Saturday, February 18, 2023

PC Madness

As someone who grew up reading the children's books written by Roald Dahl, I am quite stunned at what I read in the news today.

Puffin, the publishing arm of Penguin which releases Dahl's books, has apparently assigned 'sensitivity readers' to ensure that the books can be enjoyed in today's society.

I've read that Augustus Gloop, the fat - yes, I wrote it: FAT - child from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now going to be 'Enormous'. Then, in The Twits, Mrs. Twit will now be described as 'beastly' when she was originally introduced to the reader as 'ugly and beastly'.

It's insane.

Many of Dahl's fictitious creations are meant to be fat, ugly and revolting. That's the entire point of their existence.

I am not down with an artist's work being changed to satisfy today's society. 

All works of literature should reflect their authors' original vision and the times they were written. Yes, I also mean some works out there with even worse languages and tones than the zany world Roald Dahl brought children to in his books.

You cannot learn from history if you're rewriting it to appease today's societies. Let the reader read books as their authors intended them to be read. 

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