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Maybe it fits in with the other spy novels in the series.
Interesting that it's a Penguin; I had imagined that IFP were making the Flemings exclusive to themselves. Not quite sure why it's in this thread! :D
I didn’t know where to post it in a short time at work, lol.
What again? Must be less impressive than the last time, but I'm still interested.
To be fair, this is a new edition announced only today! :)
Yes, and have you heard that the Titanic sunk after colliding with an iceberg?
What year is it?
Yes, I read that recently in my dentist's surgery in one of the newspapers there.
It's 2020. Sorry about that, old chap.
Funny enough, just today I read at a doctor's office an article, in a 2022 magazine, about Violet Constance Jessop (1887 - 1971) who worked as a stewardess and/or nurse on all three of the great White Star liners Olympic, Titanic and Britannic (originally Gigantic) and survived first the severe collision of Olympic with a naval ship (to be fair, everyone else survived this as well), then the sinking of the Titanic, and ultimately the sinking of the Britannic, which had been converted to a hospital ship in WW I and ran into a German naval mine in the Aegean Sea.
I must say that I like to see how it's backfire. Doomed themself to have theses comments and questions to the end of the time...
EDIT: Just want to be clear I’m not trying to belittle anyone out there, just that I’ve genuinely never seen anyone side with the censored versions and I have a hard time understanding the appeal. I can understand not wanting to read slurs and whatnot, but I just can’t see how one would be able to under the pretense it was never there, which of course it was and nothing can ever change that.
They were written generations ago, in a completely different lifetime. I think a disclaimer alone would be ridiculous but it would be better that a complete revision!
Sarcasm aside, how would the term "chegroes" be rewritten? I had never heard of a half Chinese/half "negro" person before reading Doctor No. Seriously! And I am sure most people haven't. For that particular time frame, the term "negro" was acceptable. I am an American (if that isn't already painfully obvious) and I don't think there has ever truly been a way to refer to a person of color that wasn't offensive to someone. And, depending on the situation, the term "African-American" can be completely acceptable and respectful one moment, then rude and offensive in another.
In short, this matter is far from being sorted out. People are so touchy these days, the basic terms "he" and "her" can stir up trouble.
Well said. A disclaimer at the beginning of each book would have been enough. I'm still nervous about Colonel Sun and The Authorized Biography of James Bond getting edits as well. I hope IFP learns from this BIG mistake, and reissues the books in their original text. I hope the other books that are both Bond (from any author) and books in general never get edited. It's just wrong.
There was a guy on here that gave quite a reasoned argument for censored versions. I can't remember who it was.
But yea, come on Folio, bring out Octopussy!
I see. Like I said, I’m no one to deny them existing if they do nothing to impede the originals from being just as accessible and there being clarity up front as to which version is which. On a personal level, I just couldn’t imagine reading classical text knowing it’s been sanitized for modern sensibilities without feeling distracted. It just is what it is, and it’d just be in my mind that’s not how the original author conveyed things even if it’s wrong to us now. But again, if someone can manage to totally ignore all of that and prefer reading an updated one, I’m no one to say no to that. My main concern is just making sure the originals are always around and not erased from history. People should at least understand no amount of modern editing can ever truly change what happened.
Which is fine of course, but then on the previous page we had someone say that 'they'll be editing Enid Blyton next!', potentially as a very subtle joke, because of course Blyton's stuff was getting edited back when Sean Connery was still making his first Bond films. There's a chance that, if you're in the habit of reading older texts, you may have read something which has had a little trim years after it was written and never known.
I certainly think there are problems with how some of this has been tackled by the publishers, but the newspapers have been keen to promote a huge and rather overstated moral panic about this to suit their own agendas, which means that you just get a load of people on social media parroting the same old things, often quite witlessly.
Maybe when there's a new bit of publishing news we can try to use another thread than this one? Otherwise it just starts the same complaints up again rather than talking about Penguin publishing a new copy of FRWL etc.
I don't know @mtm , I can follow the sales-argument, claiming that new readers would be enjoying a book a lot more when it's sanitised. But it still is the same as covering greek nudes with leaves, or worse, dismember them for prude's sake.
Is it fair to let people 'enjoy' a book that have been altered just to protect the readers from the darker side of the same book? They'll get a completely distorted view of the book. If I took al the anti-semitism out of Mein Kampf (just an extreme example, you would hardly have a book left) and gave it to the next generation, they might even think it's not an evil book.
I'm not saying Fleming's writing is evil, but I AM saying that his world view was very distinct and you can read it in the Bond books. How is somebody going to think for themselves if you take the controversy out of there?
If we're doing extreme examples, would you be happy if any kids in your family picked this up from the Waterstones children section?
https://content.easyliveauction.com/auctions/images_lots/9F67D3AD5E8E84E0C89B0980A3ED7E4A_swa02/1100216574.JPG
Y'know: not all examples are the same and I think painting it as stopping people thinking for themselves is a touch silly. I think this debate got way too heated and stoked up by culture war advocates for bad faith reasons, and extreme examples don't really help anything.
Well, I'll definately draw the line at children's books, but Bond was never intended for kids now was he (do we have a similar situation with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? I never read that one). And I'm sure in favour of an explanation or introduction that adresses the sensibilities, but removing them is whitewashing (not the term you want to use in this setting, but I don't have another) history, and I think that in itself is very harmful.
I do agree with you that the discussion has been way too stoked up to ever get any decent result at all, which says a lot about our current society.
Sure, but Hitler's writings aren't exactly the same thing as Fleming either! :)
Yes indeed, it's too much in the interests of various media outlets to promote as much outrage and bad faith arguments as possible.
I suppose with books like that from Blyton it's a case where even with minor edits (I'm actually unsure if that particular one was edited in its own time) it'll never make its way into the Waterstones children section. Not out of censorship, but just in the sense that few customers would want to read it to their children nowadays, and the only people interested in those books would be collectors of some sort.
From what I understand it's The Famous Five that's been subjected to similar revisions as Bond - replacements of the word 'gay' and 'queer' (used in the text to mean happy and strange respectively) and that sort of thing. To be honest I don't think it's something they need bother with in regards to Bond. You can't really edit away things like the implication of Bond 'turning' Galore straight in GF, or the ethnicity/nationality of some of the villains/characters. You're left with only minor things like the replacing of words and very particular passages in an attempt to make them more 'palatable' to modern readers (which is a bit pointless as there are those who simply dislike these books and won't read them regardless of how many revisions).
As I've said in the past I'd be happy if Fleming's novels got a similar treatment to other classic novels/literature - that's to say have an introduction at the start explaining the context, themes, potential criticisms etc. It'd treat them as the important pieces of literature that they are while being open about what they contain/leaving the text intact as a record of its time.
I second that, allthough I'm trying to read a book now which has such an elaborate explanation at the start, that I'm afraid I won't be able to make my mind up when I finally get to the original book. So, I'd rather have the explanation at the back.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/04/licence-to-offend-bfi-season-gives-james-bond-films-trigger-warnings#:~:text=Audiences at a new season,“will cause offence today”.
That's not an instance of editing or censorship from what I understand but simply a 'trigger warning'.
Whether or not those trigger warnings are required or should be there is a different matter, but they've not touched the actual films going from the article.
As long as they don't mess with the films, I don't care how many warnings they give.
Don’t blame us! Are James Bond trigger warnings really for audiences’ benefit?
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/04/james-bond-trigger-warnings-really-for-audiences-benefit