This is acquiescence to an increasingly aggressive cultural mood that sanitises anything “offensive” without regard for what genuine purpose is served in doing so. The note in the new editions proclaims the decisions have been made to allow everyone to enjoy Dahl’s books. But nastiness is an integral part of Dahl’s appeal for children in the very first place.
This is not just about Dahl, though. This is also about what we mean by inclusivity. It is a good thing insofar as we recognise it for what it actually is: a compassionate attitude to human differences. Bowdlerising Dahl’s work in this heavy-handed way is not compassionate. It is an abdication of artistic and moral responsibility to the whims of a nebulous category of people: the potentially offended.
To read Owolade's entire article, click HERE.
From Imogen West-Knights' 2-23-23 SLATE article entitled "The BFG Isn’t a BFD":
This whole thing also seems like a misunderstanding about what is appealing about the world of Roald Dahl in the first place. Or not, in fact, a misunderstanding, but something closer to a cynical attempt to sanitize the I.P. before Netflix gets their hands on it to pump out a load of new Dahl adaptations, as they will be doing in the coming years after a deal with the Roald Dahl Story Company. Puffin can change lines like “so I shipped them all over here—every man, woman and child in the Oompa-Loompa tribe” to “so, they all agreed to come over—each and every Oompa Loompa.” Fine, but do we now need more detail on how the Oompa-Loompas are being compensated fairly for their work? Does any child in the world give a shit about that? I’m being facetious, but the point is that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a horrible little story in many ways. Changing specific phrases doesn’t change the shape of these books themselves. They are nasty books. Dahl was a nasty writer for adults as well: His short stories are some of the most memorable and twisted things I’ve read. The Twits is about a husband and a wife torturing each other for fun. In Matilda, a little boy is forced to eat an entire chocolate cake until he is almost sick as a punishment. In George’s Marvelous Medicine, George kills his grandmother by shrinking her out of existence. The nastiness is a feature, not a bug.
To read West-Knights' entire article, click HERE.
"A sanitized culture always on its good behavior & bleached of provocation is no culture at all. It’s a garden party where no one talks of anything but the weather, and these days even the weather is controversial. In America, culture defines politics rather than the other way around, and it remains to be seen whether the culture wrests back from our times the courage of disquieting provocations…."
--Steve Erickson, AMERICAN STUTTER, 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment