<i>Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.</i>
Honestly? If the choice is between "lock these works away because they contain something that could be offensive" or "bowdlerize the shit out of everything", then as far as I'm concerned, lock 'em up and throw away the key. At least they'll still exist in that form if they do so, for future generations to regain access to, once society realizes that this is not the way.
It’s incredibly pathetic and speaks to the inanity of this movement in the publishing industry that they edit old ips instead of investing in new ip that exemplifies their newfound principles.
It's interesting that the article calls out that James Bond had been modified in the past with reduced sex scenes to appease the US audience. This has happened with other IPs as well. It's interesting that AFAIK that wasn't hit with the same pushback by the right in the US.
I’m kinda curious who these are supposed to be for. Like are there a bunch of progressive people who would just loooove to read James Bond, the sexist alcoholic murderer, but he’s just too racist for them? With children’s books I can kinda see the rationale but with James Bond? Just seems like a desperate ploy to sell more copies that nobody actually wants.
Example of "racist reference" from article:<p>"Another altered scene features Bond visiting Harlem in New York, where a salacious strip tease at a nightclub makes the male crowd, including 007, increasingly agitated.<p>The original passage read: “Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.”<p>The revised section replaces the pigs reference with: “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.”<p>Not exactly sure why would it have different description in any night club, no matter what location (which I didn't even noticed at first).
Rather than editing books from our past to fit what makes you feel better why not write your own books without these phrases you don't like. Speaking as a black guy who could of been "hurt" from reading a James Bond book haha.<p>Are my future kids reading Huckleberry Finn gonna assume riding down the Mississippi river back then would of been completely not racial? Great novels are largely historical records. You're reading paintings of humanity behind the mask of the times.
> “A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.”<p>Not sure how this sentence is supposed to work. Surely the point of doing this is to bowdlerize the original text to suit the period in which it is being <i>published</i>.
Does this make the original books collectors editions and if so, what is such a thing called when the original is no longer available? Asking because I have some folk music from the 60's/70's and hip-hop from the 80's that has since been pulled from the market for similar reasons.
Boy, do the censors have their work cut out for them...<p>I was raised on <i>Asterix</i>[0] and <i>Tintin</i>[1] graphic novels. Not to mention the 1940s-era <i>Tom and Jerry</i> cartoons[2].<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_and_Jerry" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_and_Jerry</a>
Everything is a product of a flawed human in one point in time.<p>I think that some things are more significant because they stand in such contrast to other things at the time and place they were produced. I enjoy coming across some anachronistic work and finding how ahead of their time the author was. It could be something like an abolitionist or gay-rights advocate hundreds of years ago. It's inspiring. If I read these Bond books I might come away thinking that Ian Fleming was something that he was not.
On the one hand, I understand wanting to make the works more palatable to contemporary audiences.<p>On the other hand, I don't like the idea of whitewashing our sorted past in this way.<p>On the gripping hand, the foaming-at-the-mouth anti-woke crowd makes it difficult to not see them as exactly the reason people think this sort of thing needs to be done.
Wait. He's still an assassin, though, right? Double O means "license to kill." And nobody has a problem with that?<p>It's ok to kill people for a living, just have the right attitude while you do it!
So using the n word is unacceptable, but calling homosexuality a disease is fine? If you're censoring the books, that's a bizarre place to draw the line.
Perhaps the book industry should borrow a technique from the music industry: Songs are often released in two versions, one a "radio edit" which means it's sanitized for broadcast and another "dirty" version with a "Explicit Lyrics" warning on the label<p>Edit: Or the movie industry which releases "Directors Cut" versions