Roald Dahl

[Hijinks75]

I just read an article about Dahl's books being “rewritten “ to remove offensive language, e.g. fat in Charlie and the chocolate factory, making the oompa lump as gender neutral, changing fantastic mr foxes sons to daughters and numerous other things, am I alone in finding this more offensive than leaving the books as they are

At least link to article.

This article?

www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-to-remove-language-deemed-offensive

Then just don’t read the new versions? The old books aren’t being burnt.

How is beastly ok if ugly is offensive?

Here www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-to-remove-language-deemed-offensive

Crazy!

They have been doing the same to Enid Blyton books for years. Dame Slap being changed to Dame Scold, changing characters' names etc

Which begs the question, I'f society is doing this with books, then how much human history has been altered by the victors ?

"Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now described as “enormous”.

Ah, that makes all the difference

"In The Witches, a paragraph explaining that witches are bald beneath their wigs ends with the new line: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

That seems as if it's saying being bald is a 'witch like' characteristic.

Enid Blyton’s The Three Golliwogs featured three Black doll characters named “Golly,” “Wolly,” and “N***.”

I’m REALLY okay with that sort of thing being changed.

Ridiculous. Yanbu.

If they were seriously worried about fat-shaming, they could have removed any reference to Gloop's size and just had him as a greedy character, leaving it to the reader's imagination what he looked like. You don't need to be obese to get stuck in a glass pipe.

Apologies for not including the link and yes they not removing the old versions, yet,

I heard this on TV the other day. It's definitely true. I thought how pathetic.

It’s a bit daft. I won’t fib - there are wee bits in the BFG that I leave out or change but that’s up to me. When a character is described as fat, both my children have responded saying it was unkind. Surely that discussion is healthier than erasure

Depends on the size of the pipe doesn’t it?

Discussions better than erasure but it's up to you to leave bits out?

Yes, exactly. And he could still have been left taller and thinner than he was at the end of the book.

But if we're saying taller and thinner why would shorter and fatter be offensive?

Doesn’t it miss the point on Mrs Twit - she was ugly because she had ugly thoughts:

“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

Like Enid Blyton characters being changed from Dick and Fanny to Rick and Franny...

I'm not saying it would be, just that changing him from 'fat' to 'enormous' is completely pointless, and if they wanted to, they could remove any suggestion that he was larger than average.

It wont stop here . It’s utterly insane .

We have all the old RD books thank goodness and bloody love them.

YANBU

Its fucking ridiculous.

Sorry to clarify as it wasn’t mentioned above - Mrs Twit will no longer be called ugly in the new book

It’s bizarre if there’s nothing wrong with being fat, body confidence etc then why not just say fat?

😁

I never knew this . Crazy how everything offends everyone nowadays.