Steven Spielberg: ‘No film should be revised’ based on modern sensitivity

Plenty of the things which are pushed unconditionally in the US right now should be debatable and debated. Some concepts like cultural appropriation look clearly dubious to my French self. The issue is that having a debate has become impossible. In some circles, you will be quartered for daring to express that there exists differences between men and women which might not be socially constructed.

Reducing racism is great, but censoring existing works because they contain the n-word just seems stupid.

> Spielberg was also asked about the controversial re-editing of Roald Dahl’s work which has included changing words like “fat” to “enormous” and “ugly and beastly” to just “beastly”.

> Initially he joked that “Nobody should ever attempt to take the chocolate out of Willy Wonka! Ever!” before adding “For me, it is sacrosanct. It’s our history, it’s our cultural heritage. I do not believe in censorship in that way.”

Roald Rahdl books were a big part of what I remember reading as a child. The words "fat" and "ugly" are absolutely grotesque, but also part of the palette he used to draw his worlds as he wanted people to see them. I think parents have the responsibility to have a proper conversation about the questions their children might have about the some of stuff those books bring up, or make the decision to not read them until the child is of a certain age. At least from my point of view, the central question would be that what is the proper age that a child is old enough to know about the existence of the words "fat" and "ugly".

It hasn't even been 5 years, and already the 2020 "fight racism by renaming your master branch to main" movement feels like a tone-deaf embarrassment.

Maybe not, but there'll definitely be a time in the future when the current puritanical wave will be seen as a fad, an embarrassment in human history.

"You mean people actually self-censored in case they were punished for thoughtcrime?"

"Yes, grandson."

Proceeds to destroy hundreds of paintings by adding poorly drawn fig leaves and to censor masterpieces over tiny penises.

It is a fad; people will come to their senses and recognise the value of the original work; while accepting the fact that they were produced in a time where these behaviours were considered as acceptable but it's no longer the case.

So... I certainly hope that being genuinely anti those things doesn't turn out to be a fad, those things are all bad things and should be opposed. Having said that I do hope that some of the ways people are choosing to be "anti" these things goes the way of the dodo because I believe they are ineffective and dumb.

As an example trying to get rid of the word "master" in tech... it's use in tech is in no way an endorsement of slavery. The suggestion it is racist to use this term is especially silly to me, because slavery has been practiced by all sorts of cultures for human history and because slavery is still a thing that is going on in the world (just look at that new stadium in the UAE).

Being anti slavery is fantastic. We can do that by boycotting companies that turn a blind eye to forced labour and by pressuring our governments to sanction countries that ignore it within their borders.

The same applies to being anti-racist or anti-misogynist or whatever. There are concrete actions that can be taken that will make a difference, but going back through old art and censoring certain words for fear that they get uttered as if this were Harry Potter and these words were Voldemort is just fucking silly.

After ISIS took over parts of Iraq, they did what many have done before them through the millennia of destroying art and beauty because they disagreed.

A modern take is the climate activists destroying art because they fear the end of the world.

Fear manifests in interesting ways.

No need to even go to censorship, you have people like George Lucas who go out of their way to destroy their previous productions.

If The Internet Archive can do it for websites, we can find a similar solution for films, too.

I don't know the reason it was removed but it was like a I was pinched and realised how little control I have over my favourite music.

The album is still on YouTube but I don't know for how long.

I bought the vinyl, even though i currently don't have a record player but plan to get one

I have to start preserving DRM free or physical copies of media I like. I always knew there was a risk of stuff being removed but always put off thinking about it for convenience, but not anymore

This reminds me of the apple 'service' that automatically replaced your MP3s with its own 'sanctioned' digital files. It turned several of my tracks into unlistenable, censored versions and I've been incredibly wary of digital-only content ever since.

But the rest I agree with.

And to your point, I just found a trove of rare 'banned' cartoons. Naturally, they're banned primarily for depictions of Japanese (WWII), and of black people in various degrading roles.

I do not take enjoyment in watching them. However, due to censorship, these could be lost. And that would be a bigger loss compared to their inherent lack of compassion.

It turns out that much of the music featured in the original airing of the show wasn’t licensed in a way it could be used long term, and over the years it has been replaced with terrible stock songs or jarringly anachronistic choices that sound totally out of place.

Entire scenes and episodes have been cut from the seasons distributed on streaming platforms, because they featured live concerts that couldn’t be edited. The original had performances by the Flaming Lips, among many others, that simply can’t be watched now, except if by chance someone copied an old VHS to YouTube.

Music was a big part of the original show–in addition to the live shows it featured all sorts of great pop songs from the time, which was part of why it was such a hit with teenagers when it aired. It’s such a bummer they stripped it all out!

There are some places online with copies of early DVD releases that have more music, but still not all of it. The original is locked away in a vault somewhere and almost certainly won’t ever be enjoyed in a complete state.

I would love to see an elaboration. I think you're saying this because it's in their interest for wide appeal and so will adjust their "products" as necessary to please.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2H_7LY5LqM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOAz4nPNvLI

Funnily they had musical guests so that they could sell the show as a variety show, and get the funding to do something so silly.

It's a good sign that he has publicly acknowledged that the edits were a mistake and the original theatrical version of E.T. is available.

Fortunately, with the rise of Z-Library, I was able to recover her books (she already paid for them, so I'm ok with downloading it from such a shady source).

I guess we have to fall back to piracy if we want to stay in control.

So I guess HN, or most Americans ( East or West End ) can now finally agree this is a serious problem?

I still remember in 2019 and even in 2021, HN's majority position was that people were too focused on culture war and this is only the minority of people who cares about it.

The complete sociological ban on the utterance of any words that even sound like "the actual N word" is so bizarre to me. As a kid in the early 80s it was very clear and unambiguous to me that actually calling someone the N-word was extremely taboo and racist. But it wasn't like using the phrase in a sentence such as "Calling someone the <N word> is extremely taboo and racist" was considered offensive. When I first heard about a story where a college professor was suspended for giving a lesson in Chinese where the Chinese word just happened to sound like the N word [1], I was convinced it was either an Onion article, or an example of the right trying to make a caricature of anything that smelled of "wokeness". But alas, it was actually real, and just as absurd as I originally thought.

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/fight-agai...

The joke: Turk and JD go to a college party dressed as each other, in whiteface and blackface respectively. Turk gets distracted and leaves just as JD opens the door to an all-black frat. The frat beats the shit out of JD for his blackface.

It wasn't the blackface that made the joke racist, in my opinion. It was the tired stereotype of violent black men without deeper emotions. It was the assumption that racism is transactional in this way; you do a racism and you get your ass beat if you get caught.

The main reason I don’t think it’s profit motivated is that you see the exact same sort of culturally imperialist neo-Victorianism in entities without a profit motive like the ACLU or state govt.

> Photographers have gone to great lengths in the past to capture the scantily-clad female statue in the background as the Justice Department's top brass addressed the world's press.

…

> Hired drapes have previously hung in front of both statues for formal events, such as President George W Bush's visit to name the building after assassinated former attorney-general, Robert Kennedy.

…

> The drapes are reported to have been hanging since Monday, drawing to a close the sport of photographers who infamously sprawled on the floor to snap the former Attorney General Edwin Meese holding aloft his report on pornography in front of the female statue.

The awkward composition of the lead photo in the linked article is a decent example in itself.

The obvious middle ground is to move the art somewhere else.

The problem with replacing words with nicer sounding ones is eventually the replacement words start to sound equally negative. This is of course because fatness / ugliness are real things and cannot be eliminated by creating new words.

And once we start with these edits, say for blatant racism, do we also have to appease groups who are deeply offended by sexism/misogyny, profanity, blasphemy, nudity, drugs, gambling, alcohol, meat-eating, fossil fuels, and probably more?

Better off to leave the work intact, and when necessary just add a content warning up front, to remind people that a creative work was the product of a specific time period and in no way an endorsement of language/behavior that is seen as completely unacceptable today.

Not unless it's out of copyright.

Deliberate breakage of the nose seems to be an Egyptian thing.

Another issue of AI is the feedback loop. If you tell an AI "help me end my life" and it follows your instructions blindly, it'll end up convincing you to do so, as happened with a young family man recently, and maybe more we haven't heard of.

Existing art has no feedback loop. Movies are unlike AI because it's what they are. They don't follow orders, they just exist as immutable artifacts of human expression back when they were created. So to me it's different.

Oh, and also you'll soon be able to cook a model at home, so all these AI limitations are irrelevant mid-term.

Wait, are you saying that the bible itself has been rewritten (in terms of actual substance)? I was always under the impression that a lot of care was taken to preserve the original meaning of the underlying text, taking into account that it was written thousands of years ago in a language nobody fully understands anymore.

Unless you were already an expert in that particular topic, even knowing that the most accessible version is the censored one is difficult, since it's presumably not being published under the title "Classic Book: Current-Year Approved Edition", but just "Classic Book".

The current dominance of streaming services also means that for most people the newest version may effectively be the only version that exists.

And then there's the even worse practice of replacing version even for people who bought the original.

In theory this could be done correctly. Products would announce that they're an edited version (and name the editor), and whatever digital storefront would enable people interested in the original to view it at no additional cost. But I don't trust modern platforms to do either of these things.

Semi-related: Any video game developer that allows rolling back their game to any past version as a standard feature of their launcher deserves praise for this. And those whose remasters can be configured to be played exactly as the original should the user so wish.

The tendency of corporations to go back and revise/censor those old works in the name of profitability is just one of the many ways that lengthy copyright monopolies are damaging to society.

1. I completely agree with you, art is changed as people change, and just because something is historic doesn't necessarily make it good or meaningful today (although nor does it make it meaningless).

2. Modern copyright law completely undermines point 1. If "we" are not allowed to change a thing because the right to change it is in the hands of a very small privileged group, then I wholeheartedly think the thing should be left the fuck alone.

---

Basically - Want to rewrite that novel to use modern wording and sentiments? Go right ahead, but now that original work must be considered public domain.

Otherwise... fuck right off.

The Wire would not be the wire without the accent, manerisms including slurs, drugs and police brutality.

Dazed & Confused would not be the same without the 70s issues and fortunes but you have the show Skins replacing those with the 2000 "revisions" or Euphoria with the 2020 ones. There is no need to rewrite any of those.

It could be argued that in movies like Blade Runner the rapey scene of Deckard and Rachel does not add anything to the story or characters. Ignoring the technical difficulty of changing those scenes without altering the story narrative or the character morals and flaws at the end of the day is a product of it's time with it's flaws.

In this case it was designed that way on purpose although I consider the reasons weak and it could have been done better if that was the intent. It doesn't help that the actress did not enjoy making the scene. https://youtu.be/vIdlYzbugT8?t=261

It can also be interpreted as Deckard being a lowlife scum that purposely rapes Rachel taking advantage of the fact that she is being hunted, he is the only one who is going to protect her and she knows it.

In this case maybe not you or me would care if the scene was rewritten but I'm sure someone trying to study older movies, a director or Harrison Ford cuestionable love scenes would if only the rewritten movie had survived.

If remakes add something to the table it's the ability to reimagine stories in a less flawed way by our standards without deleting the past.

TLDR; rewriting media is very nuanced and we should take the easy way out of remaking it or creating new stuff instead.

History is mostly BS. Fairy tales very broadly and crudely constrained by some dates and events. We don't know a thing. And that's one reason we can't learn. The past is recast for propaganda purposes to control the present and the future. Nothing more.

A black Cleopatra is “rewriting history” in the same way an English speaking Cleopatra is. How do you think a Cleopatra which didn’t “rewrite history” would look?

This is a longstanding Hollywood tradition, arguably it goes back to Shakespeare.

The problem is people have come to accept that fictional works can perfectly describe reality as it is or was. That has never been the case and never will be. One should not believe what one sees on tv, outside of news and documentaries (and even there, a lot of critical thinking should be applied).

Some excellent writing involves getting into the heads of hard, mean characters who are going to say and think nasty things. I'd like it if writers were free to plumb the depths of such characters in their writing without having to worry about hurt feelings.

I'm not saying you're arguing contrary to any of this by the way. Just expanding on my views a bit.

Buck Angel and other trans people often disagree completely with the conclusions of these censors, who motivated by exerting power over others. Why listen to them over other trans people? Don't give censors that power over you and your work. You're the artist. Don't let others tell you your art is "wrong". It's not. Stand up for yourself and your art.

My argument is that we should not conceal history because our responses have generally improved over the course of history (and will continue to improve in the future). History serves as a reminder that we must remain humble and open to further progress.

I agree with you in the changing of art, I would not change them but rather label or restrict to adults, so they serve us as what they are: pieces of history to learn from.

Do we? It seems like racial tensions are higher than they've been during my lifetime because there's a grievance culture explicitly focused on race instead of treating people as individuals based on their merits. By the standards of today, MLK's request to treat people based not on the color of their skin but the content of their character is rejected as racist.

Some slaves who were teachers or artists were also probably happier and more respected than a lot of "free" people of today.

  I'm obviously playing devils advocate here, but as I said in another comment: we always think we've figured things out better than the people before us.

I just don't see bridge building taking place in the current approaches.

- Pederasty in ancient Greece

(Though I'm not sure to which extent those were disallowed before)

This makes no sense, by definition it was a progressive movement at the time: for as long as we know, people drank alcohol, and then you get these progressive people (many of them women) trying to change the society for the better. It was a failed progressive policy, that if it stuck we would have seen it as a good thing in retrospect and call it progressive - just like banning opium in cough medicine.

Conservative means keeping the old way, in this case: keep drinking alcohol freely.

The labels are often misused but really that's all it is. Progressivism wants things to change, conservatism wants them to stay the same. You need a balance of both.

As for examples of things that were forbidden, then allowed, then forbidden again there are already good examples in the other comments. Things around family, sexuality, forms of government. The postulat also assumes that all societies in the world are uniform and accepting/forbidding the same things.

I'm sure we could do with more sex, even for teenagers. That would be a great path toward learning / exploring / getting familiar about important aspects of it (consent, safe sex, different ways to find pleasure with it, not necessarily heterosexual sex, not necessarily sex involving exactly two people, also the fact that some people are not interested). There's no point in it being taboo. It's part of everybody's life (at the very least everybody comes from it). It just needs to be carefully handled.

No, it has been constantly retold. New people have written new histories. They haven't edited other people's histories while continuing to label those histories as the work of the original authors.

What's happening here isn't "our views are changing, so we are producing new material based on those changed views". They are altering existing works written by people who are long dead, without making it clear to the reader/viewer what has been changed.

Perspective is always a thing, but lies are lies.

No that overused, it appears. Look at how man replies didn't know what the source material was.

If 1984 and Animal Farm was still required reading in HS, we'd have a very different population. One, I expect, that would be more critical of thoughtcrime and revisionist history than of imaginary boogeymen.

> Many people incorrectly remember the name of the series as the "Berenstein Bears". This confusion has generated multiple explanations of the memories, including an unannounced name change, time travel, or parallel universes, and has been described as an instance of the Mandela effect.[87][88][89][90] According to Mike Berenstain, confusion over the name has existed since his father's childhood, when a teacher told him there was no such name as "Berenstain" and the correct spelling was "Bernstein."[91] A few examples of the "Berenstein" spelling have been found in references to and knockoffs of official merchandise[92] and publications,[93] and cartoons for the series used an ambiguous pronunciation which may contribute to the false memory.[94]

Because to the best of my knowledge, no world-class author or director has ever said "Feel free to change my words, images, and choices after I die, however you see fit to make the most money or appease the current narrative".

... And if a creator ever did say that, it would be the exception that proves the rule.

I had nightmares about the muppets that still kinda haunt me in my 50s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_mediatisation

It was basically the french revolutionary ideals spread to half of europe during a interim phase of french expansionism. And they were welcomed as liberators by man peasants, and the french idea of the nation, with the nobles done away wa quite attractive. In those times, lots of the old stuff was thrown out with the "old elites".

Im sorry european history is so confusing. Basically it all happens, over and over again, for different reasons, but the "bilderstürmerei" is such a old tradition, that some anticipating it, just painted over the old stuff with white chalk paint, preserving it below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconoclasm

> Elliot's mother's prohibition to go trick-or-treating dressed as "a terrorist" has been changed to "a hippie".[1]

I don't know whether this has been changed back to the original dialogue now.

[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0083866/alternateversions/

yes, you are right. for shame :(

Will changing Agatha Christie’s novels be terribly impactful or noticeable to the plot if you were unfamiliar with the original? Probably not. It inarguably subtracts from the works, however. The bigger idea is that we lose something of the original creation and it’s voice from the period; that if such edits are not clearly identified and worse - if original works are simply censored from the casual marketplace - it’s a loss bigger than the sum of the incidental changes.

I think Spielberg’s statement on this does it better justice than I can, but there’s value in keeping original works available and not just in the cobwebbed and esoteric corners of libraries or the Internet but in GA. This is our heritage, for better AND worse.

If they regret it later, it's likely because society is bullying them into pretenting to be _very_sorry_(tm) about expressing their ideas.

If they genuinely change their position, then, in a mature society, they can own up to their past and all will be good.

But that's not the direction we're moving, no, in todays society, people must constantly revise their past, not to fit with their own values, but to attempt not to be cancelled.

but I don't think anyone does read Orwell and is like "oh that's a good tool of manipulation"

because they have many more ways to find the same tools but in a context where it's packed into a "this is for (the grater,your,your peoples) good" package instead of a "this is a dystopia" package

I want to never be cruel or cowardly, but I know I will mess up sometimes, hopefully I will make amends, but I probably won't always. I don't think that is hypocrisy, just fallibility.

Ignoring the religious definition, here's how it is typically interpreted:

"one who practices or preaches a more rigorous or professedly purer moral code than that which prevails"

My comment isn't at all about a purer moral code. It's about Hollywood's obsession with pushing more and more explicit sexual content on everyone and the objectification of women.

If you think speaking-up against objectifying women is against our prevailing moral code, well, not sure what society you have around you.

How about that scene in on of the Transformer's movies where they follow the actress (who used to be a Victoria's Secret model) up the stairs while wearing underwear with the camera firmly planted on her ass? Seriously? Why was that necessary?

It isn't about some pure moral code. It's about using women and pushing shit on people just to do it. Like I said in my comment, if the movie is about sexual matters, absolutely no problem. A blow-job scene in Battlestar Galactica? Really?

[1]: https://www.goldderby.com/article/2023/steven-spielberg-regr...

BTW, I was not aware about this before. Why changing a gun?

Guns were pretty common in movies and rarely become a focus of sensitive topic, isn't it?

>We know no truth

So you're saying we have 100% certainty that we aren't capable of knowing anything is true with 100% certainty?

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

I don't know what you are missing that you think I'm arguing for censorship.

Bob Dylan told them he'd "stand over their grave to make sure that you're dead." Springstein disparaged congressmen's children.

If cops get protection from hate speech... why not politicians?

And if a black person does kill someone you love, why would you even think about black people in the same way as cops, when “black people” aren’t some public entity armed by the state to do the job of protecting people of all colors? You’re misrepresenting the issue. The only way to channel your hatred against an ethnic group that doesn’t have statutory power over you is to become racist.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/report-black-people-are-...

And on average White Americans still live longer than Blacks, though the gap isn't as stark as it once was.

https://www.humanprogress.org/dataset/u-s-life-expectancy-at...

In fact, you'd have a much harder time than the rapper in OP's post - who actually did get his published.