TAKING THE DIRT OUT OF DAHL

PUBLISHERS PREACH MORALITY IN TROUBLED TIMES

Millais’ Ophelia.

Coming from Australia, whose history of censorship is long and unenviable, I read with resigned equanimity that Penguin Books had decided to bowdlerize the work of Roald Dahl. (Thomas Bowdler was the British physician who produced an edition of Shakespeare with all the "damns" and "Jesu"s removed, as well as such "indelicacies" as Ophelia killing herself; instead, she drowns by accident. His Family Shakespeare is long out of print, but his name lives on, as FDR might have said, "in infamy".)

Australia, as I said, is in no position to throw stones. There isn't much that hasn't been banned there, from King Kong and Dracula to the Communist Manifesto and the works of Sigmund Freud. James Baldwin's Another Country, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint all fell foul of its Indecent Publications Act.  Films were routinely shorn of objectionable images and books trimmed to create "Australian Editions". The reference in Harold Robbins' pot-boiler The Carpetbaggers to a prostitute "who shaved her pussy" was reduced to "who shaved", evoking images of bearded ladies or worse, while in the film of John O'Hara's Butterfield 8, Elizabeth Taylor was permitted to mention being molested as a child but not that she enjoyed it

Elizabeth Taylor not enjoying herself in Butterfield 8.

Ironically, one of the pioneering activists against censorship was Penguin Books' founder Allan Lane, who invited prosecution by publishing the first unbowdlerized Lady Chatterley's Lover. In marked contrast, the current management, eager to have its cake and eat it, pusillanimously agreed to issue censored versions of Dahl's books but leave his originals in print as a Classics edition,  à la Classic Coke.  Could they have justified such a decision if they really believed the books damaged impressionable readers?

            An American academic press recently invited me to write a biography of the actress Catherine Deneuve but warned it would look with disapproval on anything that stressed the sexual element of her performances. As Deneuve without Belle de Jour and Hustle and The Hunger is not only Hamlet without the ghost but absent a large portion of her career, I declined

Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour.

I'd already clashed with the University of Kentucky Press over the use of such terms as "gypsy" and "coolie" in my Charles Boyer biography. Neither was my usage - they appear in his films - but this cut no ice on the moral heights of the Bluegrass State. Its interference went even deeper. To take an almost random sample, in an early chapter,  I wrote:

 "When the midwife put him into her arms, she noticed first his eyes. Dark, and slightly slanted, they didn’t resemble those of his father, but belonged, she said, to 'a stranger'. Along with his baritone voice, the eyes of Charles Boyer would prove his most seductive characteristic. Women in particular, intrigued by their almost Asiatic inscrutability, would find themselves held by his gaze."

Without any consultation, the editors altered this as follows:

" When the midwife put him in her arms, she noticed his eyes first. Dark and slightly slanted, they didn’t resemble those of his father but belonged, she said, to a “stranger.” Along with his baritone voice, his eyes would prove to be Boyer’s most seductive characteristic. Women in particular would find themselves captivated by his gaze."

I don't see the point of changing "she first noticed his eyes" to "she noticed his eyes first." Apparently, as certain British civil servants used to explain, "There's no particular reason for it. It's just our policy." More pernicious is the removal of "Asiatic inscrutability".  Boyer was actually cast in certain roles because of this quality. He owed his early success to playing a Japanese on both screen and stage. To remove the reference falsifies the text. But that's of little concern to these self-appointed censors in their search for the bland middle road of universal acceptability.  

 Charles Boyer in The Battle.

The same presses are now attempting to apply new "woke" standards to books already in print, removing any "trigger terms” before reprinting. Fortunately some writers have dug in their heels, refusing to let them thus retroactively censor their work, but it’s only a matter of time before those algorithms that automatically impose rules of grammar and spelling will remove racial and sexual terms as well.

Let me suggest an alternative. In the Hollywood of former times, one could elect to ignore the self-censorship provisions of the Production Code and use a word or phrase deemed "unsuitable" but pay a fine for doing so. Thus David Selznick decided Rhett Butler should, at the end of Gone With the Wind, say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," and expend $5000 to let him do so.

As it happens, he didn't need to, since the Code changed a few months before - but, as isn't quite said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - another of those venerable Hollywood inaccuracies - "When truth and legend conflict, print the legend." But there's nothing wrong with the principle. And it follows exactly the morality of Penguin's dual edition strategy in the Dahl case. Publish the objectionable term or text - but pay for the privilege! After all it's not as if any principle was involved. 

And think of the savings on employing so-called "Intimacy Advisers" and buying copy-editing software. No need to retitle Carl van Vechten's 1926 novel of Harlem life Rude Term for African Americans' Heaven or change John Ford's 1633 play to 'Tis Pity She's a Sex Worker. Just use the original but pay for the privilege. Contributions to the fund - I suggest the term "Penguin Payment" or perhaps "Bowdler Bounty" - could go towards research into further ways of outraging public perceptions - the better, of course, to recognize these tendencies when they appeared in the future. A few more liberal publishers would protest, but frankly, my dear, I don’t give a (expletive deleted).