ootlg
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Post by ootlg on Feb 19, 2023 10:36:13 GMT
The Brain Police.
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Post by wetkingcanute on Feb 19, 2023 10:43:11 GMT
Few editors have achieved the notoriety of Thomas Bowdler. He was trained as a physician, but when illness prevented him from practicing medicine, he turned to warning Europeans about unsanitary conditions at French watering places. Bowdler then carried his quest for purification to literature, and in 1818 he published his Family Shakspeare [sic], a work in which he promised that "those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family." The sanitized volume was popular with the public of the day, but literary critics denounced his modifications of the words of the Bard. Bowdler applied his literary eraser broadly, and within 11 years of his death in 1825 the word bowdlerize was being used to refer to expurgating books or other texts.
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Post by perrykneeham on Feb 19, 2023 10:45:03 GMT
Few editors have achieved the notoriety of Thomas Bowdler. He was trained as a physician, but when illness prevented him from practicing medicine, he turned to warning Europeans about unsanitary conditions at French places. . Fixed it. |
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mids
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Post by mids on Feb 19, 2023 10:56:14 GMT
It's weird how "liberal" types have become the modern-day Mary Whitehouses, tutting and finger-wagging at things they deem offensive. Much more successfully than Whitehouse too. I'm not sure she succeeded in banning or cancelling anything.
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ootlg
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Post by ootlg on Feb 19, 2023 10:56:40 GMT
Cheeky f**k.
Edit: For Baloo obv.
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ootlg
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Post by ootlg on Feb 19, 2023 10:58:47 GMT
Illiberal is the new liberal.
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Post by happyhammerhead on Feb 19, 2023 12:56:19 GMT
I have no idea what that means, but it sounds FILTHY  |
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Post by Repat Van on Feb 19, 2023 15:12:04 GMT
Because people, well "certain" people, will get the idea that they can and should go through life with the right not to be offended. That's bad because it restricts enquiry and discussion of ideas. Etc. Do you have a citation for this claim that that’s the end result? Sounds like you’re being a little hysterical for no good reason. |
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Post by Repat Van on Feb 19, 2023 15:13:14 GMT
It's weird how "liberal" types have become the modern-day Mary Whitehouses, tutting and finger-wagging at things they deem offensive. Much more successfully than Whitehouse too. I'm not sure she succeeded in banning or cancelling anything. You’re whining far more about an absolute non issue. |
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ootlg
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Post by ootlg on Feb 19, 2023 17:08:51 GMT
Being defensive isn't helping your case.
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voice
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Post by voice on Feb 19, 2023 17:48:06 GMT
This side of the pond, apart from the right banning and burning books they don't like (extreme editing you could say) many far right states such as Texas, Florida Carolinas and so on are banning anything from being taught in history that might make a white child uncomfortable, no referencing slavery or lynching and certainly nothing to do with inherent racial profiling faced by black and brown people, Alabama even has a primary school text book depicting slavery as beneficent with pictures of happy slaves that says they were just another immigrant group. This is leading to teachers facing jail time for teaching actual history and state governments restricting all measure of academic freedom.
So on the scale of things, a publishing house changing a few lines in a couple of children's books is small potatoes when the right is going all out culture war on ideas and critical thinking.
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mids
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Post by mids on Feb 19, 2023 17:58:13 GMT
no referencing slavery or lynching and certainly nothing to do with inherent racial profiling faced by black and brown people, So correctly categorising fiction in the fiction section, then? |
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Post by perrykneeham on Feb 19, 2023 19:32:17 GMT
TBH, what I'm hearing isn't so much "then right" as that "side of the pond".
When you've got infants bringing guns to school, black policemen racially murdering black men and the Prime Minstrel of Canada channeling Al Jolson, I suspect that the issue really isn't about political spectrums.
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Post by Repat Van on Feb 19, 2023 23:20:33 GMT
no referencing slavery or lynching and certainly nothing to do with inherent racial profiling faced by black and brown people, So correctly categorising fiction in the fiction section, then? Mids is a Holocaust denier. Who’d a thought. |
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Post by Repat Van on Feb 19, 2023 23:21:07 GMT
This side of the pond, apart from the right banning and burning books they don't like (extreme editing you could say) many far right states such as Texas, Florida Carolinas and so on are banning anything from being taught in history that might make a white child uncomfortable, no referencing slavery or lynching and certainly nothing to do with inherent racial profiling faced by black and brown people, Alabama even has a primary school text book depicting slavery as beneficent with pictures of happy slaves that says they were just another immigrant group. This is leading to teachers facing jail time for teaching actual history and state governments restricting all measure of academic freedom. So on the scale of things, a publishing house changing a few lines in a couple of children's books is small potatoes when the right is going all out culture war on ideas and critical thinking. They need things to get hysterical over. Denying that history happened is a problem. Deleting the word “fat” from a book? Not so much. |
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voice
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Post by voice on Feb 19, 2023 23:28:13 GMT
So correctly categorising fiction in the fiction section, then? Mids is a Holocaust denier. Who’d a thought. Anyone who's ever read his posts... |
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ootlg
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Post by ootlg on Feb 20, 2023 8:14:16 GMT
TBH, what I'm hearing isn't so much "then right" as that "side of the pond". When you've got infants bringing guns to school, black policemen racially murdering black men and the Prime Minstrel of Canada channeling Al Jolson, I suspect that the issue really isn't about political spectrums. I've said it before, but the US is showing all the signs of a nation brinking on nervous breakdown, a sort of institutional instability. I used to think maybe it was Young Country Syndrome, a sort of braggadocio adolescence, but if it is indeed maturing, the process is very, very slow. |
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Post by perrykneeham on Feb 20, 2023 8:28:34 GMT
It's looking pretty degenerate now. Sleezy and insincere.
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ootlg
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Post by ootlg on Feb 20, 2023 8:57:06 GMT
Our son-in-law who comes from S.Francisco says it's like a warzone now, changed dramatically in the last 20 years. I remember it as a pretty cool town but apparently it's changed big time.
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moggyonspeed
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Post by moggyonspeed on Feb 20, 2023 14:54:17 GMT
Not a great Roald Dahl fan, but this expurgating the bits of his work that we're not supposed to like is, imho, missing a golden opportunity.
Rather than adopting what appears to be a lazy-thinking mentality leaving young Dahl-readers none the wiser, I'd leave any "offensive" text in and explain in a foreword, afterword or in the blurb the fact that the times they are a-changing and, we trust, will continue to do so for the better. We cannot essentially hoodwink kids into thinking that our forefathers lived in as just an enlightened a world as we do today, and for one good reason: they didn't. I fear that not only does this paint a rose-tinted specs view of our comparatively horrible past but, in a sense, it ignores the efforts of all those good people (famous and less so) who helped to carve out the good in our modern society. Work-in-progress undoubtedly, but in passing the baton of change onto the young we need to pay suitable homage to those who effected change in their day - and that task is rendered more difficult if we simply hide the fact that change was necessary back then.
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