Censorship or rewriting ?

Not Spaghetti - I have a golly mum knitted in 1972 for one of my children. She loved golly. He lives at the bottom of the drawer I keep jumpers in. Hidden away but he’s a link with mum that only I know about.

Yammy

GagaJo

Yammy

So were Shylock and Fagin are we going to rewrite Shakespeare and Dickens? I don't agree with censorship I think we have to learn from such things that it is just a stereotype not a norm. I have lovely Jewish friends who certainly don't look like either of these men are often drawn..

If you've read The Merchant of Venice, you'll know that actually, robbing Shylock of his faith is a tragic and very sad story. I've had students in tears at the end, in the theatre. I know I'm biased when it comes to Shakespeare, but he definitely didn't show Christians in a good light, in that play. Shylock was definitely sinned against.

I'm not arguing with you I am agreeing.
One size does not fit all in any ethnic group. Look at all the white policemen who have committed truly horrible crimes recently are we from now on going to portray all policemen as people who cannot be trusted and illustrate them as unsavoury characters?

Mr Plod made Noddy’s life hell didn’t he? But it didn’t turn me against policemen.

I had a "golly" as a child and loved him. I would never have given my children such toys because by then I understood more. I did find it hard to get rid of him though.

Like Iams I remember the black and white minstrels show and thought it pretty dull and rather stupid. Again, it was years before I "understood" the background there.

I also had Little Black Sambo. I liked this story and liked the boy with the amazing mum who made a huge number of pancakes for him out of tiger butter! I thought he was wily and clever, mischievous and exciting. I loved the way he tricked the tigers and didn't understand the connotations there either.

I know now he was probably Indian.

www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1996/09/17/taking-a-tiger-by-the-tale-little-black-sambo-loses-racist-elements-in-two-retellings/3793375b-797e-422e-80cb-dbbc1e9cae72/

GagaJo

Yammy

So were Shylock and Fagin are we going to rewrite Shakespeare and Dickens? I don't agree with censorship I think we have to learn from such things that it is just a stereotype not a norm. I have lovely Jewish friends who certainly don't look like either of these men are often drawn..

If you've read The Merchant of Venice, you'll know that actually, robbing Shylock of his faith is a tragic and very sad story. I've had students in tears at the end, in the theatre. I know I'm biased when it comes to Shakespeare, but he definitely didn't show Christians in a good light, in that play. Shylock was definitely sinned against.

I'm not arguing with you I am agreeing.
One size does not fit all in any ethnic group. Look at all the white policemen who have committed truly horrible crimes recently are we from now on going to portray all policemen as people who cannot be trusted and illustrate them as unsavoury characters?

I object to all forms of censorship.

Just to confirm - my children didn’t have golliwogs. I was about 11 when I first asked my parents why anyone watched the black and white minstrel show - it was not black and white dancers, it was white men looking silly.

Some things change and rightly so. I still believe it’s wrong to re-write Dhal. Reading with children stimulates a love of reading and encourages talking between adults and children

I listened to a podcast last night which touched on this subject although it was conducted before all of the stuff about Dahl books came out. The interviewee spoke of a Jewish friend he had who loved Wagners music even though Wagner was anti semitic. And his friend said he could disassociate the music from its creator. And the interviewee said that many creative people are flawed in some way: many damaged by life events. It’s a bit like the way that we expect our sporting heroes to be ‘nice’ people even though it takes a ruthless streak to achieve what they do. Ok I get that Dahl is different to Wagner in that his books reference things that are now regarded as anti woke ( I can’t think of a better word than woke). But I never regarded the witches as being Jewish although Shylock and Fabian obviously were. I just think that our children’s lives are being so sanitised that they won’t be able to work out for themselves what is right and what is wrong. And we have politicians that get away with racism on a regular basis ( eg the most recent Home Secretaries). As I said before I’m just confused about everything these days.

Iam64

Doodledog, I enjoyed reading Dhal to my children and it’s good to see them reading his grim stories with their own children.
There are lots of things to be offended or put off by in Dhal but so much to be excited and enthralled by.
I loved fairy stories, especially Hand Christian Anderson whose tales were frightening and scary, I remember the girl with he red shoes, the little mermaid, the little match stick seller as both terrifying and enthralling.
Dhal is a brilliant writer. I don’t believe it’s right to sanitise his work. Children like me who moved on to Enid Blyton didn’t emerge as awful racists because of the golliwogs - we grew up to discuss the awfulness of those dolls and what we realised they represented.

I agree, but at the same time I would never have allowed my children to have gollywogs, as however inoffensive they may have seemed in the past they most definitely are now. Things do change, and if a book can stay on the shelves by tweaking a few words (eg the Agatha Christie one) then that's better than it being withdrawn. If the sale of Dhal's books fell because parents didn't want their children reading them, nobody's children would get the chance.

My concern is with who is making these decisions (a point that was made upthread), and what right they have to make them on behalf of others. In this case, if it is the publisher, and they feel that sales will be impacted by leaving them as they are, then I suppose it's up to them. I really wouldn't want to see anyone with an official role of censor, though, or any sort of list of words that cannot be used.

Doodledog, I enjoyed reading Dhal to my children and it’s good to see them reading his grim stories with their own children.
There are lots of things to be offended or put off by in Dhal but so much to be excited and enthralled by.
I loved fairy stories, especially Hand Christian Anderson whose tales were frightening and scary, I remember the girl with he red shoes, the little mermaid, the little match stick seller as both terrifying and enthralling.
Dhal is a brilliant writer. I don’t believe it’s right to sanitise his work. Children like me who moved on to Enid Blyton didn’t emerge as awful racists because of the golliwogs - we grew up to discuss the awfulness of those dolls and what we realised they represented.

That's true, Iam, and there is also Barthes' theory that a text does not exist in itself, but in the mind of the reader, which means that it doesn't matter what the author intended, but what the reader brings to the text, based on her or his own experiences, outlook and so on.

In that reading, even if Dahl had fully intended the Witches to be representations of Jewish women (which we have no way of knowing), only a child who grew up surrounded by anti-semitism would see the Witches as Jewish, and children from families where it didn't feature would not see that at all.

I think it's a difficult line to tread, as cumulative exposure to negative representations probably can have a subliminal impact on the attitudes of children (and adults for that matter), but in and of itself I don't think the Witches are harmful. I don't think that the disclaimer can do any harm either though.

Eric Gill was a sculptor, print maker and seen as one of the best arts n crafts individual in the 20th century. His sexual abuse of his daughters, his dog and (at least) one of his sisters was known amongst his family and friends. His children were home educated. His daughter said they thought their lives were normal.
An autobiography in 1989 and a novel, The Children’s Book by ASByatt published in 2009 exposed his sexual appetites to a wider audience. It resulted in debate about whether it’s possible to separate the art from the artist.

GagaJo I didn't say antisemitism was not offensive. You have twisted what I did say to fit your argument.

Yammy

So were Shylock and Fagin are we going to rewrite Shakespeare and Dickens? I don't agree with censorship I think we have to learn from such things that it is just a stereotype not a norm. I have lovely Jewish friends who certainly don't look like either of these men are often drawn..

If you've read The Merchant of Venice, you'll know that actually, robbing Shylock of his faith is a tragic and very sad story. I've had students in tears at the end, in the theatre. I know I'm biased when it comes to Shakespeare, but he definitely didn't show Christians in a good light, in that play. Shylock was definitely sinned against.

AGAA4

GagaJo that is a personal question which you shouldn't be asking. My religion has nothing to do with you.

But you saying that the caricaturisation of an ethnic or religious group isn't offensive hinges on whether you're part of that group. And if you aren't, you're not in a position to say it isn't offensive.

Dahl was widely known to be an anti semite. I doubt Jews would be happy with the works in which he drew them as villains, playing as it does on a long history of Jewish people being portrayed as evil, murderous, child killers (back to the middle ages) and also linked to Nazi propaganda.

My brother loved Biggles in the 1940s and early 50s. He was completely horrified when he looked at the books as an adult.

Some books we loved years ago we probably wouldn't read to our grandchildren though.

Biggles springs to mind - thats a "no"
and the Laura Ingalls Wilder house on the prairie series I think I'd have to re-read first as I know I didn't like the racism in that but don’t remember if it was in every book -
and then there's The Secret Garden which I really loved and which we listened to on a cover-to-cover type tape when my family was young- that definitely had elements of racism and colonialism.

We are making choices every day which is a personal censoring. As someone said, in this way, little by little these will die a natural death.

How dare they say enormous! I'm enormous and am deeply offended. This must be changed at once!!

Callistemon21

I'd rather be fat than enormous

Yes, must get down a size or two but enormous sounds horrendous!

Me too to be honest.
I am fat but don't think I'd like to be enormous - as that sounds... we'll, enormous!

To me, witches in storybooks look like the way ordinary women would have looked when the torturers had finished with them - pallid skin, twisted hands, black eyes, scraggy hair and so on. I've never seen Jewish women in them at all, but I wasn't looking, and neither would children be. Adults would have to put those ideas into their heads, and a child with parents who would do that is probably doomed anyway.

I heard that the witches would stay as is, with an added couple of lines saying that many people wear wigs for all sorts of reasons, and there is nothing wrong with that. It sounds a bit po-faced, but in the unlikely event that it occurs to a child that Dahl's witches are supposed to represent Jewish women the rider would cover it.

I think Miss Trenchbull is supposed to be scary, and she's so OTT that children aren't likely to believe she's real. Mine enjoyed that sort of scariness.

Fat/enormous - I don't know. I'm another who can't see the advantage of one over the other. It seems a bit hypocritical to me anyway - there is so much fat-shaming by politicians, the media and adults in general that it's no wonder children latch onto fat as a reason to bully one another.

I don't understand why Oompa Loompa have to be gender-neutral. Apart from not believing in 'gender', it doesn't seem very inclusive to single out children who claim to be 'non-binary' as a separate species. That one is lost on me, really.

I'd need to see more detail, really. I do know, however, that I wouldn't have read my children the books I grew up with if they hadn't been altered, and even my generation read bowdlerised versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales. It's just progress, really. From what I've seen (which is just a few newspaper summaries) the changes won't alter the stories or the magic.

Harry Wormwood destroys the book that Matilda has borrowed from the library because of the title Moby Dick.

I do not want to live in a world of Harry Wormwoods.

i answered a you gov poll on this earlier, some of the things they are censoring are ridiculous, small people instead of small me. saying some people wear wigs for lots of different reasons....not just witches, can't say ugly or fat, but if i am not mistaken some people are ugly and fat, you just don't say it..lol, others are the black/white thing and the females are where they work, leave the books alone and let the parents decide, children will learn they are just stories, they are not REAL the same as most of the childrens movies out there, leave the childs imagination to grow and learn the same as we all did.

I was an avid reader as a child and when nothing else was available I read my parents's books. I was introduced to Neville Shute, Nicholas Montserrat and Dennis Wheatley at an early age. There were things I didn't understand in all of them, but I just accepted that. I don't think the things I read disturbed me. Much of the world is strange to children.

Yammy

So were Shylock and Fagin are we going to rewrite Shakespeare and Dickens? I don't agree with censorship I think we have to learn from such things that it is just a stereotype not a norm. I have lovely Jewish friends who certainly don't look like either of these men are often drawn..

The point of literature and all art forms is to inspire conversation and thinking.

If culture washing becomes the norm how bland and boring life will become.

A rogue character or plot should/could lead to a class and/or family discussion which can only enhance critical thinking in children and young adults.

So were Shylock and Fagin are we going to rewrite Shakespeare and Dickens? I don't agree with censorship I think we have to learn from such things that it is just a stereotype not a norm. I have lovely Jewish friends who certainly don't look like either of these men are often drawn..

I'd rather be fat than enormous

Yes, must get down a size or two but enormous sounds horrendous!