In addition to the most bloodthirsty tyrants of the 20th Century, we now have enlightened Leftists, sensitive to harmful, racist images. Dr. Nel of Kansas State U. has clarified things for us. For example, when you “curate”, you aren’t really censoring or cancelling. No, it’s being woke and sensitive to those racist and bigoted images and words you see. God forbid, you should read something in this age of enlightenment that crosses the line.
An interview in that most modern and sensitive of left-wing garbage rags, Esq. magazine, explains it all for us unenlightened Proles. I remind the reader, that only 15% of the population is allowed to be members of the Party in Orwell’s 1984. The rest of us are Proles – serfs and slaves. And Big Brother, as told to us by Dr. Nel, is looking out for us by “curating” these harmful books from Dr. Seuss. Of course, Mein Kampf about Hitler’s plan to exterminate Jews and unlimited pornographic material is fine. Dr. Nel has no doubt “curated” many pornographic sites and found them acceptable. No need for any alterations there. Dr. Nel explains that “If I Ran the Zoo”, a Dr. Seuss book from the 50s where the animals all had slanted eyes to denote Oriental, is totally unacceptable. And of course, there were caricatures of African men. Cancelled. I feel better knowing that we will never have to endure these images again.
Dr Nel explains in the Esquire interview –
ESQ: Does this decision have precedent with other authors of children’s literature? I’m reminded of when the estate of Hergé pulled books like Tintin in the Congo.
PN: It absolutely has precedent. Dr. Dolittle, for example. You can get a bowdlerized edition of it, which is to say, an edition that’s been cleaned up. That term comes from Thomas Bowdler, who produced issues of Shakespeare that were suitable for the family. He cleaned up Shakespeare’s language, so the term to “bowdlerize” is to clean up a work by removing the “offensive bits.”
It’s a solution with problems, but it’s been a strategy that people have taken, both the estates of authors and authors themselves. Roald Dahl changed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which in 1964 had Oompa Loompas who were African Pygmies. From the 1973 edition forward, they are now white and from Loompa Land. It’s still Africa, but it’s not named as such. They are still an entire race of people who are glad to be shipped in crates to a factory where they live and work, and are paid literally in beans. It doesn’t actually erase the slavery colonialist narrative of the book. It makes it less obvious, given that they’re no longer Black, but it doesn’t change the fundamental assumptions of the book. In situations like this, the edits usually don’t work. The offensive bits are coded into the structure of the story.
In Orwell’s 1984, these works would no doubt be considered “thought crimes” and Dr. Seuss would be subject to re-education or perhaps even “evaporation” if he were still alive. But in the end, Newspeak is the goal. To eliminate all offensive words or thoughts to the point that everyone no longer needs to see anything that isn’t approved by Big Brother. Dr. Nel must be in the 2% of the Inner Circle. Thanks Dr. Nel for “curating” Dr. Seuss.
I suggest that Maria Callas, a Greek American superstar of the Opera World will definitely have to be cancelled for playing a Japanese female in Madame Butterfly. Sure it’s perhaps one of the greatest performances in Opera history by one of the greatest if not the greatest female Sopranos in our lifetime – no more Maria. Thanks Dr. Nel for setting us straight.
I expect Shakespeare and virtually all of our insensitive literature will be curated soon too. Hamlet will no longer be allowed to say:
“to be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.”
– Newspeak will reduce it to – “benotbe”. Much clearer. Less offensive. Much better than even Bowdler. Don’t you think?