A blockchain solution to Roald Dahl censorship
Are you upset by words like “fat”, “ugly” or “crazy”? Well, take solace in the fact that your cultural betters are already scrubbing them from popular works of literature. As Telegraph reported, new editions of beloved children’s author Roald Dahl include a notice explaining that “This book was written many years ago, so we regularly review the language to ensure it can still be enjoyed by everyone today.”
It turns out that the good censors at publisher Puffin, along with the Roald Dahl estate and an outfit called “Inclusive Minds”, have replaced or deleted hundreds of words from at least 10 books, including Matilda and James and the Giant Peach. Specific changes include Oompa Loompas i Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to become “small people” instead of “small men” and a farmer i Fantastic Mr. Fox goes from “Bunce, the little pot-bellied dwarf” to just Bunce.
Where should I start? As is the case with many bad ideas, the Dahl censors justify their actions by invoking a need to protect the children. But whatever marginal benefits this may achieve in achieving “inclusion”, they are grossly outweighed by this outrageous act of cultural and literary vandalism.
The censorship is an affront to the artistic integrity of Dahl and all writers who should suffer the indignation of having their work desecrated by a cabal of publishing bureaucrats. And even if you’re indifferent to the fate of Dahl — who was a nasty man in some ways — there’s a bigger problem with how far all this will go. It is hard to imagine that the “Inclusive Minds” vandals would like to stop at Dahl. No doubt they already have ideas on how to improve other books, lyrics and paintings.
If you’re somehow unconcerned about all of this as long as it’s progressive, take a moment to think about how this idea of ”reviewing the language” of children’s books could play into the hands of conservative activists eager to remove any mention of gay or trans. themes from the school libraries. There’s a reason why the head of the literary freedom group PEN America just described Dahl-style selective editing as a “dangerous new weapon.”
So what to do about this? I came across an intriguing potential answer while scrolling through Crypto Twitter, which is one of many forums sounding the alarm about the Dahl censorship. Namely lawyer Preston Byrne proposed that authors should add a cryptographic hash to the cover of their books. Such a hash would not prevent censorship, but it would give readers a means of verifying that subsequent editions of a book did not tamper with the author’s original text—a useful tool given that the censor’s impulse is to pretend that their version of a document is the correct one and only.
As a writer myself, I hope it doesn’t come to this. I would much prefer Puffin to come to his senses and retract his decision to “review the language” of popular literature. But if this dangerous idea starts to spread, I would urge authors everywhere to protect the future integrity of their work with a hash stored on a blockchain.
Jeff John Roberts
[email protected]
@jeffjohnroberts
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