Roald Dahl book edits shine light on censorship
Would Roald Dahl (1916-1990) be turning over in his grave right now? As you likely may have heard, Puffin Books, in conjunction with the Roald Dahl Story Company, recently made hundreds of alterations to the beloved children’s author’s novels to remove language that could be considered “offensive.”
Most of the passages that were changed had to do with weight, mental health, gender or race.
Changes include the following: The word “fat” was removed from every novel; for example, Augustus Gloop in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is no longer “enormously fat” but simply “enormous.”
Also in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” this entire sentence was removed: “Mike Teavee himself had no less than eighteen toy pistols of various sizes hanging from belts around his body, and every now and again he would leap up into the air and fire off half a dozen rounds from one or another of these weapons.”
In “The BFG,” the word “black” was consistently replaced with “dark” such as in sentences like “It was something black,” “It was something tall and black,” and “Something very tall and very black and very thin.”
Also in “The Witches,” a supernatural female posing as an ordinary woman may be working as a “top scientist or running a business” instead of as a “cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman.”
In “Matlida,” the sentence “She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling,” became “She went to nineteenth century estates with Jane Austen. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and California with John Steinbeck.”
Anyway, you get the idea. The Roald Dahl Story Company said it worked with Inclusive Minds, an organization that monitors children’s literature for inclusion, diversity and accessibility, to make the changes.
The changes reflect an annoying political correctness, not to mention some of them being downright nonsensical. (Who knew that the color black is now offensive? And is changing it to “dark” really better? Is it because describing an object as black is racist now, somehow? Well, we don’t really know because the publisher didn’t bother to explain its rationale to us. The rules are constantly changing, anyway.)
Tampering with the books is not fair to Dahl’s memory or how he would have wanted them. Dahl’s books have been extremely popular, selling more than 300 million copies worldwide and having been translated into 68 languages. A large part of that popularity is due to readers appreciating Dahl’s sassy, irreverent tone. By editing the book so it doesn’t cause any offense, readers are left with a bland, vanilla version of the book rather than its intended form.
“They’ve removed ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’ from Dahl’s books, FFS. Part of the joy is that kids aren’t meant to call people these things, so it seems wonderfully transgressive to read them. Books are meant to be entertaining, not nice. Yours, a fat and ugly person,” wrote comedian and writer Ariane Sherine.
It’s only fair to note that Dahl has not been without controversy before this — in 2020, Dahl’s family apologized for antisemitic comments he made throughout his life. I’m not saying we should look up to Dahl as some great role model. However, a healthy respect for his creative work, especially when it’s been read so many times the world over, seems reasonable.
The AP reports, “The changes to Dahl’s books mark the latest skirmish in a debate over cultural sensitivity as campaigners seek to protect young people from cultural, ethnic and gender stereotypes in literature and other media” (emphasis added).
Maybe instead of protecting children from all of these perceived stereotypes, parents should explain to their kids what they feel is wrong with the portrayal of a certain character, if they indeed feel something is wrong. The book could serve as a conversation starter. Dahl’s novels reflect his lived experience, how he saw and imagined the world, and the time period in which they were written. For example, the “Matilda” sentence likely reflects the literature Dahl was exposed to. Reading an author’s work gives a window into that person’s world, so changing their work too much obscures or altogether blocks that window. Some might say, it’s only a children’s book; what’s all the fuss about? But especially given our current culture, it seems foolish to think the censorship of books will stop with this one instance or this one genre. In Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” the information disseminated to the masses is controlled by the burning of books. But, authorities don’t need to physically burn books today if they can simply go online and alter the digital copies, with the public is none the wiser. There is something to be said for having a hard copy that you know hasn’t been altered.
Censorship can take many forms today, whether it’s slapping a misinformation label on a post, search engines filtering which results the user sees first, or social media platforms shadow banning someone. Shadow banning is when the user is not outright banned from an online platform; however, the platform hides or restricts how many people see those posts.
“If we start down the path of trying to correct for perceived slights instead of allowing readers to receive and react to books as written, we risk distorting the work of great authors and clouding the essential lens that literature offers on society,” tweeted Suzanne Nossel, chief executive of PEN America, an online community of some 7,500 writers that advocates for freedom of expression.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Information was taken from The Daily Wire, AP News and National World.
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