This is where Dahl bowed to early 70s wokery and erased the oompa-loompas' true identity as African slaves who would dribble for cocoa beans.
Film adaptations have struggled with the fact that oompa-loompas are, however you dress them up, slaves.
From this article which is much more interesting:
https://theconversation.com/from-pygmies-to-puppets-what-to-...
In fact, most of Walt Disney’s films were books adapted and changed and “modernized” without the consent of the original author. Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is disgustingly racist and imperialist. Disney modernized the story significantly by removing many of those themes (although adding a few “modern” racist tropes of their own).
No one calls those adaptations “cultural vandalism” though.
However, these new editions are effectively replacing the old ones. I don't so much mind them rewriting the books so long as the originals continue to be published. However, I don't expect that will be the case. Eventually, anyone going to a bookshop to buy one of Dahl's books will struggle to find the original version. That's a real shame, I think.
Paraphrasing from Dahl's 2010 biography but worth reading in full https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Storyteller/fit6PwGW...
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) objected to the original film version on the grounds that the book was racist ... they were adament that the title of the movie also had to change because they did not want it to promote the book.
Roald agreed to "de-negro" the Oompa-Loompas in both book and movie ... The movies title was altered to "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory".
We should fix copyright rather than stoke useless culture wars. The publisher and Dahl’s estate are laughing all the way to the bank on this controversy.
I'm sorry, what now?
My local library here in Western Australia has a second edition of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1860, 3000 copies).
There's been no pressure that I'm aware of to acquire the first, third, fourth, fifth or sixth editions or the numerous translations that I'm aware of - many of these are carried by other libraries.
Who is going around libraries forcing them to get more recent editions?
I also think that revising a dead author’s work as was done here is tasteless.
Personally I think the problem is excessive copyright. Without ownership, anyone could rewrite Dahl however they like. And if someone prefers the original version, that's fine too.
Arguably a death is more tasteful than a rewrite but either has room for regret.
So you're saying that in this story about giants that eat children, and a smaller giant that brings them joyous dreams via some sort of trumpet, dreams he catches with a butterfly net and then mixes himself, in a story about mobilising the British army to get rid of the aforementioned giants by means of giving the queen a nightmare, in a story about a young girl kidnapped in her pyjamas from an orphanage, there is a cloak? Moreover, a cloak whose original colour is somehow hurtful to some folks, while changing it is apparently cause for grave concern amongst some folks?
To that I say: huh.
(/Mal from Firefly)
I can see how slaves might be offensive to people and be changed by the author but for example no one was offended by the word "screeching" and if they were I don't think we should let those people choose which words a book uses.
Copyright that persists long after the death of the author makes no sense to society at large. It’s just another form of rent-seeking capitalism.