https://www.abc.net.au/btn/high/literary-changes/102064324
In order to see how the topic of censorship is being
introduced to and discussed with young people, I watched a Behind the News
(BTN) High video entitled ‘Literary Changes’, which discusses aspects of the censorship
debate as it relates to the changing of some words and phrases in popular, but
ageing books including James Bond novels and titles by Roald Dahl.
The focus of this video were the changes made to certain
books including the use of negative racial stereotypes in Ian Fleming’s Live
and Let Die, along with the removal of some negative physical descriptors
of characters in some of Roald Dahl’s works, for example, the words ‘fat’ and
‘ugly’, however, other descriptive terms such as ‘beastly’ were left in. The
other change to the Roald Dahl works outlined was to use gender neutral terms,
with the example given of ‘cloud men’ being changed to ‘cloud people’.
The debate, of course, is whether this is a series of
sensible changes that better reflect who we are as a society considering our
general growth in acceptance and inclusion, or whether these changes are a form
of censorship.
Dr Michelle Smith of Monash University is featured
throughout the video to give some opinions on the changes and speak about the
issue, stating that the desire for making these edits to older books comes from
wanting to ensure that children don’t read the books and assume that the morals
and values espoused within are accurate since these values are no longer the
standard.
The video’s presenter, Cale Matthews, goes on to state that
the James Bond titles were changed very little, with sexist and
homophobic language remaining in and only the racial stereotypes removed. Cale
states that this is because of the presumed need to protect children as stated
previously by Dr Smith, whereas content for adults is seen to be less of a
threat.
Dr Smith expresses that we should give children credit as
readers, however, to evaluate materials and understand different time periods
and how things were different then to how they are today. Dr Smith also states
that it can be difficult to teach children about issues such as misogyny and
racism if they can’t explore it in a safe way through reading books and
understanding what those things actually looked like in the past.
As a resource intended for a teenage audience, this video is
quite a successful look at censorship. Obviously, the issues surrounding this
go much deeper than making changes to ageing children’s reading materials, but
this is a good starting point to get young people looking at censorship from a
different perspective. This video introduces the idea that society doesn’t need
to protect children and that exposing them to the ways in which society
differed in the past, can open a dialogue to better understand these issues.
The video uses language which is easy to understand and
discusses the topic while giving both sides of the debate as to whether these
changes should be considered ‘sensible or censorship’. The presenter seems
knowledgeable on the topic and introduces an expert in literary studies to
speak and give their opinion. Also features are some opinions from teens, which
is always nice to see in a resource intended for teens. The video is also set
out in a similar way to many YouTube videos, with background music, voiceover
elements, whiteboard style editing and even clips taken from Netflix’s
adaptation of Matilda at one point. This is attention catching and seems
to target the teen audience by using a format that they’re likely familiar
with.
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