Roald Dahl's books edited to be more 'inclusive'

Ohhh I doubt they need them from me. 😅

There are so, so many edits listed in the reporting, and I haven't seen that particular one particularly called out, so I'd throw salt on defining how much of what outrage, is predicated on that change alone.

If it offends the publishers then simply edit where they see fit and title the book 'something less offensive based on the works written by Mr R Dahl'

Charlene and the vegan fair trade chocolate factory.

If thy eyes offend thee then pluck them out

Because we let them. Its time that the majority reclaimed the centre of the ring and put all this "woke" bullshìt to bed.

Unless i'm mistaken you're just pointing out the core function of news media - to inform people of a thing that they would not otherwise be aware of, ie. news. Are you really calling it a 'discrepancy' that people are upset about the changes having only recently learned about the changes?

I wanted to read the 'just so stories' to my kids growing up. I bought the book but it was so outdated and outright racist that they never got to experience those stories

The books will be lost to history if they're not revised to fit with progressive social attitudes.

No, I’m pointing out that the publishing puritans are only so because of what they perceive to be part of a greater agenda, when in reality, like I said earlier - original works have been revised and altered since the invention of the printing press.

Is anybody else just sick of this **** now.

Some **** in an office somewhere trying to make & justify work for themselves.

They did openly denounce the authors antisemitic comments

specifically, though, they were reportedly disavowing some things he said in an interview that essentially mirrored what Kanye “Ye” West said. Not something he committed to publication for children’s books afaik

I wonder if Dahl's family will challenge the publisher legally for misrepresentation.

Why would they or could they? The family have supercharged the commercialisation of his works.

Netflix has no real interest in the books, they want the characters and stories to create content for their platform which will probably wildly stray from the books anyway.

But but free speech.

In fairness, people have been rewriting history forever. It's actually an essential part of the historical record. The more historical evidence that gets uncovered, the more the historical record is subject to change. Add into that a bias on behalf of the author, whether conscious or unconscious, and our document history can be changed even further. As a keen reader of history, I always have to be careful of what I'm reading and usually make efforts to corroborate with other historians.

In respect to Dahl and Netflix's "ownership" of his work, that's an entirely different kettle of fish. All that's happening here is they're rewriting/rephrasing certain words that, and let's be honest here, a tiny minority of people, somewhere, might be slightly upset by. And it's a thoroughly ridiculous move. I'm sure, though, that they believe that there's a monetary reward in pushing their revisions.

I'm completely unsurprised, however, that this is coming from an American perspective, of course. Or, at least, a minority American perspective. They have a really peculiar relationship with language over there, that I struggle to understand completely. On the one hand they are generally happy with quite absurd things like out of control gun laws, which is a truly dangerous thing that their society faces, but then they'll rear up like a startled horse if they see the word "nigger" written in a Mark Twain novel and believe it's the most egregious thing ever.

One needs to be very careful of the use of the word "liberal" here, because huge multimillion dollar business concerns are anything but. If they do something like this, ostensibly, for a moral reason, you'll find that it's usually their bottom line they are more worried about.

In relation to 20 or 30 years ago, I remember all the fuss over records in America, by certain conservative groups, like the PMRC and how farcical, unreasonable, and facile their actions were and, in fact, their meddling only encouraged the very thing they were trying to stop. If you're of a certain age you may remember this sticker emblazoned on album covers...

All that ended up doing was to encourage kids to believe that the record they were buying was cool and edgy. And, in fact, most kids who were into the band that had such a label already knew there was "explicit" therein anyway. Jesus, they even printed T Shirts with that logo on them. 🤣

I'd say that the same "liberal" folk who laughed at the PMRC's silly antics would be the same folk who'll be laughing at the absurdity of Netflix's nonsense with respect to their changes to Dahl's stories. Although, while Tipper Gore and her fuddy duddy crew probably were genuinely appalled at a Dead Kennedys album, the likes of business such as Netflix or Disney are making changes for more cynical reasons.