You can't even say fat anymore! From so much protecting children we are going to turn them into idiots! We are gripped by censorship woke! The matter of the revisions to the work of Roald Dahl has everything to remain for years as the supreme example of how culture deteriorates when one tries to cauterize it with the morality of the moment. Authors such as Salman Rushdie have already pointed out the changes in the author's books, which The Daily Telegraph advanced, as what they are, unnecessary stupidity. And that most are minimal. “Her hers father was a farmer” will become “His parents were farmers” and “Mom is as stupid as you” will become “Mom and Dad are as stupid as you”. In the same newspaper there has been talk of a "neurotic elite" that "massacres freedom", and perhaps they are right, but they are pointing to the wrong neurotic elite. No one required Netflix, current owner of the rights to Roald Dahl's 16 children's books, to edit those texts or to hire the famous "sensitive readers" that everyone points to as the authors of the changes. According to what the British newspapers have published, the book review process began in 2020, a few months before the sale of the rights that The Hollywood Reporter estimated at a billion dollars, that is, a billion dollars or about 936,000 million. of euros. That same year a new film version of The Witches was released, directed by Robert Zemeckis. The reviews were mediocre. The film has a 49% critical approval and 36% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film generated a controversy, not very noisy. Several activists called the film ableist (discriminatory against people with disabilities) because witches have only three fingers. Some Paralympic athletes started a campaign about it with the hashtag
In exchange for those billion dollars, the platform reserved the right to develop a "universe of animation and live action, in film and television, publications, games, immersive experiences, live theater, consumer products and more." In other words, they are the owners of Matilda, the fantastic Super Fox, James and his giant peach, Jorge and his wonderful medicine, and from the moment of signing on, the only versions and reinterpretations of those classics will be the ones that Netflix and Dahl's heirs, led by one of his grandsons, Luke Kelly, consented, who ensured in the contract to maintain their autonomy within the conglomerate.
While waiting for the premiere of Charlie... directed by Taika Waititi, the most notorious thing that Netflix has released after the signing is the adaptation of the Matilda musical. And there are not too many changes from the original. The girl's parents are still evil; Principal Trunchbull, a sadistic character. Racial diversity was introduced to the cast, with Afro-British Lashana Lynch playing the lovely Miss Honey and expanding the role of the librarian Phelps, played by Indian actress Sindhu Vee.
The other reason this reaction to corrections is somewhat overacted is that libraries and bookstores have been filled with abridged, modified, and simplified versions of the classics, from Shakespeare on down, for centuries. And the children and tweens who will now read Dahl, corrected or in the original version, will hopefully arrive in a reading world dominated by Wattpad, the huge community of amateur readers and writers (until they stop being amateurs, because they are signed up by a publishing house). ) in which stories and characters created by others are chopped up, remixed, hybridized, and enjoyed. If we tell them that International PEN and the writers of forums around the world are outraged that "enormously fat" has been changed to "pretty big" they would find it, at least, as strange as a giant peach.
