Censors Come For P.G. Wodehouse, Proving They Don’t Actually Want To Learn From The Past
Contrary to their claims, the current race-obsessed woke scolds don’t really want to learn from the past nor study it with any care.
A week after censors edited Roald Dahl's classic children's books to remove content deemed objectionable, "sensitivity readers" are rewriting Ian Fleming's iconic novels about James Bond.
Fleming's James Bond books are scheduled to be reissued in April to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the publication of "Casino Royale" – the first novel in the 007 franchise.
Ian Fleming Publications Ltd – the company that owns the literary rights to the author's work – commissioned "sensitivity readers" to pore over the James Bond novels and scrub any offensive content before the republication.
The reissued books will reportedly remove the race and ethnicity of certain characters.
Fleming’s books will have descriptions of black people "reworked or removed."
The Telegraph reported, "In the sensitivity reader-approved version of 'Live and Let Die,' Bond’s assessment that would-be African criminals in the gold and diamond trades are 'pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much' becomes – 'pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.'"
The censors will alter a scene where Bond witnesses a strip tease at a nightclub in Harlem, New York.
The original book read, "Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry."
The rewritten passage will read, "Bond could sense the electric tension in the room."
The sensitivity readers decided to remove a description of an accent described as "straight Harlem-Deep South with a lot of New York thrown in."
Racial slurs that denigrate black people which Fleming used in his writing between the 1950s and 1960s will also be removed from the new editions.
The Telegraph noted, "Dated references to other ethnicities remain, such as Bond's racial terms for east Asian people and the spy’s disparaging views of Oddjob, Goldfinger's Korean henchman."
The British media outlet said other expressions that will remain include: "sweet tang of rape," "blithering women," "man's work," and referring to homosexuality as a "stubborn disability."
Ian Fleming Publications issued a statement on the edited James Bond novels:
We at Ian Fleming Publications reviewed the text of the original Bond books and decided our best course of action was to follow Ian’s lead. We have made changes to 'Live and Let Die' that he himself authorized. Following Ian’s approach, we looked at the instances of several racial terms across the books and removed a number of individual words or else swapped them for terms that are more accepted today but in keeping with the period in which the books were written. We encourage people to read the books for themselves when the new paperbacks are published in April.
The revised novels will feature a disclaimer that reads: "This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set."
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Publishers have meticulously scrubbed recent U.K. editions of Roald Dahl's classic children's stories to nix language readers might find offensive, The Telegraph reported Friday.
"Hang on to your old children's books, everyone! Dr. Seuss was only the beginning," Wall Street Journal's book critic Meghan Cox Gurdon tweeted Saturday afternoon.
Gurdon, who wrote "The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction," was responding to The Telegraph's piece detailing a lengthy list of changes to the 2022 Puffin editions of many of Dahl's works.
Dahl's body of work includes "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Matilda," "James and the Giant Peach," "The Witches," "The Twits," "The BFG," "Fantastic Mr. Fox," and more. They are children's literature classics from one of the world's greatest storytellers.
"Dahl is only a prominent example of a growing trend in children’s publishing for content that nobody can find offensive," wrote Ed Cumming, Genevieve Holl-Allen, and Benedict Smith in Friday's well-researched piece.
The authors documented literally hundreds of changes to Dahl's books. These changes render the classic tales no longer uniquely Dahl's, some would argue. Rather, they have become Dahl-esque narratives that substitute the "contemporary sensibilities" of his publishers for Dahl's own.
Those contemporary sensibilities, in Dahl's case, meant language changes around "weight, mental health, violence, gender, and race." Some passages have been re-written to such an extent that they alter what Dahl clearly intended to convey.
For example, a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been swapped for Jane Austen in "Matilda." In "The Witches" a passage that formerly read "'Here's your little boy,' she said. 'He needs to go on a diet.'" now only says "Here's your little boy."
Illustrations accompanying Dahl's work were also subjected to sensitivity readers' chopping blocks. Sketches of character Mike Teavee of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" previously included toy pistols hanging from his belts. In today's version, the pretend firearms are no longer included in the illustrations, nor in the text, The Telegraph observed.
Dahl's greatness in storytelling, of course, does not negate the fact that he made egregious antisemitic comments. This sad, inescapable fact has been long acknowledged, and his family apologized for it years ago in a brief statement that is still available on Dahl's website.
"The Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company deeply apologise for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by Roald Dahl's antisemitic statements. Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl's stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations," the family's 2020 statement issued 30 years after Dahl's death said.
"We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words," the statement concludes.
Though some of the contemporary edits to Dahl's body of work addressed the heinous antisemitism, many of the changes related to other matters. There was a notable emphasis, it seems, on changing passages that reference women, for example.
"What's next: sanitizing Mark Twain? Aristotle? Many of Dahl's books were written 50-60 years ago," California-based Lee Wardlaw, author of 30 books for young readers told BlazeMedia.
"Let kids read what they want to read today. If they have issues with the language, they can stop reading the books...or they can discuss them with their teachers or parents or fellow students," Wardlaw added
"I am sure there is a lot of guilt and shame in that family. [Dahl] was an anti-semite, and although he apologized years later, and so did his family, there is still a stain on his name from his remarks," Wardlaw concluded.
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