Roald Dahl Under Attack From Beyond The Grave

 Yesterday, I came across an article in The Guardian. It seems that the publishing company known as Puffin Books is altering the language used in the many books by Roald Dahl.

Roald Dahl is one of those authors whose works I grew up with. I was always intrigued by the themes he covered; the wide world from the children's points of view, the dangers they faced, and the fact that some of his stories had pure antagonists as the main focuses (such as The Twits and The Enormous Crocodile), class themes and his courage to include macabre elements in his material, regardless of the target audience. There were some of his books read to me when I was at primary school and I even had some of his books. Roald Dahl is one of the influences behind my writing.

And after reading that particular article, it personally irks me that such a publishing company, even though they published Roald's novels, would "fix" the language within these products. Roald stayed true to his art no matter how "offensive" any of it was. And yet, I'm hearing that certain people find certain parts of the text "offensive". I wouldn't be surprised if long-time fans of Roald's material, books, and screenplays, described this action as a betrayal of their childhoods. It means that when such alterations are made, the next youth generations shall not see things the same way as we did.

One example of Puffin Books' alterations is during the 4th chapter of The Twits. The chapter introduces the character of Mrs. Twit and observes how "ugly and beastly" she is. Now, she'll just be referred to as "beastly". I was never offended by the use of the word "ugly" and I think Roald himself made clear that one's ugliness occurs if one possesses ugly thoughts. But someone with thoughts of beauty can still have similar features to said character. Beauty and ugliness occur within (as seen in the image below). Nor did I object when Madam Mim from The Sword In The Stone described herself as ugly.

Another alteration I question is in James & The Giant Peach which has described the character of Aunt Sponge as "fat". The same's been said for Augustus Gloop in Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. It's like the term is now considered a profanity. The word "fat" has existed since the early era of my childhood simply as the basic opposite of thin/slim. That word has been used a lot on, say, The Simpsons, particularly because of Homer, and I never heard any complaints. I get that people don't like being referred to as fat, because of, well, body-shaming. But it's not like it was constantly used as an insult. Even though I'm personally not getting any slimmer, I've never taken any offense from that small three-letter word.

Speaking of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, I heard that the Oompa-Loompas are now gender-neutral. The novel has already been adapted numerous times, hence the 1971 version and the Tim Burton version. In each adaptation, they've stayed the same gender as in the book.

Next, The Vicar Of Nibbleswicke might get censored, just because it's about a vicar with dyslexia and because there are only a few mild swear words in it.

Sometimes, the language used in books and other sources of written material has been part of history. Racial intolerance was the norm during the Great Depression and the following years. But alas, this has not ceased people from the modern era from turning a blind eye to certain classic media products and referring to them as racist or offensive. This has been the case where some of the films by Walt Disney Pictures were picked on.

What if publishing companies were analysing, say, Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird? Would censoring its racist language be necessary? No, because it marks an essential contribution to the story that focuses on racial intolerance during the Great Depression. There's a lot of the language in that and it would mean cutting out a large chunk of pages.

Undoubtedly, censorship has always been one of the largest barriers writers, myself included, have faced. Considering the actions Puffin Books is taking on Dahl's stories, it's no wonder many newcomers to the writing industry or the creative industry in general struggle to get new projects made. Throughout his life, Roald Dahl tried extremely hard to make his projects as imaginative as possible. That's exactly what other writers are trying to do. But this quantity of heavy censorship doesn't help and I doubt that if Dahl was still alive, he would want his works altered.

My next point concerns the target audiences. This particular article refers to Dahl's children's stories. Being that I read many of his books as a kid, I fear that if I have kids and the alterations have been made to those books, they won't be able to witness what I grew up with. Kids will want to be familiar with some of the things their parents and other older associates came across. For censors to make things "safer" for kids, it's like when a boy gets diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and then parents and teachers decide that the young lad goes to one of those "special" schools, only for the young lad to be shut away from other kids and the outside world, especially during break times - all because they're scared of him getting in trouble. It's also like a mother banning her daughter from riding a bike in case she falls off and injures herself. That's exactly what I fear Puffin Books and the many censors across the globe are motivated by - fear. Not just the fear of certain media projects causing trouble for audiences, but the fear of creative newcomers' achievements making a difference.

I admit that I'm fearful of certain things in the world; like if my car gets trashed by vandals, if scam companies contact me, or if other creatives steal my ideas, but not fear that will want me to over-protect my future children. Because in the end, when they get older and if I'd over-protected them, they wouldn't thank me for it and they'd stumble across a certain situation and be like "oh I don't know what to do. What do I do?"

I saw lots of things "offensive", controversial, macabre, and so forth as a kid. I saw children smoking and drinking beer in Disney's Pinocchio (which is unlike the recent remake. Another example of over-censorship - more on that in another blog post). And speaking of smoking, many of the characters from Thunderbirds smoked cigarettes. There were a few instances of suicide bombing in Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons. There was lots of animal violence in The Animals Of Farthing Wood. And I turned out okay in the end.

The point I want to emphasize is that if such heavy censoring continues, this might not only increase difficulty for writers and general creatives, but many children may grow up with several unimaginative media products and quite possibly demonstrate historical ignorance. This ongoing period of heavy censorship started by the PC brigade seems to be spiralling out of control. The more that keeps up, the more damage that'll do to the creative industry.

Think about it.