Updated 1 year ago
Roald Dahl can never be made nice | Atlantic
“Roald Dahl without nastiness is not Roald Dahl. Something about the process [of making his works more acceptable to easily-offended modern helicopter parents] feels dishonest, like an Instagram filter that flattens and smooths, trending all faces toward one idealized yet utterly generic face.
One of the inadvertently funniest amendments is a passage in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which once explained how the Oompa-Loompas—whom Dahl originally wrote specifically as African “pygmies”—had come to work for Willy Wonka. “It was easy,” the deranged capitalist inventor used to say. “I smuggled them over in large packing cases with holes in them.” In the newly sanitized version, Wonka instead tells his audience that the Oompa-Loompas were volunteers and “they’ve told me they love it here.” Yes, the sensitivity readers have somehow re-created a classic trope from colonial literature: If these slaves are unhappy, why are they singing all the time? Thank you for the clarification, Mr. Wonka, and now perhaps your PR firm could explain why the Oompa-Loompas aren’t allowed to leave the factory.”
And now, the oompa loompas are “gender neutral.”
Please leave books alone! This is disgraceful, and unfair to the authors.
As a typical Gen Xer, I hope this sanitizing doesn’t become a trend. The thought of it metastasing into efforts such as taking the N word out of Mark Twain’s books makes me nauseous.
Thank you Salman Rushdie!
See also:
The Original ‘Wizard of Oz’ Books Are Shockingly Violent Compared To The Judy Garland Classic
