Can we do the same with all the holy books, they are full of slavery, mass murder, taking people as war trophies, genocide and filled with ideas that can be used to oppress others.
We do this across the board or we stop editing history.
They need to do ‘Roots’ next.
The whole book is full of the most appalling and triggering racist tropes and terminology.
And how or why are the character groups so lacking in diversity? No trans characters, no characters of disability. The slave holding class appear to have been entirely whitewashed.
As if that wasn’t all bad enough, the protagonist is called ‘Kunte’!
This feels wrong to me…like erasing history
If we are censoring old books can we make suggestions? I mean, look at this filth I found in a church, in a book they leave lying around everywhere, that they teach to kids. TO KIDS!!
> Ezekiel 23:19 But she increased her prostitution, recalling the days of her youth when she had served as a prostitute in the land of Egypt.
> Ezekiel 23:20 She lusted for the lechers of Egypt, whose members are like those of donkeys, whose thrusts are like those of stallions.
> Ezekiel 23: 21 You reverted to the depravity of your youth, when Egyptians fondled your breasts, caressing your young nipples.
As a kid stuck with my grandmother stash of Christie books I was desperate to find offensive language in my reading, and mostly disappointed to find very little in her works. Not a single F bomb to be found!
Nostalgia is a hellava drug.
And that’s what this is. It’s so people can happily keep on enjoying and even lauding those people and works from the past without having to acknowledge that the past had some awful elements.
Similar to what has happened to sitcoms from the ’70s or ’80s having all those raslcist, sex is and homophobic jokes edited out. Then they can stick them up on UK gold or whatever it is now and old people can relive their younger days without having to confront how truly terrible our society, and by extension themselves as individuals, was back then.
I’m reminded of a reddit post from a whole ago. Some smaller/mid sized US company was having a staff away day thing with the theme of the antebellum south/ Gone with the Wind. The owners and upper management were all thinking of crinoline dresses, southern belles and dashing officers.
The one black employee they had turned up dressed in rags as a slave and suddenly the event was cancelled.
Guilt free nostalgia is what they want. I say if you want to enjoy Christie or James Bond or whatever then go and do so, but also accept that they are products of a less enlightened time.
They should consider rewriting the Bible to remove all the incest, rape, misogyny, murder, and weird bullshit…
But then there wouldn’t be much left to read to the kids at church
EDIT: Looks like someone beat me to the point
This sub clapped on when this first started. Own it.
Sometimes editing books for content can completely ruin the context and narrative of the novel. For example in “the bible” the censors cut a scene early in the new testament where a young Mary has a hot fling with a dashing (but non-commital) Roman soldier, gets pregnant, and hides it from her family, duping them into thinking it was some kind of miracle. This completely changed the genre of the book from a kind of romantic drama to magic realism and far fetched plotlines about virgin births.
So this is the new way publishers are getting attention and marketing books. It’s going to get boring quickly, in fact, I’m already bored of it.
This was done at the time of initial publication, to the standards of the time. And it was done again, multiple times, on republications.
Anyone who thinks they’re preserving the “original” doesn’t know how publication works.
This is far more insidious and evil than straight up banning or burning books whole and untouched.
What is the logical conclusion of this? All art censored? Statues with breasts made to wear bras?
I used to be all on the digital bandwagon but you cant trust the world to not change the art you love.
If you love a book buy a physical copy.
I can find some pretty offensive things in books called The Bible, The Quran etc. I look foward to them being censored for outdated beliefs.
Agatha Christie novels have been reworked and had words removed for over 50+ years.
She’s written some popular novels, but that doesn’t mean that she wasn’t an awfully racist and antisemitic person.
This isn’t some sort of new woke agenda, it’s been happening since the 1940s.
I remember reading her book ‘and then there were none’. When I was done I googled it and the original title is outrageous. In general I’m against editing books to remove ‘offensive’ language but in some cases it is absolutely justified.
That Talking Pictures TV has a disclaimer on the screen that says something along the lines of contains language which may offend. Tbh though, if you’re wayching a channel with older films you should expect dated attitudes and language. Same with reading older books. It’s part of history and erasing evidence of past attitudes is not a good thing. It still happened and we should remember how badly people were treated in the past.
(Saying that though, characterising censorship and whitewashing of history as a “lefty/PC” phenomenon is not the full picture. Plenty of people across the poltical spectrum try to do this sort of thing- you only have to look at the outrage when someone suggests mentioning negative aspects of the British empire in classrooms).
This has happened ever since books have been published. The hobbit was changed when Tolkien wrote lord of the rings, changing gnomes into what are now the high elves.
Just more culture war bullshit.
Even if Christie’s books had words changed in the past, it was probably done by people who “cared” about the works, now it’ll be done by hacks or maybe just some kind of AI replace words with the new PC version.
Surely they can be left alone and if you don’t like it or feel offended you can just not read it? Editing stuff kind of washes away parts of history no? If somebody wants to study her and her works the words she uses are important to that, Jesus wept in GCSE English lit we were analysing full stops let alone word d
I remember when they did this with another book a month or 2 ago and everyone was acting like it was like The Ministry of Truth when the government had absolutely nothing to do with it since they cant since they A. Have no authority over privately owned text and B. Cant because of the Human Rights Act
Do they also remove potentially offensive actions like the murders ?
Might as well burn the old books and reprint them with “Correct language”
Horseshoe theory?!
Write to Harper Collins and let them know you will never buy these versions. They can be reached at [hello@harpercollins.com](mailto:hello@harpercollins.com)
Here’s what I just sent them. Use any words you wish, but make sure you tell them you’ll never buy these ersatz books.
Since you are now editing AC books to be less offensive, please know I will never ever buy those versions ever. I will buy used books forever, will borrow copies, will goto the library, or I will read something else. I will never buy these woke tepid re-writes.
One reason I read old books is precisely to learn what it was like then. How did people think 90 years ago in Britain? When I read the word “negro” for example, I celebrate that we have evolved past that vernacular and have in some ways matured. But when you people remove such words from books, you dumb us all down. Nothing becomes thought-provoking anymore, and you just pander to the weakest parts of society instead of building critical thinkers who can place books in context and learn from that.
Please continue to print original works, no matter what you decide about these abominable rewrites.
22 comments
Can we do the same with all the holy books, they are full of slavery, mass murder, taking people as war trophies, genocide and filled with ideas that can be used to oppress others.
We do this across the board or we stop editing history.
They need to do ‘Roots’ next.
The whole book is full of the most appalling and triggering racist tropes and terminology.
And how or why are the character groups so lacking in diversity? No trans characters, no characters of disability. The slave holding class appear to have been entirely whitewashed.
As if that wasn’t all bad enough, the protagonist is called ‘Kunte’!
This feels wrong to me…like erasing history
If we are censoring old books can we make suggestions? I mean, look at this filth I found in a church, in a book they leave lying around everywhere, that they teach to kids. TO KIDS!!
> Ezekiel 23:19 But she increased her prostitution, recalling the days of her youth when she had served as a prostitute in the land of Egypt.
> Ezekiel 23:20 She lusted for the lechers of Egypt, whose members are like those of donkeys, whose thrusts are like those of stallions.
> Ezekiel 23: 21 You reverted to the depravity of your youth, when Egyptians fondled your breasts, caressing your young nipples.
As a kid stuck with my grandmother stash of Christie books I was desperate to find offensive language in my reading, and mostly disappointed to find very little in her works. Not a single F bomb to be found!
Nostalgia is a hellava drug.
And that’s what this is. It’s so people can happily keep on enjoying and even lauding those people and works from the past without having to acknowledge that the past had some awful elements.
Similar to what has happened to sitcoms from the ’70s or ’80s having all those raslcist, sex is and homophobic jokes edited out. Then they can stick them up on UK gold or whatever it is now and old people can relive their younger days without having to confront how truly terrible our society, and by extension themselves as individuals, was back then.
I’m reminded of a reddit post from a whole ago. Some smaller/mid sized US company was having a staff away day thing with the theme of the antebellum south/ Gone with the Wind. The owners and upper management were all thinking of crinoline dresses, southern belles and dashing officers.
The one black employee they had turned up dressed in rags as a slave and suddenly the event was cancelled.
Guilt free nostalgia is what they want. I say if you want to enjoy Christie or James Bond or whatever then go and do so, but also accept that they are products of a less enlightened time.
They should consider rewriting the Bible to remove all the incest, rape, misogyny, murder, and weird bullshit…
But then there wouldn’t be much left to read to the kids at church
EDIT: Looks like someone beat me to the point
This sub clapped on when this first started. Own it.
Sometimes editing books for content can completely ruin the context and narrative of the novel. For example in “the bible” the censors cut a scene early in the new testament where a young Mary has a hot fling with a dashing (but non-commital) Roman soldier, gets pregnant, and hides it from her family, duping them into thinking it was some kind of miracle. This completely changed the genre of the book from a kind of romantic drama to magic realism and far fetched plotlines about virgin births.
So this is the new way publishers are getting attention and marketing books. It’s going to get boring quickly, in fact, I’m already bored of it.
This was done at the time of initial publication, to the standards of the time. And it was done again, multiple times, on republications.
Anyone who thinks they’re preserving the “original” doesn’t know how publication works.
This is far more insidious and evil than straight up banning or burning books whole and untouched.
What is the logical conclusion of this? All art censored? Statues with breasts made to wear bras?
I used to be all on the digital bandwagon but you cant trust the world to not change the art you love.
If you love a book buy a physical copy.
I can find some pretty offensive things in books called The Bible, The Quran etc. I look foward to them being censored for outdated beliefs.
Agatha Christie novels have been reworked and had words removed for over 50+ years.
She’s written some popular novels, but that doesn’t mean that she wasn’t an awfully racist and antisemitic person.
This isn’t some sort of new woke agenda, it’s been happening since the 1940s.
I remember reading her book ‘and then there were none’. When I was done I googled it and the original title is outrageous. In general I’m against editing books to remove ‘offensive’ language but in some cases it is absolutely justified.
That Talking Pictures TV has a disclaimer on the screen that says something along the lines of contains language which may offend. Tbh though, if you’re wayching a channel with older films you should expect dated attitudes and language. Same with reading older books. It’s part of history and erasing evidence of past attitudes is not a good thing. It still happened and we should remember how badly people were treated in the past.
(Saying that though, characterising censorship and whitewashing of history as a “lefty/PC” phenomenon is not the full picture. Plenty of people across the poltical spectrum try to do this sort of thing- you only have to look at the outrage when someone suggests mentioning negative aspects of the British empire in classrooms).
This has happened ever since books have been published. The hobbit was changed when Tolkien wrote lord of the rings, changing gnomes into what are now the high elves.
Just more culture war bullshit.
Even if Christie’s books had words changed in the past, it was probably done by people who “cared” about the works, now it’ll be done by hacks or maybe just some kind of AI replace words with the new PC version.
Surely they can be left alone and if you don’t like it or feel offended you can just not read it? Editing stuff kind of washes away parts of history no? If somebody wants to study her and her works the words she uses are important to that, Jesus wept in GCSE English lit we were analysing full stops let alone word d
I remember when they did this with another book a month or 2 ago and everyone was acting like it was like The Ministry of Truth when the government had absolutely nothing to do with it since they cant since they A. Have no authority over privately owned text and B. Cant because of the Human Rights Act
Do they also remove potentially offensive actions like the murders ?
Might as well burn the old books and reprint them with “Correct language”
Horseshoe theory?!
Write to Harper Collins and let them know you will never buy these versions. They can be reached at [hello@harpercollins.com](mailto:hello@harpercollins.com)
Here’s what I just sent them. Use any words you wish, but make sure you tell them you’ll never buy these ersatz books.
Since you are now editing AC books to be less offensive, please know I will never ever buy those versions ever. I will buy used books forever, will borrow copies, will goto the library, or I will read something else. I will never buy these woke tepid re-writes.
One reason I read old books is precisely to learn what it was like then. How did people think 90 years ago in Britain? When I read the word “negro” for example, I celebrate that we have evolved past that vernacular and have in some ways matured. But when you people remove such words from books, you dumb us all down. Nothing becomes thought-provoking anymore, and you just pander to the weakest parts of society instead of building critical thinkers who can place books in context and learn from that.
Please continue to print original works, no matter what you decide about these abominable rewrites.