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The odd thing about IFP's decision is that redacting dead authors is rare nowadays. When I buy a Penguin Classics or Oxford World Classics edition of a book they promise to reproduce the text as the author intended--sometimes they even restore passages taken out by editors or publishers. And yet with Fleming we're getting less than the originals.
The redactions to Roald Dahl are somewhat more understandable because the books were written for children, and it's not uncommon to find children's versions of books like The Three Musketeers or the Sherlock Holmes stories. But a children's version of Fleming wouldn't work (as earlier experiments demonstrated). The Bond books are geared toward adults--they're not Harry Potter or child-friendly fantasy like Tolkien. When teens read them them in the past, it was to take a disreputable look at what adults got up to. And if they read them nowadays, they surely notice how the books belong to a very different time. That's why adding contextual material is a good idea, rather than redacting some offensive bits but leaving other offensive bits in.
If you can access NYT articles, here's the link:
https://nytimes.com/2023/04/03/books/classic-novels-revisions-agatha-christie-roald-dahl.html
I myself felt I should finally order a copy of "Tintin in the Congo" (the German translation) before it becomes unavailable over here as well. (For good measure, I also ordered "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" as well.)
Call me cynical but I'd be surprised if a story featuring a popular character like Tintin and the Soviets was edited or censored at all. This is because the driving force behind these "sensitivity readers" and the general wokeism of today are usually of the left, or at the very least liberals. They have selective amnesia when it comes to the crimes and mass murder of the likes of Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. They tend to point out the speck in the eyes of others while ignoring the beam in their own eye. Now, if it was "Tintin in the Land of the Nazis/Fascists" that'd be a different story altogether. I'm happy to be proven wrong of course but in my experience it's just the way these things normally work.
Just for information's sake, it is important to know that Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is very critical of the Soviet Union and depicts it as a place you would want to stay away from. It has been described as an anti-communist satire and was first published in a Catholic newspaper (Le Petit Vingtième).
In Bond terms: a place full of Orlovs, without the Gogols or Pushkins to compensate :))
I particularly liked this bit:
Why are publishers so invested in the idea that reader can't understand this? They assume readers will require fainting couches if the books aren't edited to shield fragile readers.
Well, that makes sense but sadly the readers and even publishers of today often overlook such nuances and push for the removal of all references whether they be critical or not. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the Soviets are still safer than the Nazis when it comes to censorship and historical revisionism.
The EXACT SAME THING. SIXTY YEARS AGO.
And there was ZERO so-called “wokeism” back then.
As a matter of fact, I am aware the "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" is certainly anti-communist, and I don't have a problem with that. I'm anti-communist as well, as any half-way intelligent being should be. Satirizing it always helps.
I also know that "Tintin in the Congo" is - by current standards - racist (and I guess even by mine), but I'm aware of that and therefore don't have a problem with that at all, since I know how to categorise this sort of stuff and place it into its historical context and see it as what it is. So I guess I'm sort of an equal opportunity cynicist regarding political extremes. And I don't like messing with literary works from former times just because they go against the grain of some or even many these days.
We agree 100%, my friend. I just wanted to point it out for the sake of information.
A pretty good TV series of the Tintin comics was created in 1991-92, adapting all the comics save for these two. I can imagine why the one in Congo wasn't adapted. Not sure why the one in the USSR was skipped though.
Could be either because the USSR at that point was already dissolved, or maybe because they considered several elements to be too politically loaded, or perhaps the different drawing style and the fact that the comic is in black and white were too difficult for them to go together with the rest...
Tintin In The Congo featured a scene where Tintin drills a hole in a live Rhinoceros and fills it with a stick of dynamite, then blows up the animal. This was was changed in the 1970s, some forty-five years after it was published, to a less horrible scene where the Rhino gets scared by a gun and runs away. I can't get angry about it.
I agree, and I'm afraid it would have spoilt the story for me big-time. But then, this is not really a political decision, and Hergé was still around to approve it. However, he apparently saw no reason to sanitise the rest of the book before he died in 1983.
PS: I just read that he did most of the sanitising in 1946 already, when he put the story into colour. He shortened it from 112 pages to 64, omitting much of that colonial propaganda (where Tim obviously teaches the Congolese that Belgium is their fatherland - I'm quoting other sources here) and changing that rhino scene.
It was an animated adventure show for kids. Of course a political story about a journalist visiting the Soviet Union, seeing riots and executions, doesn't fit in. Tintin in Soviet is nothing more than a political comic book for adults.
Yep, changes happen. If racism is 'a political decision' then animal rights and cruelty is too. These aren't historical documents: they're published alongside brand new books under the same editorial policy. If they were museum exhibits being changed I could get upset, but they're not: they're commodities for sale in the market today, and if the folks who own them decide they can't be sold in their original condition it's up to them because they're running a business, not an archive. Stuff goes out of print all the time, there's way more books not being reprinted than there are, and keeping them alive is a very active proposition. It's the way it's always been. Do I 100% agree with it? Honestly, I don't think I've completely made up my mind; but I can see why it's happening, and why it has happened many times before.
The problem in a big way is the newspapers making as much of these stories as they can. The papers seek to poke at the sore spot that no-one likes feeling old, that the things you liked in your childhood are being moved on from, that today's generations are examining those things with a more critical eye, that you're being judged to have done it 'wrong'- and no-one likes to be told they lived their life wrong. Funny how loads of these stories are all hitting at once isn't it? Because it hasn't only just started now. And the papers know that hits at an existential nerve, that feeling that you're being moved on from, that knowledge we'll all die, which is a very powerful feeling to hit; and they love nothing more than provoking a bit of outrage. Because, guess what: they're a business too and outrage sells.
Well you could look at it as a comic for adults today, but when it first was released it was very much intended for children since it was first released in the children supplements of a newspaper (Le petit vingtième).
Anwyay, I agree that it is indeed pretty logical that it wasn't included in the kid's show from the 90's, which I absolutely loved as a kid, and still today to be honest.
A) Certain images were considered okay-ish in some circles many many many years ago, but are thankfully treated as problematic today. Here are the reasons why. (And this is where the parent becomes a teacher.)
B) Hergé may be accused of racism and stereotyping; however, he did mend his ways in later years. People make mistakes but they can also learn from these mistakes. It would appear that Hergé wasn't deaf to good arguments and a bit of soul-searching. Hence why almost every other Tintin book is not just "okay" but a big bundle of joy.
I want to teach my son to form nuanced views of the world more than anything else.
You're so right!
And very true that Hergé changed his ways later on, considering the enormous amount of research he put into his comics. For me most stories from The Cigars of the Pharaoh onwards are so much fun :)
Agreed. That book is where the rise in quality becomes clear and steep. Both 'Moon' books are my favourites.
Different, this pursuit to change Fleming, Dahl, others reminds me of the closing passage of Orwell's Animal Farm.
Lowest common denominator, erasing relevant meaning.
The press release said just race stuff.
Maybe they’re going to hand out censored books.
That's the only way they'll get them shifted - to hand them out for free.
Well, that's not too bad then considering some US Bond novel releases can be months later than those in the UK.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a43567165/james-bond-novels-edited-new-edition-review/
You can't initiate "an open and honest discussion" of the books by removing the racist passages. You can if you discuss the context of those passages, which is exactly what the author does in the first part of the article.
Yet he doesn't see the contradiction in cutting "galling and outdated" racist language while keeping "galling and outdated" sexist language. He thinks keeping the sexism is acceptable because it can be discussed and contextualized. But the same applies to the racism, as he showed in his own article! Isn't it rather patronizing to assume readers are incapable of having "nuanced conversations" about race and therefore need expurgated editions?
Very interesting and intelligent article- many of those observations actually make me want to read them again. It's perhaps a bit of a stretch to say that removing a very small number of racist terms suddenly makes the book easier to interpret, but I can see how some of them may be disproportionally distracting for readers.
Nowadays they should be shown and treated as teaching tools. As to what the changes have been, in respect to what is socially acceptable today.