Books and Magazines News

Hungarian authorities have fined a bookseller for selling a British graphic novel without closed wrapping - saying it breached an anti-gay law on LGBT literature for under-18s.

The retailer was fined 12m forints (£27,400), for selling Heartstopper without wrapping it in plastic foil, as required by law. Officials said the book depicts homosexuality and was sold to minors.

In 2021, the government of prime minister Viktor Orban introduced a law banning the display and promotion of homosexuality among under-18s. The censorship laws says that minors cannot be shown pornographic content, or anything that encourages gender change or homosexuality.

The Heartstopper series of books, written and illustrated by the British author Alice Oseman, follow the lives of two British teenagers attending a fictional school who meet and fall in love. It is billed as a book about life, love, and everything that happens in between. It has since been acquired and adapted by the streaming service Netflix, which plans to release a second series in August.

Tim Minchin, the comedian behind the Matilda musical, has described editing Roald Dahl's books to better suit modern audiences as a slippery slope . The British-Australian composer and entertainer, who wrote the music for the musical based on Dahl's book, said removing outdated language in the author's works set a precedent for needing to change all texts that might offend people and warned they could need to be constantly updated to keep up with changing sensibilities. He explained in an interview with the Guardian's Saturday magazine:

It seems there's an incredible slippery slope problem with editing texts,  I mean, my initial reaction, when I heard about it? 'Now we'll have to get all the rapes out of all the history books. Then the world will be a better place.'

It's not actually about morality. It's about keeping the property, owned by the Dahls and Netflix, contemporary --  It's an interesting part of modern progressivism, that a huge amount of change is happening because corporations have identified where their bottom-line is best served.

Problem one, as I see it: If you do this once, you'll have to do it to all texts ever, taking out all the words that might upset people.

Problem two: You'll have to change it all again in five years when the new words you put in are out of vogue. So that's two slippery-slope problems. You're standing at the top of a double slide. And now you're spraying soap on the fucking things, he said.

Jeeves and Wooster books have been censored to remove prose by PG Wodehouse deemed unacceptable by the publishers, Penguin.

Original passages in the editions of the comic novels published since 2022 have been purged or reworked. These censored editions can also be identified by a disclaimer reading:

Please be aware that this book was published in the 1930s and contains language, themes and characterisations which you may find outdated.

In the present edition we have sought to edit, minimally, words that we regard as unacceptable to present-day readers.

Wodehouse has become the latest author to have their work altered, after novels by Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and Agatha Christie were purged of words deemed at odds with modern sensitivities.

In the 1934 novel Right Ho, Jeeves , a racial term used to describe a minstrel of the old school has been removed.

In Thank You, Jeeves , whose plot hinges on the performance of a minstrel troupe, numerous racial terms have been removed or altered, both in dialogue spoken by the characters in the book, and from first-person narration in the voice of Bertie.

 

Offsite Comment: How dare they rewrite PG Wodehouse?

17th April 2023. See article from spiked-online.com by Simon Evans

No one has the right to meddle with his pristine and perfect prose.

Australia's book censor has rejected a push by anti-LGBTQIA+ activist to ban memoir titled Gender Queer.

The book was referred to the Classification Board after Queensland Police was tipped off by conservative campaigner Bernard Gaynor.

The Australian Classification Board has now classified non-binary author and cartoonist Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer: A Memoir as unrestricted with the rating M (Mature). Not Recommended for Readers Under 15 Years.

The award-winning book has become one of the most banned books in America over its depictions of LGBTQIA+ sex and sexuality, including explicit illustrations and descriptions.

All of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels are to be reissued in April 2023 to mark 70 years since Casino Royale , the first book in the series. Unfortunately this will be a gobblefucked release that has been cut by sensitivity censors.

Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, the company that owns the literary rights to the author's work, commissioned a review by sensitivity censors of the classic texts under its control. The Telegraph understands that a disclaimer accompanying the reissued texts will read:

This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.

The changes to Fleming's books result in some depictions of black people being reworked or removed. Dated references to other ethnicities remain, such as Bond's racial terms for east Asian people and the spy's disparaging views of Oddjob, Goldfinger's Korean henchman.

In the sensitivity censor-approved version of Live and Let Die , Bond's assessment that would-be African criminals in the gold and diamond trades are pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they've drunk too much becomes pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.

Another altered scene features Bond visiting Harlem in New York, where a salacious strip tease at a nightclub makes the male crowd, including 007, increasingly agitated. The original passage read: Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.

The revised section replaces the pigs reference with: Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.

A further lengthy passage describing Bond's night out in Harlem, including an argument between a man and his girlfriend conducted largely in accented dialogue Fleming describes as straight Harlem-Deep South with a lot of New York thrown in, has been entirely removed.

The word 'nigger', which Fleming used to refer to black people when he was writing during the Fifties and Sixties, has been almost entirely expunged from the censored texts. In most cases, this is replaced by black person or black man, but racial descriptors are entirely dropped in some instances. In one example, some criminals escaping from Bond in Dr No become simply gangsters.

The ethnicity of a barman in Thunderball is similarly omitted in new editions. In Quantum of Solace , a butler's race now also goes unmentioned.

UK publisher Puffin has officially announced the release of Roald Dahl's classic texts in their original uncensored form as well as the new gobblefucked versions that have been censored for modern woke sensitivities.

Following widespread derision of the censorship from the likes of prime minister Rishi Sunak and Queen Consort Camilla, Puffin has announced the publishing of a Penguin labelled version of each book in uncensored form. Francesca Dow, managing director of Penguin Random House Children's in the UK said in a statement:

We recognise the importance of keeping Dahl's classic texts in print. By making both Puffin and Penguin versions available, we are offering readers the choice to decide how they experience Roald Dahl's magical, marvellous stories.

The new collection of original unrevised texts will be published under the Penguin label and named The Roald Dahl Classic Collection, according to Puffin. It will include 17 titles by Dahl and will be available later this year.

Meanwhile the Guardian has revealed that Roald Dahl was not OK with edits being made to his works.

One of Roald Dahl's best-known characters was the Enormous Crocodile , a horrid greedy grumptious brute who wants to eat something juicy and delicious. Now a conversation the author had 40 years ago has come to light, revealing that he was so appalled by the idea that publishers might one day censor his work that he threatened to send the crocodile to gobble them up.

The conversation took place in 1982 at Dahl's home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, where he was talking to the artist Francis Bacon. Dahl said:

I've warned my publishers that if they later on so much as change a single comma in one of my books, they will never see another word from me. Never! Ever!

When I am gone, if that happens, then I'll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their heads with his Mjolnir. Or I will send along the 'enormous crocodile' to gobble them up.

Update: Also censored in 1973

26th February 2023. See article from theconversation.com by Alison Baker

Roald Dahl agreed in 1973 to remove racist language from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, originally published in 1964. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) objected to Dahl's original portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas as African pygmies.

In Dahl's original story, the Oompa-Loompas were smuggled by Willy Wonka in packing cases with holes in the side for air, which carried echoes of both the Gold Coast slave labour used to produce chocolate in the 19th and early 20th Century and the transatlantic slave trade. The NAACP further threatened to boycott the 1971 film before its release over concerns about depictions of the Oompa-Loompas.

Content deemed offensive to woke sensitivities, such as references to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race have been removed or rewritten in Dahl's library of children's classics.

Rishi Sunak has condemned the rewriting of Roald Dahl's books, quoting the Big Friendly Giant's warning not to gobblefunk with words. Sunak's spokesperson said:

When it comes to our rich and varied literary heritage, the PM agrees with the BFG that you shouldn't 'gobblefunk' around with words.

I think it's important that works of literature and works of fiction are preserved and not airbrushed. We have always defended the right to free speech and expression.

Booker Prize winner Sir Salman said the publishers, Puffin Books and the Roald Dahl Story Company, should be ashamed. He tweeted:

Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship.

Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, tweeted to say she was alarmed by the reported changes and warned the power to rewrite books could be abused. She added:

Amidst fierce battles against book bans and strictures on what can be taught and read, selective editing to make works of literature conform to particular sensibilities could represent a dangerous new weapon.

Those who might cheer specific edits to Dahl's work should consider how the power to rewrite books might be used in the hands of those who do not share their values and sensibilities. Edits to Roald Dahl's classics

Some of the edits reportedly include removing the word 'fat' from every book, with Augustus Gloop in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory instead being described as enormous.  Hundreds of edits have reportedly been made to the latest editions of Roald Dahl's classics. A report in the Daily Telegraph compared the latest editions with earlier versions of the texts. It found language concerning weight, mental health, violence, gender and race had been either cut or rewritten.

But the most ludicrous examples of censorship are to removed the words 'black' and 'white' when used to refer to colours when nothing to do with skin colour. Eg a description of a white bed sheet has had the word 'white replaced'.

The Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach are now the Cloud-People, while references to Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad in Matilda had been changed to Jane Austen and John Steinbeck.

In The Witches, a reference to women working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman has been changed to working as a top scientist or running a business.

In James and the Giant Peach, Miss Sponge is no longer described as the fat one, Miss Spider's head is no longer black and the Earthworm no longer has lovely pink skin but lovely smooth skin.

In The Twits, Mrs Twit is no longer described as ugly and beastly but just beastly.

The Roald Dahl Story Company claim their censorship process has been ongoing since 2020 and any edits are small and carefully considered. They worked with Puffin and Inclusive Minds, a group saying that they are working for inclusion and accessibility in children's literature.

 

Offsite Comment: Censoring Roald Dahl is not the answer, just a problem

23rd February 2023. See article from indexoncensorship.org by Jemimah Steinfeld