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

Which is not great to hear for those of us who, objectively, are not very good looking and sometimes get called 'ugly'. I wouldn't be sorry to see that paragraph go.

While I don't agree with changing books (Most of the time anyway) I can see the logic behind some of the changes.

But what on earth is offensive about Mr Fox having 3 sons? Shall i tell my friend she's offensive for committing the sin of having 3 boys? Is my cousin more or less offensive for having 3 daughters?

According to the Telegraph's article:

One of Dahl’s most popular lines from The Twits is: “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.” It has been edited to take out the “double chin”.

So... what's the logic there?

As a fat, ugly female I don't find the originals offensive. Actually, I find it offensive that the terms fat, ugly and female are now considered so awful that they are cut out of books before children are allowed to read them. Will the illustrations be doctored too? Will no fat or ugly people be allowed to be shown?
The Roald Dahl Story Company claims that the "irreverence and sharp-edged spirit" has been maintained. Rubbish. It's not irreverent to criticise things that everybody in society is encouraged to criticise.

I have to agree the whole thing is ridiculous!

@PlaitBilledDuckyPuss ah sorry I didn’t ever read it in that way - I thought it meant that we all need to look beyond looks and see the person within (and anyone calling someone ugly just because of what they look like is therefore stupid). Sorry if I’m the one who misunderstood that paragraph.

You could read it either way, I agree. But if you are assessed as 'ugly' by people (on the basis of how you look) then that paragraph reads as though it's your punishment for having ugly thoughts.

I thought the whole appeal of his books were that he didn't sugar coat anything.
There are loads of new books that people can buy if they don't want to deal with his words.

@PlaitBilledDuckyPuss absolutely fair point - and taken. That way it is horrid and upsetting.

Books are of their time, and can and should be a starting point for conversation. children are not stupid and are perfectly capable of understanding that some things are unkind, that people believe different things now.

David Walliam's books are full of comments about women being fat and ugly. And still being published...

It is very offensive,I agree. Mind you, we shouldn't be surprised that Dahl can be corrected in the name of wrong-think when these woke sensitivity readers can declare Shakespeare 'problematic'.
Why have publishers put self confident illiterates in charge of literature?

Yes @GoodChat i feel I can decide whether my 5 year old needs to hear the BFG talk about Hottentots for example. Some of it just hasn’t aged terribly well and bedtime isn’t always the time to have the discussions.

my preference is to talk about the language

I think it's pretty clear he is saying the opposite of that, that actual features don't matter. And people who think otherwise are therefore mistaken, and probably shallow.

My guess is because it implies "fat". They had a sensitivity reader who was specifically looking for references to weight, and anything like that has been cut out.

I was an avid reader of blyton but I remember in one famous five book they had seen a shadowy figure or Face at the window and we’re discussing all the horrendous things it could have been . One of them says “ maybe it was a black man” and they all gasped. The horror of it! 😂

I did enjoy a lot of her books, wouldn’t give that book (and many others she wrote) to any child unless that part had been removed. That would be irresponsible.

Oh I never even clicked re Dick & Fanny ... was that an inside joke or something??!

Even this kind of thing is somewhat context specific. It seems so odd and nasty now, everyone has seen a black man. My grandmother, however, was a contemporary of Blyton, and grew up in the Cotswolds. She had never seen any black person until she was an adult and went to work in London. Even photographs weren't that common, in part because there was just less of that kind of thing around, no tv, picture quality wasn't always great in newspapers and magazines many had more illustrations rather than photos.

It likely would have been surprising and shocking to see a black man outside your window in that kind of scenario, and it's easy to think of anything very outside your experience as potentially scary. Novel and scary are connected in the brain, which of course makes perfect sense.

There's some language I don't mind being changed, but scenarios like that can, I think, be understood by children pretty well.

You know some of us are Black and have Black children, right? Black children who are dealing with racism in real life from an early age? As someone who read those sorts of things as a child, I can assure that it was confusing and unpleasant.

Regardless of what your granny experienced growing up in the Cotswolds, explaining to a five year old why their skin colour is a thing of shock and horror to the characters (with whom they are supposed to identify) in the book you’re reading them/they’re reading is not our preference.

So, yup, these things can he understood by kids pretty well. They also cut deep and start to do so early.

If you think they'd bother your kids, it would certainly be better to wait. Not all kids do find the same things upsetting though. I always tended to read my kids pretty unvarnished stuff, whether it was fairy tales, or people exploring far off places, where people's prejudices were different than ours but very much present, or Enid Blyton. That's probably partly because when I was a child I really liked books where people did things I found questionable, scary, or weird - what I'd now describe as morally problematic. Encountering that kind of thing in books was very much a way to think about them in a controlled environment.

Obviously not everyone use books the same way or has the same kind of personality. Which isn't bad, but it doesn't mean we should only have books that are low-key nice stories with nothing that would bother anyone, even for kids.

If you think they'd bother your kids, it would certainly be better to wait.

Yes, I think references to Black people being scary and called racist names would bother my Black kids.

Not all kids do find the same things upsetting though.

Indeed. I imagine kids who aren’t the subject of racism are less upset about it.

You have the luxury of exploring said prejudices in the abstract. We do not. Black people (who live with racism) don’t describe it as merely ‘morally problematic’ and aren’t looking back at racist books from our childhoods and describing them thusly: ‘when I was a child I really liked books where people did things I found questionable, scary, or weird’.

But, great for you and your kids that your ‘personality’ (race) is such that you can enjoy it all and treat it as a learning experience. I’ll read my kids ‘low-key nice stories’ without golliwogs, the n word and references to Black Sambo.

I can understand the need to change offensive words.

However the article also says:
"References to “female” characters have disappeared. Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a “most formidable female”, is now a “most formidable woman”.

Gender-neutral terms have been added in places – where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Oompa Loompas were “small men”, they are now “small people”. The Cloud-Men in James and The Giant Peach have become Cloud-People."
Surely that isn't necessary?

I think you'll find that black people have a variety of viewpoints on this. Like pretty much everything else.

Well if Roald Dahl ends up being amended I hope that means the same for all the offensive bits in David Walliams’ books.

I think you’ll find that Black people, as a whole, don’t enjoy anti-Black racism or our young kids being exposed to racist abuse in their reading material. We’re pretty united on that front.

I think you having the audacity to tell a Black person about Black people’s views on racism is incredibly offensive.

I think that unless you’re Black, you should be quiet on this subject. Your comments on this thread are incredibly tone deaf and very ignorant.

So, I suppose we all have thoughts.