No Substance #129: To Everything Its Place

I came across an article the other day about changes made to Roald Dahl’s books. There’s been a ton of articles, so you’ve probably come across one or a dozen as well. If you haven’t, the story is that the publisher, Puffin, went through the books with a sensitive reading company and edited out various slurs, unflattering terms, and parts that might otherwise offended. A lot of it was things like ‘fat’ being cut out, or changing ‘slave’ for ‘hero’, or ‘boys and girls’ for ‘children’.

I don’t care for the changes. They’re mostly ugly and badly done and unnecessary. But this also isn’t the first time Dahl’s books have been changed. Dahl himself changed Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, for example. In the original version the oompa loompas are black pygmy slaves that have been imprisoned by Willie Wonka. Dahl changed them after the movie was released, and after he’d been heavily criticised. It’s possible that Dahl did that, back then, because he knew he was wrong, but mostly likely he did it to minimise the backlash against his work and continue selling it.

In other words, the change then, as it is now, was about the money. A couple of years ago Netflix bought the rights for Dahl’s books, essentially forming a partnership between themselves and The Roald Dahl Story Company for millions. It put Netflix in a place where they could build endless movies, TV shows, and spin offs to fight Disney’s empire of children’s stories – which is, I might add, busy re-imagining its classics to be more inclusive. I don’t know if Netflix wanted Dahl’s books cleaned up or not, but that’s neither here nor there. Whatever the reason, whoever okayed it, the reason for it isn’t about making better work but ensuring that the intellectual property is kept safe. It’s a protective move and a cynical one.

In many ways, I don’t actually have a problem with editing books to be less offensive. A lot of the Dahl stuff is just kind of stupid, but step aside from that, and think about Dahl’s original oompa loompas, and you’ll find yourself hard pressed to defend the change he made. But, if I’m honest, this isn’t my preferred solution. You see, in my opinion, you leave the racist oompa loompas, you let Dahl get all the flak, and you let the book die its natural death. What you do then is that you invest in new work and new stories and new artists. If you want to continue to sell the old books because there’s a market, you do what Warner Brothers have done for the old Looney Tunes cartoons, and you put a disclaimer at the start of the book. Or you can do what the estates for Dr. Seuss and Tin Tin have done, and you take the most offensive books off the market, or repackage them for adults only.