[Tom Bishop]

I am still waiting for an explanation for why the words mother and father should be censored.

[stack]

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.

[Rushy]

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.

[Tom Bishop]

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.

[honk]

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.

[Tom Bishop]

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.

[Roundy]

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.

[stack]

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'.

[stack]

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.

[Tom Bishop]

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. 

[stack]

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.

[Action80]

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/

[Rama Set]

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.

[Rama Set]

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.

[Action80]

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...

[Rama Set]

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.

[Алёна]

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

[Roundy]

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.

[stack]

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

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.

[Алёна]

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??"