The Bowdlers Are Back!

    What to write, what to write? Well, it's been busy lately. While not really blog-worthy, my Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl...thank the gods (I was born there, you know); and as of this writing, my Boston Bruins are on a winning streak of historic proportions (I lived up there for 16 years, you know). But most importantly, I recently had the honor of getting together with some old friends. That was the best, and we'll get back to that in a couple of days. You are such an idiot! You haven't cheered for your Chiefs since Len Dawson was quarterback. And "your" Boston Bruins?! You wouldn't know a Blue Line from a clothes line! And I got a hundred that says you can't name one player on that team! I'll give you the get together, though. You've got great friends. Thanks, Sancho. They are the best. But, truth be told...I'm angry. Uh-oh.

    History lesson, kids! Back in the early 1800s, a woman by the name of Harriet Bowdler edited something called The Family Shakespeare. It was a version of the plays and poems in which anything remotely salacious was erased. Seriously...William Shakespeare's own words were deleted, expunged, thrown into the Thames...pick your euphemism. And just to prove that being a moron or a jackass is not relegated to one sex or the other, her brother, Thomas, did the same thing to Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Talk about a destructive twofer! For my younger readers who may not be familiar with Shakespeare or the Decline and Fall of Rome (and shame on you, if you're not), think of it this way: You sit back after dinner and you want to watch a couple episodes of The Sopranos. So you do your On-Demand, or your DVR, streaming, strumming...whatever the hell it is. The show starts with the iconic opening as Tony drives from NYC, through Newark and finally to his palatial estate way out in the north Jersey 'burbs. But wait a minute...where's the song? That bass-thumping, growling vocal, let's get it on song that might just be the greatest TV show-opener, EVER! That would be Alabama 3, kids; Woke Up This Morning. (Download that song NOW!) But no, instead you get Jiminy Cricket singing High Hopes! You say to yourself, "WTF???!!!" And now, thinking you've been punk'd (pretty hip, huh?), you watch the episode and realize that all of the profanity, the sex, the scenes at the Bada-Bing, and the murders have been deleted. Go ahead, call your state rep. That's what I'd do! Anyway...that's the equivalent to what the Bowdler siblings did to those great pieces of literature.

    The above story of the Bowdler siblings is not only true, but gave us a delightful new verb: to bowdlerize, which, as I mentioned above, is the removal of supposedly offensive language from a literary work, thereby weakening it and reducing its impact. When you learn about the Bowdler siblings and others like them, the first urge is to just laugh and make fun of them; their prudishness and prissiness. You would think that since we're a little more mature now in the 21st century, we would be past this need to bowdlerize. Guess not. This desire to destroy seems to spring eternal.

    Let me introduce you, dear reader, to Roald Dahl. I have no doubt that most of you are familiar with Mr. Dahl's oeuvre. He's the man who gave us some of the most wonderful children's literature ever written: Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, BFG, Witches, James and the Giant Peach, and so many others. His books are funny, dark, wonderful, and have sold over 250 million copies worldwide. They allow children, who are necessarily dominated by adults and are required by adults to control their impulses, to delightfully see adults in all their hideousness and dopiness, both physical and moral. Unfortunately, all of that has come to an end.

    These days, it's easy to let the thoughtlessness, infantilism, dare I say, the philistinism of the woke mind to just wash over. I mean, you can't fight every single episode. It's not that these battles are unimportant, it's just that they are so ubiquitous. And sometimes the mind loses its capacity for outrage. We're just not surprised anymore. But every now and again, the self-imposed authoritarians cross a line that just screams "STUPID"! And I hate STUPID! Dahl's publisher, a company called Puffin, has decreed and already made hundreds of changes to his books that range from the aforementioned stupid, to utter insanity. The text has been cleansed, BOWDLERIZED, as it were, of words that an in-house group of sensitivity-readers deem harmful to the seemingly growing number of brittle flowers among us. Puffin says these changes need to be made so Dahl's books "can continue to be enjoyed by all today." The hubris, the cultural vandalism, is stunning. Mrs. Bowdler, meet Josef Stalin.

    So what's changed, you might ask? The list is endless but I'll keep it to some highlights. Descriptive words like "fat" and "ugly" are gone, because some people are, I guess, fat and, like me, ugly. I had no idea it was a publisher's job to prevent the discomfort of some readers. The Oompa-Loompas are no longer "titchy" or "tiny." They're just "small" now. "Small men" is now "small people." Everything is gender-neutral. No more "mother" and "father", just "folks." Can't have "mothers" and "fathers" because some kids now have two moms or two dads or more often than not, no dad. Think of the distress the poor kids will feel if they read the words "fathers" and "mothers." Really?

    But the most hideous thing is that whole sentences and paragraphs have been rewritten by these troglodytes! In The Witches, a line describing a witch posing as a "cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman" now casts her as an aspirational girl boss, "working as a top scientist or running a business." And not to be outdone, the line "Maybe that will brighten up those horrid brown teeth of hers" is now "Maybe that will brighten up her smile," to avoid the dreadful sin of aesthetic preference. There's even a dedication in one of the books to all doctors...which Dahl never made! Really? Are you effing kidding me?! You don't like the story-line of a classic piece of literature, you small-minded prick? Write your own goddamn story! Sorry, Mom.

    Can you imagine if these nitwits get a hold of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass? Does the White Rabbit become the Cross-Breed Rabbit? I can't imagine the White Queen being long for the literary world, as she will no doubt be seen as representative of some type of colonialism, racism, genderism, royalism, classism and some -isms I can't even think of. The Mad Hatter? Surely, now the Neurodiverse Hatter! I read where one critic mused that "Off with his head" would become "Give him community service!" 

    We've been down this road before; this politically correct takeover of children's literature. Propaganda has triumphed over creativity. These people have no idea what metaphor is, let alone what literature is supposed to do. Their insistence on literalism has been a blot on humanity for 5,000 years and it shows no sign of receding. Remember that it was only two years ago that a number of Dr. Seuss books were shamefully cancelled and tossed into the dustbin of history. More will follow. But think about it. Cancelling someone or something is one thing. It's stupid, infantile and shows a lack of maturity. Rewriting/editing/deleting is something far more hideous. You are literally changing a writer's work! And in this instance, Dahl, who died in 1990, is not even around to defend himself. It's like painting a hat or a moustache on the Mona Lisa because some moron said it would be more presentable! For the love of Harold Bloom, just stop! Deep breath, Peter. Deep breath. 

    These cultural times we live in are infantile ones. Speech, culture, the written word, and even history are all censored or rewritten in one way or another so that the brittle spirits of tiny minds, who have no idea what they are destroying, can feel better about themselves. We desperately need to push back against this new philistinism; against this vandalism posing as progress.

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com