Liberal censorship takes on children’s classics in the UK

The British are furious over the rewriting of Roald Dahl’s books, which was arranged to eliminate such “terrible” words as “fat” from the works that have become classics of British literature.

As the Daily Mail writes, angry Britons have criticized the attempts of the guru of the so-called Woke culture to rewrite and censor Roald Dahl’s favorite children’s books, removing “offensive” language from them.

The Puffin publishing house decided to rewrite fragments of the author’s texts to make sure that the books “can be used by everyone today”, which led to significant changes in all of Dahl’s work.

Significant changes have been made to character descriptions – the new editions no longer use the word “fat” that was cut from every book, and even Roald Dahl’s fictional Oompa Loompa pygmy tribe from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now gender neutral.

But the move sparked outrage, with 98 percent of MailOnline readers demanding that the best-selling author’s works be kept in their original form.

British parents have said they will boycott the revamped novels as the changes have been called “absolutely insane”.

Significant changes have been made to Roald Dahl’s works, including the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being gender-neutral.

The word “fat” has been omitted from all of Dahl’s books, and Augustus Gloop is now described only as “huge”.

“I find the whole thing downright appalling and shudder at the thought that there are enough people in the profession who support this,” wrote one user on the popular parenting forum Mumsnet. – Write your own books and leave other books alone. If you’re so easily offended, then stay at home wrapped in bubble wrap.”

One parent was furious: “This is absolute madness. These are children’s books that have been loved for decades. I won’t be buying new versions for my two little ones… Seriously, what will they aim for next? To Shakespeare?

Another user wrote: “I seriously hope no one buys this!” while another added: “They removed ‘crazy’ but not ‘nutty’… Seems random. Too early or later, someone with crooked teeth will complain and they’ll have to do another reprint.”

One person wondered why the word “fat” was removed to describe Augustus Gloop from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”: “If they were seriously concerned about shaming a fat man, they could have removed any mention of Gloop’s size and just portrayed him as a greedy character, providing the reader’s imagination of what it looked like. You don’t have to be obese to be stuck in a glass tube.”

The comments were echoed by the former child actor who played Augustus Gloop in the original Willy Wonka movie, who insisted there was “nothing harmful” about the character’s description. Now child star Michael Bellner from the original 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has come to the defense of the author. The German actor played the voracious boy Augustus Gloop, who leaves the film after falling into a chocolate river at Wonka’s factory. He said, “I don’t think the chocolate factory story was politically incorrect at all.”

“Here in Bavaria, we’re used to people playing a little joke on us, and we’re kind of very well known for loving all of our traditional cuisine, and that’s okay,” the actor says. – It’s really wonderful. So I don’t feel like it was violent or politically incorrect or anything like that.”

Even Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke out against attempts to remake Dahl’s books. A spokesman for the prime minister said it was “important” that literary works be “preserved and not airbrushed,” citing the “right to freedom of speech and expression.”

Noted writer Sir Salman Rushdie also called these actions “absurd censorship”. It is also reported that references to the colors “black” and “white” have been removed.

Here are some of the changes that have been made to the works of Rroald Dahl.

The 2001 edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory states: “Mrs. Salt was a huge fat creature with short legs and she breathed like a rhinoceros.” Today it looks like this: “Mrs. Salt was so out of breath that she breathed like a rhinoceros.”

In another piece, “Mrs. Tweet may have been ugly and disgusting, but she wasn’t stupid” was replaced with “Mrs. Tweet might have been nasty, but she wasn’t stupid.”

In the book Matilda, the original version said, “Call your mother or father.” But now it sounds gender-neutral: “Gather your family.”

Another book replaced “little boys and girls” with “little children”.

The work “Fantastic Mr. Fox” was also altered – in the 2001 edition, the text looked like this: “Bance, a small pot-bellied dwarf, looked up at Bean …”. Nowadays, the author’s text has been emasculated to: “Bance looked up at Bean …”

“They looked like a pair of hunters who had just shot an elephant,” wrote Roald Dahl in James and the Giant Peach. But censorship corrected his words: “They looked like a pair of hunters who had just shot their prey.” Probably so that the elephants are not offended.

Hundreds of changes were made to the original text, writes the Daily Mail, eliminating Dahl’s colorful and memorable descriptions, making his bright characters less grotesque.

Even the Oompa-Loompas who were once “little men” are now “little people”.

In a word, the scope is open – and there is nothing sacred left for politically correct censors. Who will be next? Shakespeare? Defoe? Jane Austen? Or Charles Dickens? The field for experiments is huge.