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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32806 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Next They Came for the Dead White Authors

Apparently, Ian Fleming is next on the list for posthumous editing by sensitivity readers.

I've read a bunch of Bond novels. They are hilariously and unironically racist and sexist. Much moreso than the movies, which were already notorious for being un-PC even in an un-PC era (remember Octopussy?).

The Bond novels are fun but schlocky; Fleming's output was wildly erratic in quality. Casino Royale was actually pretty good (the Daniel Craig remake was the most accurate-to-the-book Bond movie ever made), while Dr. No was just hilariously bad (and bore almost no resemblance to the movie).

I guess I don't need to say much that hasn't already been said or that most people here won't agree with.

I will point out that editing children's books to be more acceptable to modern readers is much older than Roald Dahl. For example, I read the original, unedited Dr. Doolittle by Hugh Lofting a few years ago. I was actually unaware of just how racist it was. Modern editions have removed the "niggers" and other slurs, and the plot about the little African prince who wants Dr. Doolittle to turn him white. I don't actually object to this, so long as the original is still around. In itself, this isn't some new practice that only started happening in the woke era.

But it appears increasingly that it will no longer be acceptable to acknowledge that attitudes in the past were different; a warning label won't be enough. I expect the march will continue with Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell's novel is a magnificent epic and a glorious, unapologetic paean to the Old South, and should be preserved in its entirety both for its literary merit and for being such a cringeworthy time capsule of Lost Cause mythology. The movie was actually toned down a lot even in 1939 (they removed the part where Rhett Butler literally joins the KKK, for example), but I would not be surprised if it's next on the block for expurgation.

Here is a good news/bad news thought for you to ponder: I think sensitivity readers will soon be out of a job. Why? Because scrubbing "problematic" texts out of old books seems like a really easy job for the next generation of ChatGPT.

Maybe I'm being unfair, or maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but it's odd watching you get with the program. I seem to remember you as one of the "everything is fine, you're overreacting" types. After seeing so many of these kind of stories, I kind of ran out of things to say on them. If you're actually worried about preserving the history of literature, start buying the (print) books you think are worth preserving, and keep them in good condition. What's more is there to say?

Maybe I'm being unfair, or maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but it's odd watching you get with the program. I seem to remember you as one of the "everything is fine, you're overreacting" types.

I'm not sure if you're being unfair, but while I'll admit my priors have adjusted slightly over the years, I do think many people were and are overreacting. I didn't write my thoughts out at more length, though I thought about it, because generally I am not an effortposter, but I don't think the Roald Dahl or Ian Fleming revisions are destroying our cultural heritage or cause for George Orwell memes. That doesn't mean I don't find the trend objectionable. I can think things are bad without thinking they are a prelude to the End Times. (And if they are, I am starting to worry more about AI than I am about wokeness.)

Out of sheer curiosity: what would be your central example for destroying cultural heritage? Is there anything short of the establishment of a literal Ministry of Truth that would justify Orwell memes?

I'm a little wary of answering questions asked as "sheer curiosity" (usually they aren't, they are asked with an agenda and a desire to fight), but okay.

First, a few pebbles does not an avalanche make. For all our grousing about Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming, there are countless more offensive works that remain untouched. We are mostly sniping at small skirmishes in the Culture War, not the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

If the original versions of such works become not just out of print, but impossible and possibly illegal to acquire, I will worry more. Yes, if you want to claim things are literally Orwellian, then I do think you need to show me a literal Ministry of Truth.

I hate a lot of woke things, and in my darker moments I think maybe the doomers are right, but I've been grousing about wokeness since it was called "political correctness" (which was years before the term "SJW" was coined). Things are cyclic, and some cycles date back to the dawn of literacy.

But maybe I'll wake up one day devoured by leopards. Who knows?

(Still think SkyNet is more likely.)

Even the burning of the library of Alexandria didn't happen the way it is supposed to have done in the popular imagination, and that pop culture version is very much a deliberate creation of people with an agenda in the past.

No, Dahl and Fleming aren't important, Fleming more unimportant than Dahl. But they're straws in the wind. The little pebbles whose falling starts the avalanche in the mountains. This is a mainstream publisher mucking around with long-established properties, not a first-time YA novel getting lambasted for having the wrong type of slavery. Indeed, the first "it's only a few pebbles" was a 2022 memoir by someone who was the typical liberal do-gooder, but was guilty of being the White Saviour:

Last month, controversy was reignited in the UK around teacher Kate Clanchy’s memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, about her time teaching kids from diverse backgrounds to write poetry.

Although Clanchy’s book was initially lauded (even winning the Orwell Prize), criticism soon eclipsed praise. Readers, prominent writers of colour and autistic author Dara McNulty protested the language Clanchy used to describe her pupils (“Somali height”, “Ashkenazi nose”, autistic children as “jarring company”). Her publisher Picador agreed the objections were “instructive and clear-sighted”; eventually, it withdrew the book from publication.

When an author or other creator is not from the group being represented in their work, they might decide to engage a member of that particular community to read it and offer feedback. A novel featuring a transgender Indigenous character would ideally be read by a transgender Indigenous person, and so on.

And if you can't easily get your hands on a trans Indigenous person, you won't get published, seems to be the message here.

They moved on from non-fiction to fiction. What is the next target? Dickens is very problematic, even in his own time (see Fagin). A lot of "Classics" by Dead White Males that don't have even a single transgender Indigenous person! Even worse, there's the reshaping of the past to fit the present:

A recent example from academic publishing shows how this happens. Mary Rambaran-Olm was asked to read a chapter on Early Medieval England of a history book written for the general public. Rambaran-Olm has expertise in relevant academic fields, and also through her personal experience as a scholar of Afro/Indo Caribbean origin.

The white male authors overwhelmingly did not accept her advice about problems with the manuscript’s representation of the past and how it feeds into contemporary racism. They thanked her in the acknowledgements, however. This created the false impression she had actively shaped the contents of the book.

You see? How do you or anyone else learn about Early Mediaeval England? Generally you read a scholarly book. But if the scholarly books are increasingly being "sensitivity read" to make sure that they include all the right think about "contemporary racism", what version are you getting? How much is this already happening, without us knowing?

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