions match up with their desired sanitized/modernized visual version.
If the Dahl estate was simply doing this out of the goodness of their hearts then whatevs, do what you want. However, this whole thing is about $ at the end of the day and moving more product. It's a win-win: People pissed at the revisions will buy the old books and people embracing the revisions will buy the new books. It's kinda devilishly genius in a way.
It really doesn't matter what the motivation to do it was. The books were expressly censored to make them more politically correct. You are just muddying the issue with these irrelevant tangents.
Also note that I am not arguing about the legality of censoring the books. I imagine if Dahl's estate wanted to alter the books to make them explicit pornography they would have the legal right to do it (they'd have to age up some characters I imagine but why not just go whole hog?). That doesn't mean that they should.
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I am still waiting for an explanation for why the words mother and father should be censored.
I suspect you'd have to ask the Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC). And they would determine whether you're deserving of an answer or not.
None of those people are in this thread. You are the one coming up with justifications for this censorship here. Usually if you are defending something it's good to have some sort of coherent defense. Admitting that there is no good reason for censoring common words, but people sometimes censor profanity, is a rediculous argument.
We should see a good argument for why mother and father should be censored on the level of profanity. You have yet to produce it, or even attempt to argue that point. Your argument is that censorship of profanity sometimes happens, yet have neglected to show why mother and father should be censored like profane words.
In truth, these are unjustifiable edits which support a radical ideology which wants to erase gender in society. References to 'men' and 'women' were also censored. There is no defense for this other than a few people are confused about their gender so everyone else should be too.
Apparently, your sense of what is radical ideology and unjustifiable is different than some other folks. It seems that Fred Rogers was one of those 'other folks'.
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Anytime you change the writer's original words, that is censorship.
We get banned for shit like that when we do it here.
Tell you what, next time you get published, I'll change the words you write, not only post-publication but post-mortem.. Or would you rather a work you submit for publication, subsequently approved, be released as you submitted it? The "editing that happens all the time," as you put it, happens pre-publication, with any subsequent revisions approved by the author.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
I wonder how bible revisions were approved by the author.
They don't need to be. They are always translations. Sometimes translations are updated to reflect changes in language.
If someone were to update the original ancient Hebrew or Greek to make it more politically correct and say this is what the Bible says from now on you can be sure as shit people would have a problem with it.
The arguments you people are coming up with to try to justify the censorship are at least as absurd as the censorship itself, I literally can't even.
"Political correctness" is not the only driver of 'censorship'. I'm pretty sure the original ancient Hebrew or Greek language has been updated a gazillion times, not just 1-for-1 translated, considering the gazillion versions of the bible. Language altered, softened, whole chapters/gospels removed over the ages. One only has to look as far as the Jefferson Bible.
Bible aside, kind of my extreme example anyway, it's not really a "justification" for censorship so much as does it really matter? Authors self-censoring due to publisher pressures, estates/owners of material with every right to do whatever they want, and the fact that no one is putting a gun to anyone's head to even buy or read any of this stuff. If someone finds an original text offensive, don't read it. If someone finds an alternate version of a text offensive due to revisions made to remove what an owner deemed was offensive, don't read it.
I agree that it's a slippery slope at best with razor thin lines of interpretations. Real troublesome "censorship", for me, is when people who don't have have the legal/ownership authority to revise something demand that something be revised.
All that said, what's more problematic here is that I'm guessing the motivation for this case is that Netflix spent half a billion dollars on the Dahl catalogue and for the 'Mathilda' musical they are working on they want to make sure the supporting book versions match up with their desired sanitized/modernized visual version.
If the Dahl estate was simply doing this out of the goodness of their hearts then whatevs, do what you want. However, this whole thing is about $ at the end of the day and moving more product. It's a win-win: People pissed at the revisions will buy the old books and people embracing the revisions will buy the new books. It's kinda devilishly genius in a way.
It really doesn't matter what the motivation to do it was. The books were expressly censored to make them more politically correct. You are just muddying the issue with these irrelevant tangents.
Also note that I am not arguing about the legality of censoring the books. I imagine if Dahl's estate wanted to alter the books to make them explicit pornography they would have the legal right to do it (they'd have to age up some characters I imagine but why not just go whole hog?). That doesn't mean that they should.
I'm not sure what you are arguing. That the Dahl company should not revise the authors original works? Ok, duly noted. I agree. I'm in the camp of I don't think any original works should be revised for any of the reasons under the banner of 'censorship'. But I've moved on.
As in, ok, I don't think Dahl should be revised, I don't think Suess should have stopped printing 'troublesome' books, nor Fred Rogers reshooting segments decades ago to make them gender neutral. But so be it. My sole recourse is to reject those things by not buying the revised Dahl books, coveting my out-of-print Suess books and not watching Fred's revised neighborhood episodes in re-run.
Essentially this whole thread is should this happen or not, yes or no. It's come down to a bunch of no's mixed in with 'I don't care' or two. So far, I have't seen any yes's. If we all just want to bitch and moan about how this is a travesty and an abomination, cool, I think that's been satisfied. What's to be done about it, see the paragraph before this one.
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Apparently, your sense of what is radical ideology and unjustifiable is different than some other folks. It seems that Fred Rogers was one of those 'other folks'.
So in other words someone else might have a good argument for the censorship of father, mother, men, women, but you don't. Right. ::)
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Apparently, your sense of what is radical ideology and unjustifiable is different than some other folks. It seems that Fred Rogers was one of those 'other folks'.
So in other words someone else might have a good argument for the censorship of father, mother, men, women, but you don't. Right. ::)
Correct. I don't have an argument for it as I don't think it should be changed. But, apparently other people do. If I were to speculate as to why the other people think the change is warranted, I'd just be stating the obvious: Their intent was to make the writings appeal to a wider audience in the 2020's, to be more "inclusive", as not all parents are mothers and fathers. Just like Fred Rogers did decades ago. Is it a "good" argument from them? I personally don't think it's good enough. But that's just my opinion.
That's about all I got and is purely speculative.
My argument against is that I feel one shouldn't mess with original art, just let it be, in all cases, across the board. That's about it.
What to do about it if I am offended by the change? Don't buy the new versions and cancel my Netflix account in protest. That's the extent of what I can do to display my rage about this travesty of a sham of a travesty of censorship.
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Apparently, your sense of what is radical ideology and unjustifiable is different than some other folks. It seems that Fred Rogers was one of those 'other folks'.
Again with the Fred Rogers...
Maybe you really ought to look up what Fred Rogers thought about the gender of a mother and the gender of a father.
https://thefederalist.com/2017/07/05/mr-rogers-help-eight-year-old-drag-queen/
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I am still waiting for an explanation for why the words mother and father should be censored.
It’s really easy to justify not using the words Mother and Father in some contexts. When it is irrelevant which gender the parent is, including same sex couples is a better choice. Nothing is lost and something is gained.
Instead of waiting, perhaps next time you could just review what people have posted. Saves everyone time.
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Apparently, your sense of what is radical ideology and unjustifiable is different than some other folks. It seems that Fred Rogers was one of those 'other folks'.
Again with the Fred Rogers...
Maybe you really ought to look up what Fred Rogers thought about the gender of a mother and the gender of a father.
You know he changed his messages about gender roles and parents as times changed so that he would be more inclusive? You too, can do this. I know it.
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Apparently, your sense of what is radical ideology and unjustifiable is different than some other folks. It seems that Fred Rogers was one of those 'other folks'.
Again with the Fred Rogers...
Maybe you really ought to look up what Fred Rogers thought about the gender of a mother and the gender of a father.
You know he changed his messages about gender roles and parents as times changed so that he would be more inclusive? You too, can do this. I know it.
100 percent wrong...
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Apparently, your sense of what is radical ideology and unjustifiable is different than some other folks. It seems that Fred Rogers was one of those 'other folks'.
Again with the Fred Rogers...
Maybe you really ought to look up what Fred Rogers thought about the gender of a mother and the gender of a father.
You know he changed his messages about gender roles and parents as times changed so that he would be more inclusive? You too, can do this. I know it.
100 percent wrong...
Incorrect. He changed the lyrics to “Everybody’s Fancy” in order to be more inclusive. People change, it’s ok. You don’t need to be scared.
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On the sister site. Some words are censored by a word filter which is absturd considering you can't say "slemon" without it changing to "slime" unless you put some bbcode brackets between letters like this: Slemon
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There's no hope of ever editing Roald Dahl's works into becoming something pleasant or politically correct by today's standards. Dahl's nastiness is baked right into his books, and that's a big part of why kids have always loved them. You can't go through them line by line and edit everything problematic out without the end result feeling nothing like Dahl at all. If they want to keep publishing him, the best solution is probably just to include a preface in each book that warns parents about the language and encourages them to discuss with their children what is or isn't considered appropriate nowadays. The usual suspects would probably still throw a fit about "cancel culture," but there's no helping that.
This is the most reasonable response in this thread. I agree.
On the sister site. Some words are censored by a word filter which is absturd considering you can't say "slemon" without it changing to "slime" unless you put some bbcode brackets between letters like this: Slemon
Ah, the lemon rule lol. I think Daniel just did that for funsies. You know, because it's such a serious site.
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Apparently, your sense of what is radical ideology and unjustifiable is different than some other folks. It seems that Fred Rogers was one of those 'other folks'.
Again with the Fred Rogers...
Maybe you really ought to look up what Fred Rogers thought about the gender of a mother and the gender of a father.
You know he changed his messages about gender roles and parents as times changed so that he would be more inclusive? You too, can do this. I know it.
100 percent wrong...
From the interview with the director of the documentary, 'Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
MR. ROGERS AND WHY KIND MEN FREAK US OUT (https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/mr-rogers-and-why-kind-men-freak-us-out)
The documentary really flies along — it’s only about 90 minutes. Were there things that, because of time or pacing, you decided to cut out that you think also inform who this man was?
There’s one detail that I really liked that’s not in the film, which is he felt like the shows should be evergreen. As he often said, the outside world of the child changes, but the inside of the child never changes. So he thought his shows should play the same to two-year-olds now or 20 years ago. But as the years would go on, he would find things that had happened in old episodes that didn’t feel current, where maybe he used a pronoun “he” instead of “they” — or he met a woman and presumed that she was a housewife. So he would put on the same clothes and go back and shoot inserts and fix old episodes so that they felt as current as possible, so that he could stand by them 100 percent. I’ve never heard of that happening — it’s kind of amazing.
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On the sister site. Some words are censored by a word filter which is absturd considering you can't say "slemon" without it changing to "slime" unless you put some bbcode brackets between letters like this: Slemon
Ah, the lemon rule lol. I think Daniel just did that for funsies. You know, because it's such a serious site.
LEMON TO LIME. SLEMON TO SLIME.
The lemon rule always gets people lol. They're like "WHY CAN'T I TYPE THIS WORD IN??"
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Ah, the lemon rule lol.
To my recollection, it was a highly advanced way of stopping people from linking to lemonparty. Kind of like how for the longest time "tfes.org" was replaced with "google.com"
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Ah, the lemon rule lol.
To my recollection, it was a highly advanced way of stopping people from linking to lemonparty. Kind of like how for the longest time "tfes.org" was replaced with "google.com"
Ha, I never thought of that but it makes sense.
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my big-picture viewpoint is that the coercive suppression of ideas is a necessary component of censorship.
If I only censor things a little bit instead of a lot, that's okay in your world?
if you're not even going to bother reading what i write, then i'm not sure why i should do the same for you.
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my big-picture viewpoint is that the coercive suppression of ideas is a necessary component of censorship.
I don't think that's true, and I'm having trouble finding a source that confirms it, and given that it's possible for one to censor oneself, it seems absurd. Can you link to something that supports it, or is it just your personal opinion?
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my big-picture viewpoint is that the coercive suppression of ideas is a necessary component of censorship.
I don't think that's true, and I'm having trouble finding a source that confirms it, and given that it's possible for one to censor oneself, it seems absurd. Can you link to something that supports it, or is it just your personal opinion?
I don't think this fully supports that censorship of this type must always involve coercion, but here's more info on Dahl's changing up of the oompa-loopas in the early 70's and the pressure from the NAACP and others to do so:
Roald Dahl’s Anti-Black Racism (https://daily.jstor.org/roald-dahls-anti-black-racism/)
“In response, Dahl was shocked and sullen,” Eplett writes. “He found the NAACP to be unreasonable, telling Knopf editor Bob Bernstein he was unable to understand why they perceived his story as a ‘terrible dastardly anti-negro book,’ and described their attitude as ‘real Nazi stuff.’”
In the movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa-Loompas are reimagined with orange skin. But it was only after a series of exchanges with Eleanor Cameron, a white children’s book author who objected to the racist content, that Dahl agreed to revise the book. In the 1974 edition, Oopma-Loompas became long-haired, rosy-cheeked, and white, hailing from the island of Loompaland. (Dahl’s widow revealed in 2017 that the original Charlie was intended to be a Black child.)
Interesting too that he was apparently pressured by his people to change the original draft(s) where he had Charlie as a black kid. From the interview with Dahl's widow and his biographer on BBC (2017), “I can tell you that it was his agent who thought it was a bad idea, when the book was first published, to have a Black hero,” Sturrock said. “She said people would ask: ‘Why?’”
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Apparently, your sense of what is radical ideology and unjustifiable is different than some other folks. It seems that Fred Rogers was one of those 'other folks'.
Again with the Fred Rogers...
Maybe you really ought to look up what Fred Rogers thought about the gender of a mother and the gender of a father.
You know he changed his messages about gender roles and parents as times changed so that he would be more inclusive? You too, can do this. I know it.
100 percent wrong...
Incorrect. He changed the lyrics to “Everybody’s Fancy” in order to be more inclusive. People change, it’s ok. You don’t need to be scared.
No, he didn't. Somebody may have, but he didn't.
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Apparently, your sense of what is radical ideology and unjustifiable is different than some other folks. It seems that Fred Rogers was one of those 'other folks'.
Again with the Fred Rogers...
Maybe you really ought to look up what Fred Rogers thought about the gender of a mother and the gender of a father.
You know he changed his messages about gender roles and parents as times changed so that he would be more inclusive? You too, can do this. I know it.
100 percent wrong...
Incorrect. He changed the lyrics to “Everybody’s Fancy” in order to be more inclusive. People change, it’s ok. You don’t need to be scared.
No, he didn't. Somebody may have, but he didn't.
Apparently, you are incorrect...
THE NEIGHBORHOOD ARCHIVE - All Things Mister Rogers (http://www.neighborhoodarchive.com/music/songs/everybodys_fancy.html)
Notes
Becoming more sensitive to gender issues, Fred Rogers slightly altered the third verse of this song for the You Are Special CD release:
- Original lyrics: "Only girls can be the mommies. Only boys can be the daddies."
- Altered lyrics: "Girls grow up to be the mommies. Boys grow up to be the daddies."
Released 1992
(https://i.imgur.com/10WelAO.png)
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my big-picture viewpoint is that the coercive suppression of ideas is a necessary component of censorship.
If I only censor things a little bit instead of a lot, that's okay in your world?
if you're not even going to bother reading what i write, then i'm not sure why i should do the same for you.
"Dude, I just redefined what censor means, now I don't have to address your argument because I just don't consider censorship to be censorship, lmao, gg"
Very good meme, bravo. Maybe you should stick with the mockery shtick instead of letting the mask slip and pretend you had anything meaningful to write in the first place.
my big-picture viewpoint is that the coercive suppression of ideas is a necessary component of censorship.
I don't think that's true, and I'm having trouble finding a source that confirms it, and given that it's possible for one to censor oneself, it seems absurd. Can you link to something that supports it, or is it just your personal opinion?
It seems absurd because it was the only way to make it seem like he had a salient point. Otherwise, he might accidentally agree with us after mocking us and calling us all 14 years old. No, he must disagree with us to the end.
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Apparently, your sense of what is radical ideology and unjustifiable is different than some other folks. It seems that Fred Rogers was one of those 'other folks'.
Again with the Fred Rogers...
Maybe you really ought to look up what Fred Rogers thought about the gender of a mother and the gender of a father.
You know he changed his messages about gender roles and parents as times changed so that he would be more inclusive? You too, can do this. I know it.
100 percent wrong...
Incorrect. He changed the lyrics to “Everybody’s Fancy” in order to be more inclusive. People change, it’s ok. You don’t need to be scared.
No, he didn't. Somebody may have, but he didn't.
Apparently, you are incorrect...
THE NEIGHBORHOOD ARCHIVE - All Things Mister Rogers (http://www.neighborhoodarchive.com/music/songs/everybodys_fancy.html)
Notes
Becoming more sensitive to gender issues, Fred Rogers slightly altered the third verse of this song for the You Are Special CD release:
- Original lyrics: "Only girls can be the mommies. Only boys can be the daddies."
- Altered lyrics: "Girls grow up to be the mommies. Boys grow up to be the daddies."
Released 1992
(https://i.imgur.com/10WelAO.png)
For only the second time, at least in all the days I have been posting here, it seems you and Rama were right.
Now tell me how an author revising his work equates to someone else revising the work post-mortem.
In addition, whatever revision Rogers did to his work changed nothing of the message. Girls are mommies, boys are daddies.
Pretty exclusive if you ask me.
Back to NAMBLA and GLAAD for more lessons on effective delivery of propaganda.
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I can understand altering words to make it make sense to current child audiences.
Like changing "he was acting gay" to "he was acting happy" for books written when gay meant happy and not homosexual.
But beyond reading comprehension for children, I don't see the need to edit.
They're products of their time and its important for people to read and see how others were thought of in the past.
They need to critically think about race, for example, and these books help with that.
Gay doesn't mean happy? It has been synonomous with happy for as long as I remember.
It is but its hasn't been primarily used that way for several decades now. So a 10 year old may be confused and use the current meaning instead of the one we know. Which will give the wrong idea.
Why should we allow ten year olds to be blind to proper use of language within context?
"He was a delightful and gay young fellow..."
I'm pretty sure todays youth would default to, "He was a delightful and homosexual young fellow..."
"He ventured off to grab a faggot and then was headed back to the cabin to start a fire and cook some stew..."
I'm guessing here too the youth of today would not default to a bundle of sticks.
Only because illiterates, too fucking lazy to improve their language skills, default to the "I DEMAND SOMEONE CATER TO MY INEPTITUDE AND HURT FEELINGS!!!" approach.
And you and the other agent provocateurs'/chatbot GPTs' located on various forums across the internet gleefully cheer that shit on, like it is a fine position to have and life philosophy worthy of perpetuating and inculcating in today's populace.
That's okay. Every time I physically encounter one, I don't hesitate to label the bullshit out loud.
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I can understand altering words to make it make sense to current child audiences.
Like changing "he was acting gay" to "he was acting happy" for books written when gay meant happy and not homosexual.
But beyond reading comprehension for children, I don't see the need to edit.
They're products of their time and its important for people to read and see how others were thought of in the past.
They need to critically think about race, for example, and these books help with that.
Gay doesn't mean happy? It has been synonomous with happy for as long as I remember.
It is but its hasn't been primarily used that way for several decades now. So a 10 year old may be confused and use the current meaning instead of the one we know. Which will give the wrong idea.
Why should we allow ten year olds to be blind to proper use of language within context?
Because language changes.
The proper use of language also changes with the time. And its always great to teach kids about older usages of a word or phrase, but unless they ask (and why would they if they know the word) they'll just make assumptions. Which isn't what you want when they read.
Yeah, god forbid we forget history though.
It seems you are the type with little interest in what your own children do with their time.
When a kid reads something and they cannot understand the word within the context, they have options. Derive the meaning from a dictionary or other source material within the entire fucking text.
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For only the second time, at least in all the days I have been posting here, it seems you and Rama were right.
Now tell me how an author revising his work equates to someone else revising the work post-mortem.
In addition, whatever revision Rogers did to his work changed nothing of the message. Girls are mommies, boys are daddies.
Pretty exclusive if you ask me.
Back to NAMBLA and GLAAD for more lessons on effective delivery of propaganda.
Apology accepted.
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Ah, the lemon rule lol.
To my recollection, it was a highly advanced way of stopping people from linking to lemonparty. Kind of like how for the longest time "tfes.org" was replaced with "google.com"
Makes sense.
For those who don't know, Lemonparty is a shock/gore site.
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I can understand altering words to make it make sense to current child audiences.
Like changing "he was acting gay" to "he was acting happy" for books written when gay meant happy and not homosexual.
But beyond reading comprehension for children, I don't see the need to edit.
They're products of their time and its important for people to read and see how others were thought of in the past.
They need to critically think about race, for example, and these books help with that.
Gay doesn't mean happy? It has been synonomous with happy for as long as I remember.
It is but its hasn't been primarily used that way for several decades now. So a 10 year old may be confused and use the current meaning instead of the one we know. Which will give the wrong idea.
Why should we allow ten year olds to be blind to proper use of language within context?
"He was a delightful and gay young fellow..."
I'm pretty sure todays youth would default to, "He was a delightful and homosexual young fellow..."
"He ventured off to grab a faggot and then was headed back to the cabin to start a fire and cook some stew..."
I'm guessing here too the youth of today would not default to a bundle of sticks.
Only because illiterates, too fucking lazy to improve their language skills, default to the "I DEMAND SOMEONE CATER TO MY INEPTITUDE AND HURT FEELINGS!!!" approach.
Welcome to 2023.
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Apology accepted.
Apology, my ass.
Back to your original post:
Sometimes Tom just happens to be right.
This isn’t that time. It’s really easy to justify not using the words Mother and Father in some contexts. When it is irrelevant which gender the parent is, including same sex couples is a better choice. Nothing is lost and something is gained.
In regards to the editing of Dahl’s books I’m not the biggest fan. It appears this wasn’t a unilateral move by the publisher, it was a 4 year project by the rights holder of the works, the publisher and a company that specializes in this sort of thing. There might be more at work than the top line story and I’m open to learning about that but if there isn’t more context then this is an example of progressive values gone too far.
Tom was talking specifically about the revisions to Dahl's work.
Nothing you posted justifies the removal of the words mother and father in the work of Dahl.
In other words, Tom is rigt, whether you like or not.
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Apology, my ass.
Too much to expect. Ah well.
Back to your original post:
Indeed!
Tom was talking specifically about the revisions to Dahl's work.
Nothing you posted justifies the removal of the words mother and father in the work of Dahl.
In other words, Tom is rigt, whether you like or not.
My point still stands. Obviously we haven't read through all of the new versions, however unless there is a specific need to identify the gender of the parent, it is irrelevant. This issue gets trumped by the larger issue of whether or not editing the author's work to appeal to modern sensibilities was appropriate, which I am not convinced it was, but in specific reference to the words Tom was SUPER CONCERNED about, it's not particularly difficult to justify the change.
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A couple of people mentioned removing words like "gay" and "queer" as a more acceptable example of something to revise, but I have to say that I don't agree with even that. I think it's good to teach kids that language changes over time and that words have meant different things at different times. If this is something that really needs to be spelled out to them, then new versions of older children's books could include annotations or footnotes explaining what unfamiliar words mean. There's something that strikes me as almost anti-intellectual about supposing that if kids are faced with something that they may not entirely understand, then we should just remove it entirely rather than help them understand it. Kids aren't stupid. If they're old enough to read by themselves, then they're old enough to understand context, and they're old enough to interpret the media they consume critically, even if they don't realize that's what they're doing.
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To show you exactly how ridiculous all of this is, I was actually sanctioned and banned here for using the word abnormal, because some people want to think abnormal is personally insulting.
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To show you exactly how ridiculous all of this is, I was actually sanctioned and banned here for using the word abnormal, because some people want to think abnormal is personally insulting.
Oh interesting, you actually don’t understand context.
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To show you exactly how ridiculous all of this is, I was actually sanctioned and banned here for using the word abnormal, because some people want to think abnormal is personally insulting.
Oh interesting, you actually don’t understand context.
I exactly understand context. Next, you'll claim it is possible for context to allow the word normal to be deemed as insulting.
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To show you exactly how ridiculous all of this is, I was actually sanctioned and banned here for using the word abnormal, because some people want to think abnormal is personally insulting.
Oh interesting, you actually don’t understand context.
I exactly understand context. Next, you'll claim it is possible for context to allow the word normal to be deemed as insulting.
Of course it can. That is precisely how context works. Reach out in a DM if you want to avoid this embarrassing conversation. I am happy to educate you.
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Since it is directly related to the OP title, kindly post your absurd example here ITT.
Please note, everyone will most certainly view the example you present as absurd, without question.
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Since it is directly related to the OP title, kindly post your absurd example here ITT.
Please note, everyone will most certainly view the example you present as absurd, without question.
Sure.
“You’re too normal.” Don’t get it? That’s because context matters.
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Since it is directly related to the OP title, kindly post your absurd example here ITT.
Please note, everyone will most certainly view the example you present as absurd, without question.
Sure.
“You’re too normal.” Don’t get it? That’s because context matters.
It is evident this is not offensive in the least; therefore, it is absurd.
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Some shows were censored in china (like an anime) to where blood was instead changed to white which is even worse than blood since if there's blood all over someone in the Original version than in the censored version it looks like some porno where someone has cum all over them
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To show you exactly how ridiculous all of this is, I was actually sanctioned and banned here for using the word abnormal, because some people want to think abnormal is personally insulting.
Directly insulting another user outside of CN/AR is against the forum rules. If you would like to question forum rules, you may do so in Suggestions & Concerns. Do not do it here.
I would also like to remind Rama that it is possible to not reply to the things Action80 posts. We've had you two ruin enough threads. Do you really have to do it here, too?
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We could just lock of them in AR/CN and the problem would probably be solved.
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They can’t keep getting away with this! The woke mob has gone TOO FAR!
https://comicbook.com/irl/news/goosebumps-author-r-l-stine-rewriting-series-for-sensitivity-ahead-of-reprinting/
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They can’t keep getting away with this! The woke mob has gone TOO FAR!
https://comicbook.com/irl/news/goosebumps-author-r-l-stine-rewriting-series-for-sensitivity-ahead-of-reprinting/
What an author does to their own work is not topical.
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They can’t keep getting away with this! The woke mob has gone TOO FAR!
https://comicbook.com/irl/news/goosebumps-author-r-l-stine-rewriting-series-for-sensitivity-ahead-of-reprinting/
It's just as silly and dumb, but I have no problem with people making changes to their own work, it's their prerogative.
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To show you exactly how ridiculous all of this is, I was actually sanctioned and banned here for using the word abnormal, because some people want to think abnormal is personally insulting.
Directly insulting another user outside of CN/AR is against the forum rules. If you would like to question forum rules, you may do so in Suggestions & Concerns. Do not do it here.
I wasn't.
And I submit Roald Dahl's work wasn't directly insulting anyone either.
The point is, some people can take some things any way they wish.
If a person wants to spend their time looking for insults, they can find them anywhere...
...primarily, however, in their imagination.
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And I submit Roald Dahl's work wasn't directly insulting anyone either.
Direct insults are not the only way to be offended. For example, some people are offended by explicit sexual references or excessive profanity, even if not directed at anyone in particular. Even someone with an obnoxious attitude can be offensive to some.
The point is, some people can take some things any way they wish.
If a person wants to spend their time looking for insults, they can find them anywhere...
...primarily, however, in their imagination.
Agreed. Some people are overly sensitive and/or go out of their way to look for things to be offended by. Some people get over zealous in trying to cater to those people while others are themselves offended by such people and go out of their way to offend them even more.