the Roald Dahl of it all

or, stop that!

What do you make of this?

What is there to make of it? As far as I can tell, just about everyone is against these changes. PEN has come out against them. Most authors have come out against them. Your average person is either unaware of this or against the changes to books they read as children.

Dodging the question, eh?

I’m against it, to put it plainly. There seems to be no reason to make these changes, most importantly, but any changes made to a book without the author’s input is definitely bad. I would say that, in fact, I’m against it in every conceivable sense.

My view on this is that if the publisher is so opposed to the text that they feel it must be changed, they should give up the publication rights and stop publishing the books entirely.

They would never do this, of course, because of money.

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

If you think that the rights-holders to Roald Dahl’s work changing the adjective to describe Augustus Gloop from “fat” to “enormous” matters *at all* in the face of a land war in Europe, a global pandemic, an ever-devolving climate disaster and rising fascism worldwide, *grow up*

What about this then?

That dude sucks. His whole career is based upon writing insanely long twitter threads about how Donald Trump is about to get arrested for being a Russian spy.

And so when conservatives make a panic about censorship, Abramson’s kneejerk reaction is to take the opposite position, because his career depends on always being against whatever conservatives are for, even when it’s something like this.

Like, the play conservatives are making here is that since the changes seem to be something some aggrieved liberal wanted then they can convince everyone that liberals want to censor the past and are the pro-censorship wing of the country.

That liberals like Abramson fall so thoughtlessly into this trap speaks mostly to the fact that he is an idiot and mostly a con artist.

Never mind that conservative legislation happening across the country is currently banning books from schools.

This is how liberals should counter these claims, because conservatives cannot be the anti-censorship and pro-bookbanning wing of the country at the same time, though they’re doing a pretty good job of holding this position.

Which, again, mostly speaks to the idiocy of liberals.

What about this?

If you fear books, stop reading. Bury your head in the sand.

I’ll say it again: I am against the works of authors being changed without their consent or oversight.

If this is how you feel about Agatha Christie, stop reading her. It’s easy to do. I’ve never even read one! There are lots of books I’ve never read but there are lots that I have read. Just make your choices based on whatever personal criteria you want and live with them.

You disliking something or finding it problematic is not a reason for it to be changed.

If the publisher thinks Christie’s novels are too racist, they should cede publishing rights and stop publishing the books.

You know they’ll never do that.

Exactly, because there’s money to be made.

Let me guess: capitalism is the problem?

In a word: yes.

Who is driving these changes? I haven’t heard of some big petition to change Dahl’s work or anyone recently bringing up problems with the way Dahl writes about people. There weren’t a flood of thinkpieces and buzzfeed listicles of the worst moments in Roald Dahl’s books, so I have a hard time believing this is coming from the public or some kind of grassroots movement.

What does that have to do with capitalism?

Netflix is now the exclusive owner of the Roald Dahl Story Company. They worked with Penguin, the publisher, and Inclusive Minds, to make the books more palatable to avoid any possible controversy moving forward.

They want the money and they don’t want anybody trying to cancel the books for racism, bigotry, fatphobia, etc.

I imagine some executive read the books after acquiring them and thought, These are pretty mean and kind of dicey, especially in today’s political climate. Maybe we can smooth this out a bit.

To Netflix, this move seemed less controversial because they’re not interested in books or stories. They’re selling a product that they don’t want to have to recall, which would threaten their ability to turn this into the Dahl Cinematic Universe and print mountains of money.

Is that even fair? Roald Dahl made changes to these books himself to, as you say, smooth them out a bit.

If you can’t see how that’s different than this, I don’t really know what to tell you.

But, again, when Dahl made those changes, it was also for money. His books sparked a bit of controversy and rather than stand behind what he wrote and how he wrote it, he chose to smooth it out.

That smoothing that he did likely contributed to the books selling over 300 million copies.

You really think children should be subject to racism, anti-semitism, and celebrations of colonialism?

Um, no, I guess not, but I also don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Adults can choose for themselves which books to read to their kids or to buy their kids.

Too, they can do the work of being a parent, which, I know, is controversial. But if you come across something you don’t like or that you find questionable in a book that you’re reading to your kids, maybe try talking to them about it.

Also, it probably shouldn’t need to be said, but reading a racist character be racist will not turn your child into a racist. Especially if you spend five minutes talking to them about the situation.

So make choices for you and your kids that make sense to you. If you want them to read Dahl but don’t want the dark bits, use it as a moment to talk to them.

Or, you know, just avoid them.

For example, the first time I read a Roald Dahl novel was when I was 23 and tasked with teaching English to Korean students. Part of the curriculum involved reading James and the Giant Peach.

So that was my first and only interaction with Dahl’s work.

Did my mom avoid it because of the racism or anything like that?

Knowing her, probably not. She probably just didn’t like the books when or if she ever read them and didn’t really think about giving them to me.

Besides, if you go to a children’s section at a bookstore (like I recently did), one thing you won’t find a lot of is Roald Dahl. Now, maybe that is because of the language that some people find offensive. Maybe booksellers themselves have refused to stock Dahl’s books.

Or maybe there’s been a deluge of children’s books since the publication of Harry Potter created it as a separate category. And maybe that deluge managed to wash away some of the older books in the category (some of which are nearly 80 years old).

For the record, I also didn’t see any Narnia books there. And maybe those have also been canceled by booksellers, but I imagine the public’s interest in all these books has simply waned in favor of whatever books currently top the bestseller’s list in this category.

Then how could this be about money if the books aren’t making any money?

Well, that’s not what I said. The books are clearly still selling well. Probably not as well as they once did, but any future Netflix adaptation of these books is certain to spike sales.

And so Netflix is heading off controversy over the content before it arises.

By causing a controversy?

Well, presumably this wasn’t the controversy they were intending to make. But it does seem like this will work out well for them as people fill their libraries with the older versions of Dahl’s books. I’m assuming that Netflix will earn the profits from any Dahl book sold, unless you’re buying secondhand.

So everyone wins!

Uh, sure.

It is possible that Netflix engineered this controversy in order to respark interest in Dahl’s catalogue in preparation for their adaptations. And it is a clever bit of marketing to get people to rush to bookstores to buy books before they’re censored, causing a minor buying frenzy which may be big enough to push Dahl back onto the NYT Bestseller list (you’d be surprised how few sales will get you there).

Especially if Netflix makes a statement soon (almost certainly coming) that they will continue to publish the legacy editions of Dahl’s books. They may announce that they will not publish the altered versions or they may offer both, because why not?

The question for these controversies is always: Will anyone care in six months?

So why is this even a big deal?

Imagine if some future government or organization decided Ursula K Le Guin’s books were too political and so they decided to smooth out any of the troublesome politics from her books. Or they could do such a thing to Margaret Atwood or Octavia Butler or Joanna Russ (a problematic author!) or Samuel R Delany (another problematic one!) or any number of authors.

Maybe The Grapes of Wrath is just a bit too much, yeah? Same with For Whom the Bell Tolls and on and on and on.

When we allow censorship of work that we find morally reprehensible, we create a path that quickly becomes a highway for the same to be done to any work of art.

Fearmongering.

Maybe. I hope so.

But reading The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses was a good reminder of how much interest there is in containing information and limiting distribution of information they don’t approve of.

And I am opposed to such attempts. I’m even against whatever strained hypothetical you’re thinking of right now to try to catch me in a quandary.