[ SECRET POST #3336 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3336 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


__________________________________________________



11.

















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 059 secrets from Secret Submission Post #477.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's a question of who's reading it and for what purpose. At the end of the day, if it's an edition that someone is buying to read with their kid, I can't begrudge removing the racist elements from it (or any other work). That's a very different context than studying it as a work of literature, obviously.

[nonnymouscawitz]

See, I'd rather buy an uncensored version so that I could talk to my kid about censorship and racism. You don't have to be studying something to want to keep cultural and historical context in place. And then, of course, you don't have your kid going 'Oh, mom/dad read that book with me' and picking it up and being so surprised at how different it is.

[(Anonymous)]

I think that's also a valid choice.

[kallanda_lee]

I very much agree.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree. I love The Secret Garden, but I freely admit that it has problematic aspects. It's something I keep wishing people would get: you can enjoy a work, even if it has problematic aspects, without you, yourself, endorsing said problematic aspects. And pointing out that something has problematic aspects is not the same as saying, "You are stupid for liking this and this story should be banned forever and launched into the sun so no one else can read it!"

But there's a reason I stay the hell out of discussions on the Internet.

[(Anonymous)]

I think if a kid is old enough to enjoy a story like The Secret Garden, then they're likely old enough to grasp the very basics of racism. You don't have to go into big lecture on colonialism and the history of India, it's enough to say that some people look down on other people because of the color of their skin.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm saying, I don't have a problem with leaving it up to parents when and how they want to have that conversation.

[(Anonymous)]

Well sure, but I don't think parental control over when to have that discussion should extend to having editions that edit out the racist bits. That's shifting the control to publishers rather than parents. If you're a parent who doesn't want to have the racism talk just yet, there are plenty of other books you can read with your child, or you can skip over the bits in question if you're reading the book to your child.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not shifting the control to publishers. Parents can still choose to buy unexpurgated editions. It's not like we're talking about banning the thing quickly. It's no different than selling an abridged edition of something.

[(Anonymous)]

We'll have to agree to disagree. I have problems with altering the source material for reasons of censoring out objectionable material. There is currently a huge problem in the U.S. public school system because conservative states like Texas are heavily influencing publishers to write textbooks that conveniently leave out the topic of slavery in the U.S., instead portraying black people as happy workers who enjoyed serving the white bosses.

I'd like to believe that the parents who choose to avoid these topics are only protecting their children until they're mature enough to handle the discussion, but I don't think that's what is actually happening. I think what's happening is that parents are choosing to keep their children ignorant because it's easier and more comfortable than having tough discussions about race and history, discussions that are extremely relevant in modern times. I think we're getting a whole new generation of poorly educated people with no clue about their own country's troubled history, because all the troublesome bits have been sanitized.

I do not like this at all.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt, but I agree. Censorship can sound good when you're theoretically the objective person who's deciding which objectionable material to excise. However, when someone else is in charge, that might mean that they might want to censor around religious issues, women's issues, etc., and all of a sudden the idea doesn't seem so palatable.

Look around the world to see how censorship is applied in other countries to see the many different yardsticks that are used to determine "objectionable".

[(Anonymous)]

A friend has an interesting experience when he got a library copy of A Separate Peace when his class was short on school copies. So when he's reading along and gets to the not-very-subtext homosexual parts the rest of the class goes "huh?"

The school copies had carefully censored out all the homosexual subtext.

[(Anonymous)]

This. Arguing censorship of "bad" parts in a work of fiction is a non starter for me. I'm not happy with the idea that publishers would decide what parts are too objectionable for me (or my child) to read, even if there is an uncensored text available. I just think it's a bad path to go down. I want the text as it is, and I'll decide for myself.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly. The problem with publishers (or the government) or someone deciding which parts are objectionable is that they could just as soon decide anything they just happen to disagree with is now objectionable. Then that version become the one used in school, or it is cheaper, or whatever, and most people doesn't know there is another version or can't get their hands on it.

That is aside from the fact that cleaning literature and anything else of things we now find objectionable also means not learning about history, and possibly forgetting about bad things that happened to people in the past because it is not even mentioned.

Like how many young Japanese now doesn't understand why people in China or Korea would hate them for what they did during WW2, because the Japanese school books have been editing out that part.

[(Anonymous)]

As a parent, I agree with you. It's much better to have an unedited book that you can discuss with your kid than a whitewashed, bowdlerized lie. People that want to teach lies to their kids do no one any favours. It's how we get idiots like the current crop of Republican hopefuls for the presidency.

[(Anonymous)]

Read a different book, then? Read this one when your child is ready for it.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't see any intrinsic virtue in that approach.

[(Anonymous)]

Fine, patronise your kid by giving them a heavily edited book that doesn't reflect the author's intentions.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not a moral call. Parents can and should be assessing what media their kids consume regardless, for many reasons. That's why you don't find many moms and dads trying to get their toddler to read War and Peace. It's why you don't buy your teenager Pat the Bunny. Figuring out what material is age and reading level appropriate for your kid is part of good parenting. Isn't that enough of an intrinsic virtue for you?

[(Anonymous)]

Buy a different book and save this one for when they're ready to read it.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

I once read the original version of an Agatha Christie novel, and if I regularly encountered that much racism and antisemitism in her work, I couldn't keep reading her. It just wouldn't be enjoyable enough to be worth it for me. And since, as you say, I'm not studying her work--I'm just trying to read a fun murder mystery--I'm really quite happy that the modern editions of Christie's works have been Bowdlerized.