My first-best view is probably that Dahl’s works should now be in the public domain and anyone should be able to publish whatever version they like
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Whoo boy.
How can anybody read that dsytopic ass sentence and not want to be on the other side of it? I wish I could properly convey how curating what your children read, either on their own or part of a curriculum, and having passionate opinions about this curation, is a world apart from whatever that deeply unsettling shit is.
For one, that was the artist himself making the changes, but two, how’d I still know Sweet Willie Wonka trafficked in candy and pain and misery? Are these children’s books because people are stupid and were stupider as children and couldn’t figure this one out?
“They’re not from Africa they’re from Magic Africa. It’s a whole different place. Only real fans would understand.”
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big friendly overactive pituitary gland sufferer
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With his name on the cover? No way. People can play around with edits and whatnot but put your own name as editor or adaptor on there.
Something along these lines is what I had in mind
James and the Giant Peach and the Woke Mind Virus
by Roald Dahl and econophile
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Preserving “the canon” is not justice, or even neutral, unless you’re talking about a course on the history of “the canon”
But purposely maintaining “the canon” as the source for things like teaching reading and comprehension, is actively not justice, lmao bro
Enforcing tradition is stupid and suboptimal
I was thinking along these lines. Should copyright law differentiate between the creator and the estate? Should dipshit heirs have the same right as the author to make modifications to the original work? I don’t see why. Sure they can sell it to a movie studio and adapt the screenplay how they like. But do we want estates and heirs editing original author’s works? I don’t. Seems like copyright law could address this. You want to make significant changes to your dead relative’s work? OK, go for it, but the original enters the public domain. Better make those edits good! Let the market decide.
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Things “are canon” because of a small number of biased decision makers, not because of merit
Eh, why not both? Canon stuff pretty good ime.
I don’t see why not, unless the author has left instructions about it.
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Gatekeeping the literary canon is one way of enforcing white male privilege.
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Maybe. Gonna need you to show your work on “gatekeeping,” “literary canon”, and “white male privilege.”
Do you mean aside from the fact the overwhelming majority of Western classics were written by white men?
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Good start.
Step 2: which part of my post does that respond to.
Step 3: how does this relate to the original claim that the canon is both (a) chosen by a small group of biased decision makers and (b) made up of pretty good books.
Or are we just doing snarl words? Alas.
Nope but thanks for playing/reading/doing whatever it is that you do out there.
What I said was that it’s normal for holders of art - whether it’s books, paintings, or statues - to edit their material for various reasons. Doing this isn’t and obviously shouldn’t be illegal lmao the way you answered in the poll. I don’t have a strong opinion on the specific Dahl case, just laughing at the ZOMG shameful censorship characterization. Removing racist things to make money isn’t shameful, it’s the opposite, it shows how much progress we’ve made as a society. Tons of material is altered over time - go back and read The Odyssey in ancient Greek. Unfortunately you are part of team perpetual grievance outrage brain so it’s difficult for you to understand simple concepts.
And Then There Were None is one of my favorite books of all time. I’m quite glad that the publishers made the editing decision that they did. We can appreciate the work much better as a result.
The canon should be evolving, leading to new books being included and some dropping out. Western chauvinists resists eliminating dead white males from the canon because they want to preserve the whiteness and US/UK-centric nature of the canon and not because of the merits of the books, which may be decent reads, but might not be included if the notion of a canon was a new thing and the first attempts to describe one began today.