I suppose we wouldn’t be doing due diligence as thrashers of ignorance if we ignore the ‘sensitivity readers’ story surrounding the edits of books by Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming. I was in my local library chinwagging with the librarian about books and we were talking about genre Detective books, and got into this. Wait till they come for so and so, etc.
The authors currently being gulaged apparently used the word “fat” to describe…eh…am I allowed to say it? Full disclosure, I’m skinny. Always have been. Could do with putting on a few pounds. It isn’t offensive to say this, even if I say it about myself. It can become a health issue, but from a strength and fitness point of view, I’m not at the optimum.
There are of course other words found to be unpalatable in these books, to do with race and gender. I’d like to hear an argument in favour of editing them though. I have yet to read one or hear of one that makes sense. Generally the argument goes that we should be more sensitive - which is absolutely no argument for interfering with books.
My issue is that no ideology should ever interfere with art. No politics, no religion. And that if they get away with changing the writings of the past, then they’ve deleted part of history, leaving us with an inaccurate view of people from back then. But also, I would say we should educate the present to understand the past, rather than delete or misrepresent the past.
Also, we should know that in our time of speedy changes of correct protocol and terminology, we will look ridiculous to the future, if they also feel frisky about changing our books. This rapid rewriting will take place weeks and months, rather than years and decades, after our books are published. Colloquialisms will be destroyed. Local humour will suffer.
And as well, we should understand that no matter how progressive we think we are, in the future we will be judged harshly, just as we harshly judge the past, and for reasons we probably won’t expect. Does this mean that they in the future should erase our views, and alter our art? This is more akin to erasing our existence than misgendering some ugly preening narcissist.
Finally, the more crucial aspect is this: while they’re tackling the past, they also pay sensitivity readers to alert publishers to problematical uses of language in books not yet published. They’re bringing these cleansing ideologies into movie making and television. They’re demanding their erroneous ideas of race and gender be followed in art and theatre and cinema, and so on.
And so we have a clash of civilisations within our own civilisation - and we’re losing…
