Roald Dahl and now Ian Fleming. There’s a certain irony to that as the two men were friends, had both worked as spies in D.C., and Dahl took on the screenplay for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang after Fleming’s death. The resulting Dick Van Dyke movie feels a whole lot like Dahl and has little of Fleming in it.
And Fleming, like Dahl, is now a “property” of great worth to a massive global content cartel.
As I wrote in The End of Literature, “Netflix paid an estimated $686 million for the Roald Dahl Story Company. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which already has deals with Netflix and major studios, is considering its own total sale that would probably top $1 billion. Amazon paid $500 million for the rights to make The Rings of Power: a woke pastiche of Tolkien.”
Amazon also bought MGM and the James Bond movies with them. The Fleming Estate, which is responsible for this travesty, has tried to “keep” the novels alive by having other authors do a terrible job of writing their own Bond sequels. It’s hard to say this is even the worst thing they’ve done with them, but, like the case of Dahl, it subjects an author’s work to woke censorship after his death in a curiously selective way.
Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, the company that owns the literary rights to the author’s work, commissioned a review by sensitivity readers of the classic texts under its control.
The Telegraph understands that a disclaimer accompanying the reissued texts will read: “This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace.
“A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.”
The changes to Fleming’s books result in some depictions of black people being reworked or removed.
And it is just references to black people. Not stuff that would strike people more obviously today.
Dated references to other ethnicities remain, such as Bond’s racial terms for east Asian people and the spy’s disparaging views of Oddjob, Goldfinger’s Korean henchman.
References to the “sweet tang of rape”, “blithering women” failing to do a “man’s work”, and homosexuality being a “stubborn disability” also remain.
But they’re very careful to remove anything with a hint of negativity toward black people.
In the sensitivity reader-approved version of Live and Let Die, Bond’s assessment that would-be African criminals in the gold and diamond trades are “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much” becomes – “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”
Black people actually weirdly disappear.
In one example, some criminals escaping from Bond in Dr No become simply “gangsters”. In the same novel, the race of a doctor and an immigration officer now go unmentioned, as does that of a henchman shot by Bond.
The ethnicity of a barman in Thunderball is similarly omitted in new editions. In Quantum of Solace, a butler’s race now also goes unmentioned.
Detail is also removed from Goldfinger, where the race of the drivers in the Second World War logistics unit, the Red Ball Express – which had many black servicemen – is not mentioned, instead referring only to “ex-drivers”.
Whom does this help exactly?
Live and Let Die was a pretty terrible novel. And the blacksploitation angle, popular then, is dated as hell. But that was Fleming’s call to take out. Fleming died a decade after publishing it. There were objections and he had plenty of time to do what Dahl did with Willie Wonka and revise it. He chose not to do it. And the estate should just take things as they are. But the Bond novels, probably more than any other British fictional figure other than Sherlock Holmes, is a property to be pumped for maximum value and which has spawned numerous projects that Fleming would likely have disapproved of. Fleming was overrated as a writer, but he was still a whole lot better than whatever sensitivity experts are going over his work and more importantly, they are his work. Not anyone else’s work.
“Black people actually weirdly disappear.”
How are younger generations supposed to understand history?
Preventing them from understanding history is their goal!
Joseph Conrad’s remains are to be rocket transported outside the known universe.
You can safely avoid the diaphragm cramps associated with compulsive laughter by never perusing his Youth: A Narrative. Humor being, in general, a public health nusaince, this manuscript is a direct attack upon public solemnity.
The story seems like a nightmare voyage from the start, it’ll be interesting to see where the humor comes in. But I love stories of sailing ships, so it’s now on the list.
If you love naval lore and want a serious case of diaphragm cramps, R.Adm Daniel V. Gallery’s comedy novels will do it, though they are somewhat hard to find. “Now Hear This,” “Stand By-y-y-y to start engines,” “Cap’n Fatso,” and “Away Boarders,” will bring tears of laughter to your eyes.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” – George Orwell
How did Orwell know, how did he predict this was going to happen ?
Yeah… like the hollywood movies “predicting”, they aren’t really predictions, they’re usually problem and mitigation strategy, or justification for doing some plan another way. I did alot of damage helping people in the entertainment industry when I was younger…
Thats interesting. I have always found it eerie to find the introduction concepts in (fictional) shows/movies that then play out later in the news. At first i thought it was just the imagination of the writers. But, its become too specific to ignore. I guess Hollywood writers, who I assume are woke, get a memo of what to include.
The one that I am thinking of is the “ Corporate congress” US government in a SciFi series. And now we have woke corporations merged with government.
speaking of…
Several years ago I watched all of the available Bond Films on Netflix and Amazon. Great fun. Most were dated, especially the very early Connery films but who cares.
Don’t like the book revisions? Watch the films.
Hmm…Does the newly rewritten Goldfinger retain mention that he was a Jew? (Fleming, like Dahl, disliked them – they had that in common as well..) Since the new reworkings delete the identities of both blacks and Asians who are either villainous or possessing deficiencies in character or intelligence, is Goldfinger’s Jewish identity deleted as well? …Just curious.
I presume the Jewish stuff, like the Asian stuff, has been kept in. They deleted the black stuff.
Only certain kinds of bigotry are bad.
Fun fact, Fleming, who was a ridiculously petty guy, named Goldfinger after one of his neighbors who sued him over it.
There was no hint in the Sean Connery movie that Goldfinger was a Jew; those who had not read the book probably assumed that he was German or perhaps eastern European, as he was portrayed by the German actor Gert Fröbe.
Frobe was a former Nazi so that fit well.
Daniel – do you know if the term “,Chigro” was retained in the rewrites? Fleming used it in Dr. No, if memory serves, as a label for Jamaicans who were of mixed Chinese and black lineage. I don’t believe he coined the word – it may have been in use at the time (1950s-early 60s) by the Jamaican locals.
Considering it’s only half racist toward black people, sounds like a coin flip if they kept it or not.
Likely didn’t even recognize it.
First Roald Dahl, now Ian Fleming. Actually Dr. Seuss was first. No, wait, Mark Twain and Harper Lee were first. And so on and so forth.
Ridiculous! The authors were who they were and wrote what they wrote in the context of their time. There ought to be a bar on later copywrite owners changing it for any reason. I’m sure there are many paintings that depict scenes that might be offensive to today’s viewers. Should they be allowed to be altered by some hack to confirm to today’s fashion?
There ought, as I’ve written, be a ban on extending copyright past the life of the author.
JAMES bond had been a real person until he passed away he was Ornithlogists(Birds)and wrote book Birds of the West Indies
Would be better than the Fleming novels. As long as it wasn’t unexpurgated.
Weird that they would remove the reference to the famous and historic Red Ball Express. It was mostly black men, and they moved more material further and faster than anybody had before. The Germans didn’t believe it was possible, but they didn’t believe our production figures either.
I had a good 5th grade science teacher who lost a leg in an accident driving for it. He had a wooden leg and would slide it forward instead of stepping. My 6th grade math teacher (who also taught after school PE for 4th through 7th grade-let us box and didn’t get too mad when flag football turned to tackle as soon as his back was turned) was with the 1st ID from Torch to VE day, and he made sure we knew the story of the Red Ball Express.
I’ve noticed for a while that they’ve been changing Indian names and references to the point that they seem to be erasing them, but this is the first I’ve seen them doing it to black people. Leftists apparently only want the memory of victims, and they whitewash that, especially where Indians are concerned..