Penguin to publish 'classic' Roald Dahl books after backlash
abcnews.go.com
abcnews.go.com
I never would have thought the culture war could go so poorly that we have to fight just to keep our old books from being rewritten. The metaphorical front line is past our doorstep, and high command is cowering in their bunker.
In his original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa-Loompas were African Pygmies. The NAACP complained, and Dahl rewrote them in 1973 to be white-skinned. In the 1971 movie they were portrayed as orange-skinned, and in the 2005 movie as brown.
Each of those falsifies the original literature.
And you're right - these changes affect the interpretation of the original story!
As "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator" more clearly shows, the books are also commentary about then-current society. Post-war England opened the labor market and granted British citizenship to the New Commonwealth. Black-skinned Anglo-Caribbean and brown-skinned people from the Indian subcontinent moved to England, causing English people to protest how "white" English jobs were being stolen. It's not hard to draw a parallel between that and how the workers in Wonka's chocolate factory were kicked out, replaced by Oompa-Loompas who were illegally smuggled in to the country.
Rewriting the books and movies to avoid possible associations with African slavery obscures this interpretation.
Also, don't read Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None". Even though it's the world's best-selling mystery, it's also been rewritten, including even the title.
While releasing a new version of one's book without noting any significant changes can be somewhat deceptive, it is not even remotely comparable to rewriting someone else's book, and passing it off as the original.
"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."
-- Roald Dahl, 1982
There's all sorts of questions lurking there, like, are all versions of a story "true", or just the last one? Or the one you know best? Did Greedo shoot first?
> passing it off as the original
Remember, this is not the original version. Even if it were, you're okay with it so long as they don't pass it off as original, right?
How much notice do you want? "This film has been edited for content" seems enough for the film industry. Is "This book has been edited for content" good enough for you?
The accounts I've read said there was a comment on the copyright page about the edits. However, everyone cites The Telegraph, which has an ellipsis in its original report, so is incomplete. Without knowing the full text, we don't know what it said regarding the edits made.
> enormous crocodile
There's a very different way to interpret Dahl's comment. It could be continued anger over being forced to change his text some 10 years previous, when he faced a lot of pressure to make the Oompa Loompas be something other than the implied slavery of African Pygmies workers smuggled into the country working for food.
Some of the pressure came from the film studio for the Gene Wilder picture. In 1971 when plans for a US-produced film was announced, the the NAACP threatened to protest and boycott it. The studio wanted to make money, not defend implicit slavery.
“In response, Dahl was shocked and sullen,” Eplett writes. “He found the NAACP to be unreasonable, telling Knopf editor Bob Bernstein he was unable to understand why the perceived his story as a ‘terrible dastardly anti-negro book,’ and described their attitude as ‘real Nazi stuff.’” (quoting https://daily.jstor.org/roald-dahls-anti-black-racism/ ).
Pressure came also from the US publisher, who wanted to reprint the book for the movie, and sell the sequel. Even more pressure came from the literary world, with criticism from people like Eleanor Cameron.
So, he changed the text.
But that doesn't mean he wanted to change the text because he thought it resulted in a better story. The changes were to improve profit.
As a reminder, he was an asshole to work with. The editor-in-chief of his publishing company called him out on it in 1980 ("I’ve come to believe that you’re just enjoying a prolonged tantrum and are bullying us. ... Apparently, when [the editor] sent the letter [to Dahl], all of Dahl’s contacts at Knopf “stood on their desks and cheered.” - https://lithub.com/when-roald-dahls-editor-decided-he-was-to... ).
So this 1982 quote could also be seen as part of an arrogant asshole's 'prolonged tantrum' with his publishing company.
Clearly if nothing at all works then your standards may be unreasonable. A detailed diff at the end of the book would probably also be unreasonable.
On the topic of falsification of books, the Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Charlie_and_the_Chocol... took me to https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/... titled "Deconstructing Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory: Race, Labor, and the Changing Depictions of the Oompa-Loompas"
That paper argues the 1970s edits were "textual whitewashing" which deliberately obscures the "racial nuances and power dynamics within the original un-sanitized text", it "has allowed for this master-slave narrative to continue" and "has allowed for white privileges to go unchecked and unnoticed. Wonka is not understood for the master figure that he is but a patriarchal figure likened to a paternal one."
To use your expressions, it argues the 1970s edits are not somewhat deceptive but falsify the original literature. Which you've said you don't like. Except, for some unexplained reason, if the author does it.