A collection of 17 Roald Dahl’s works will be re-released untouched as part of the Roald Dahl classic collection. After a week of lively debate, the publishing company Puffin’s, the children’s imprint of Penguin, decided to amend Roald Dahl’s work to lighten language, words or phrases amended for a contemporary audience. The publisher listened to the dialog and discussion and has announced that the authors original books will be kept in print along with the new versions. Look, this latest controversy isn’t moral, it’s capitalistic. Let’s break this down.
The Dahl franchise is big business – worth a fortune to the Dahl estate and about to spin off into a series of big budget Netflix shows (in a deal worth big money to the family)
Sales of the books themselves have steadily declined. Parental memory and the wider franchise (films, shows etc) plays a bigger role in maintaining the brand. Publishers clearly projected this trend forwards.
The actual books (if you pick one up now) seem badly dated in terms of the various references. Also the nastiness of Dahl himself really stands out in a number of ways. Both in terms of some of the bigger plots and the descriptions of individuals etc
The huge deal with Netflix has clearly led Puffin (the publishers) and the Dahl estate (the copyright owners) to decide to republish ‘cash in’ editions tied to the series. A commercial decision has been taken to ‘update’ the books to make them more saleable. The edits (if you look at them) soften some descriptions which parents would typically self edit and switch references to make them more familiar to today’s audience. Minor edits of reissues is a very common practice amongst publishers for several decades. Many other children’s books have been similar.
Far from being made by ‘liberals’ the edits have been agreed by a deeply Conservative political organization (Dahl foundation) and a mainstream commercial publisher (puffin). The results (despite what is implied) are not edits substantive enough to do more than paper over the problems with the books. Dahl’s personal nastiness, racist and anti-semitic politics still shape many of the narratives in a way that is clear now but easier to miss when we were kids.
To any rational person the books should be left unedited and allowed to gradually fall from the public eye. Parents who read them as kids might retell them to their kids and self censor the worst bits. The issue for Puffin and the Dahl family is this kills their cash cow.
The debate then isn’t about Liberal censorship, it’s about commercial interests trying to patch up a ‘product’ to keep flogging it. Look, If there was a Grimm estate, I’m pretty sure they’d be pumping out sanitized books to cash in on the Disney movies. It’s not about a ‘woke war’ or cancel culture. It’s an attempt to enable a company to mass market books that have probably passed their sell by date.