Andy Weir’s Best Seller ‘The Martian’ Gets a Classroom-Friendly Makeover
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The swearing and cursing does make it a better book, but removing that doesn't remove the beauty of it. The film adaptation was okay without it (though it lost some scenes I'd have loved it to have included, and I'm only somewhat okay with Matt Damon in the lead role).
Kids with cool parents will buy them the better version, and they'll get to show it off to their friends. Now it's not about who is reading the book, but who's reading the cool version of it.
[0] I bought it as a KDP novel for $0.99, somewhere between it being a free book online and it being picked up by a mainstream publisher. Every now and then I want to re-read some small part of it, and accidentally re-read it all. One of my favourite books, honestly.
But I also totally understand your point. Why is every marvel movie jam packed with gratuitous violence. To the point where fighting is the entire point of the narrative. Characters will die in fantastic ways but is still equally traumatizing. But portraying love or swearing is too adult for children. Makes no sense to me.
He talks like the rest of us, not like a robot.
Then use it. These kids aren't going to be damaged by hearing the word fuck.
> I'm pretty much fucked. > That's my considered opinion. > Fucked.
Trust me, you start your lesson in an 8th grade classroom with that, and you've lost fifteen minutes to giggles.
But, hopefully they aren't reading to each other in the middle of science class. I imagined the book would be homework or read in silence.
And it's not like the swearing is in any way essential to the work. You're not destroying a great work of literature by replacing "fuck" with "crap." So while I agree we shouldn't be so uptight about swears, I'd say we also shouldn't be so uptight about removing them here.
First they came for the swears . . .
Next is content not in alignment with the schools ideologies or politics, for what is essential to a work?
These aren't abstract tin-foil hat concerns either: In 1982 Texas banned a geography textbook for mentioning evolution [1]. Publishers are financially incentivized to publish. These mechanisms enable those in power to control the information presented to children and students to suit their agendas (even while their own children attend private schools not subject to their decisions).
>According to Time magazine, the list of the most banned books of all time include . . . “Brave New World,” by Aldous Huxley; “1984,” by George Orwell
We should be pretty uptight about censorship.
https://ncse.com/cej/3/4/censorship-evolution-texas
https://www.webjunction.org/documents/webjunction/Censorship...
Perhaps you can provide an example where increases in censorship do not make it easier for the types of problems listed above to occur, a place where the misuse of power is unheard of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_...
"The F word." "The N Word." "Eff that." "Effed in the A." "They want the D." "That scene was hot af."
Pick a better word, or demonstrate your lacking vocabulary. But the self-censorship makes one sound like a tool.
You'd get a better reaction saying, 'They want the orange dust-encrusted phallus.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jixxYx9fklM
(For those who don't know, writing songs based on Fuck has kind of become one of Eric Idle's things.)
There are two F-bombs in the opening sentences, and over 160 swear words throughout. I'm not cool with my 8 year old walking around dropping F-bombs, and I'm not sure why you think it's your place to tell me I should be...
I can't wait for my son to read this book, but in it's original form it was completely inappropriate for him. I'm glad to hear this is available now - it's going on the Kindle soon.
- Kurt Vonnegut
So long as some parents would be upset or uncomfortable it would limit the reach of a very important story. I also think that while the language lends authenticity, it's not at all necessary to the story.
I remember from being a kid that the etiquette I quickly figured out was that kids don't swear around adults and adults don't swear around kids. Where does this come from? Are there any anthropological studies about this?
Kids around kids can swear as much as they like, same with adults around adults, and they use exactly same swears, maybe adults with more awareness where did the swearwords came from, since they have better understanding of sex.
I swore much worse and much more as a kid than I do as an adult (I curbed my swearing around high-school). I haven't met an adult that swore as much as we did as kids.
Devil's advocate: maybe they should!
besides, a loud expletive is sometimes required in certain situations. :P
Yes, words are just words. It doesn't matter if you replace Fuck with shit or damn or pussy. The expression of the word is, in some situations, completely disrespectful of those around you.
Respect. There's a severe LACK of it now-a-days.
I can put headphones on. I can't put a blindfold on.
hats indoors? really? you think that's disrespectful?
there's a severe lack of common sense nowadays, and uppity folks are proof of it. fuck words. :P
"Hats indoors" is a superset of "hats in a theater" (ignoring outdoor theaters). Saying that something applies to a subset isn't an argument for why it should apply to a superset.
There might be a good argument for them being rude. The theater isn't that argument.
It's less censoring and more of an abridgment.
The fact that both situations would occur in a school setting is completely irrelevant to me. I don't think that it should play a part in the "abridgement" decision (although I recognize that it would, and that my opinion on the matter is likely to be controversial). It's more important to me how closely it fits the purpose that it's being put to. In the case of my two examples, scientific vs artistic truths.
I thought the swearing in that book was very tastefully done. For me it added a bit of lightness and humor to the whole thing. I'm actually pretty disappointed that they cut so many of the swears from the movie.
To be clear, the character is a foul-mouthed variety of person. But if he weren't, and the book were absent of swearing, it would not seem any less authentic to me.
See the Apollo 10 logs: https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/AS10_CM.PDF
In some cases it really felt like they were just going back over text and adding them in as an afterthought.
https://4f46691c-a-dbcb5f65-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/micha...
We have a cultural norm that adult authority figures do not swear in front of children or provide them with educational materials containing profanity.
I can see why this norm may be irksome to some people but I don't see how it is harmful.
I certainly wouldn't have any problems with it for 13-18 years olds, but I can see why there is some push back.
Especially in an age where saying "son of bitch" could be construed as a perpetuating hostile workplace environment for women.
I've got a filthy mouth and I sort of wish I didn't.
I'd also be against cleaning up important classic works that use language that isn't really allowed anymore. That is whitewashing history.
Who is 'our' here? Cursing is part of the language in many industries. They are just words with added emphasis. Saying something like 'crap' is akin to saying 'awe shucks' and does a bad job conveying the seriousness of the situation. Using a word like 'fuck' in the same context does convey an additional seriousness of no other word.
I don't curse that much, but when I do it is to make a point. If I was stranded on Mars looking at the road ahead as this character did, I absolutely would be cursing.
Yeh, there's some swearing but ultimately it's partly about context, and partly about parents expectations of their kids and he knows we wouldn't accept the same language from him.
Although some books will lose something if you subtract the harsher language, this is not one of them.
> It just would have been better with a lot of other literary devices.
about a lot of parts of any given book.
By the way, thanks for the link. I just ordered a classroom version of the book for my kids to read (yes, I would be one of those parents who wouldn't give permission for their kids to read the original version.)
As an example, here is some colourful language in a novel was a pretty standard text for English Literature classes in my state: https://books.google.com/books?id=BRwwAAAAQBAJ&q=fuck#v=snip...
>RC (Refused Classification) – Contains material that is considered offensive to the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that it should not be classified. Classification is mandatory, and films that are Refused Classification by the ACB are legally banned for sale, hire or public exhibition, carrying a maximum fine of $275,000 and/or 10 years' jail if an individual/organisation is found to be in breach of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Classification_Boar...
But, most countries there are suffering State coups recently and some even removed science (geography, chemistry, sociology) to add State doctrine classes (where kids 6 and up are educated on their duties but never on their rights as citizens)
Since 2000, there have been coups or attempted coups in two countries in South America (Ecuador several times, plus Venezuela). You have to take a very unusual view of "recently" to make the idea that most countries in South America have "recently" had coups.
2 weeks ago non elected party passed the law, via executive order, which discussion caused high school kids to protest all over the country: http://g1.globo.com/educacao/noticia/temer-sanciona-a-medida...
Somewhat interesting, all 3 started in Utah.
https://www.vidangel.com/news/mission/
I'm wildly supportive of the PG version of the book. There are a lot of prudish parents out there, and public schools naturally have to be inclined toward folks who complain the most.
It would be tragic to allow a few bad words to keep such an inspiring book from millions of children who wouldn't see it otherwise.
Or will there be an adult version and a child version?
IDK, I find this kind of thing really stupid and pointless[1], but then again I don't have kids so I doubt my opinion matters on the subject to those that do.
[1] Kids swear like trains when they're 10, or these days probably younger.
When millions of people have some harmless feeling you think is irrational, the thing to do is work around it, not whine about it on Hacker News.
The people who have a problem with a kid (I'm guessing this would be 8th grade plus?, so teenagers) reading a few swear words in a book need to get over it.
(I have essentially the same rant about alcohol and high schoolers).
I would prefer my kids not have a teacher that talks that way. I think a majority of parents would not appreciate that.
(Although I feel like this I would support a teacher who chose to use the uncensored version of The Martian in school. )
The second one gets the same message across in my opinion, but without resorting to obscene language.
Now imagine a professor saying that during a lecture; sounds even worse to be honest. You mentioned that you grew up in a foreign country. Is it normal to hear your professor or boss speaking like that in a professional setting?
But actually even in my current corporate business application development job there's a healthy amount of swearing within the department, even from the boss. We don't use it when communicating with people outside the department though (well, usually).
Now, I can agree with you if you're talking about using curse words just as a standard course of business. They are words with meaning just like all other words. Use them to convey what you are actually trying to convey.
Same denotation, different connotation and emotional content (assuming both sentences are spoken by the same person). There are people at my work from whom the first example is heard daily, and people for whom it would be severely out of character.
> Is it normal to hear your professor or boss speaking like that in a professional setting?
Only one or two of my professors, out of a couple dozen, but probably 3 of the 5 bosses I've worked under would occasionally use that kind of language.
How about their parents? Should we change every book out there so it can be a children's role model now?
If the parents and other authority figures in the child's life aren't already providing good models of social behavior, then the kid's got bigger problems to worry about than the rough language in the book, and if they do have good models, then I don't see the problem, as long as the context gets explained to them at some point.
If the original text hadn't had him swearing, would you have walked away thinking "Gee, that was nice, but it seems odd that he never said 'fuck'. I'll remove half a star from my rating for that'? If not, why is this edit in any way a negative, let alone a travesty?