Politically Correct Bullshit Alert!

[elfs]

From the New York Times:

In a newly revised edition of Goodnight Moon, a book which has lulled children to sleep for nearly 60 years, the publisher, HarperCollins, has digitally altered the photograph of Clement Hurd, the illustrator, to remove a cigarette from his hand.

Comments

Well...

[(Anonymous)]

at least they haven't revised Magritte's "Betrayal of Images" to be an empty picture...

Joshua Sasmor

Re: Well...

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

This is not a pipe: |

Re: Well...

[elfs.livejournal.com]

"And indeed, this is not a pipe. This is a painting of a pipe. Right? Well, actually that's wrong. This is not a painting of a pipe, this is a drawing of a painting of a pipe. N'est-ce pas? Nope, wrong again. It's a printed copy of a drawing of a painting of a pipe. Ten copies, actually. Six, if you fold back the pages. Do you hear what I've saying? If you do, have your ears checked, because no one said a word." (Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics)

And I've just reproduced a paragraph where McCloud discussing the implications of looking at printed copies of a drawing of a painting of a pipe. Oy, vey!

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Gah.

I remember back when I was a senior in high school when my English teacher brought in a newspaper article about how they were re-writing Peter Rabbit to make it "easier" for children. The rest of the class couldn't figure out why I and the teacher were so horrified.

[casualprofessor.livejournal.com]

I just sent the link to my spouse - she's a senior designer in HarperCollins children's dept. She hasn't mentioned this to me...

[casualprofessor.livejournal.com]

Apparently, the photo was passed down the chain of command at Harper with a yellow post-it note: "Delete cigarette". My spousal unit handed the photo to the retoucher, and then she placed the retouched photo in the mechanical, and passed it back up the chain of command.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Bleah. That's very sad.

[casualprofessor.livejournal.com]

Yup. It'll be an interesting topic after the kids are sent to bed...

[kengr]

Arthur C. Clarke predicted this *years* back. It was a minor plot/background element in one of his books (Ghost from the Grand Banks?)

He had them doing it to movies too.

[(Anonymous)]

And more recently, Connie Willis, Remake ....

Is that a walkie-talkie you're holding?

[(Anonymous)]

Is that a walkie-talkie you're holding?

Censorship in general...

[(Anonymous)]

According to the Wikipedia article about Fahrenheit 451, a 1967 version of the book was released without the words "damn" or "hell" so that the books could be distributed to schools. When Bradbury objected to censoring a book about censorship, the words were restored and an afterword was added with Bradbury's comments about "well-intentioned censorship."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

Ironic, eh?

Joshua Sasmor