Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are the latest to be mutilated by ‘sensitivity readers’ who are apparently both shaken and stirred by just about everything.
Some of the changes are for racial language that, while I am a free speech absolutist who would leave everything in, might not be the hill to die on. However, other edits are unforgivable, with the moronic censorship teams reducing Fleming’s descriptive flair to generic, sixth form level prose. As the Telegraph reveals:
Another altered scene features Bond visiting Harlem in New York, where a salacious strip tease at a nightclub makes the male crowd, including 007, increasingly agitated.
The original passage read: “Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.”
The revised section replaces the pigs reference with: “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.”
In another vaguely infuriating example:
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.”
I’m not certain here if the offence is drinking itself, which is roughly 25% of what the Bond series is about, or if it’s that African criminals can’t be seen to do anything bad. Apart from being criminals, obvs.
Some of the changes in racial language were apparently authorised by Fleming himself, but I assume he would shudder at efforts like “The electric tension in the room”. This is, of course, the problem with employing sensitivity readers – apart from it being a pathetic, authoritarian, philistine idea – where do you stop?
Does Bond’s name have to be so white sounding? Isn’t it irresponsible to be so promiscuous? Couldn’t he cut down his alcohol intake to the recommended 14 units a week? While we’re here, does he have to be a spy? Doesn’t seem a particularly honest occupation.
In an ideal world Bond would be a sober woman of colour who runs a successful tech startup. While obviously ‘retaining the original spirit’ of the author’s classic works.
I jest, but the idea is probably being pitched to Netflix as we speak. Markle is the obvious choice for the lead.
Like so many woke innovations, sensitivity readers are remarkably unpopular. The appalling desecration of Roald Dahl’s works united the culture in outrage (okay, except Billy Bragg) and forced Penguin to offer a separate run of the real Dahl texts alongside the ruined versions.
Yet there are still no signs of the sensitivity reader phenomenon ending any time soon, and it’s not clear how we might go about achieving its demise. There are only so many times Camilla can intervene.
Anyway, I can’t solve it right now. I’m in the middle of an eBay bidding war for the racist version of Live and Let Die. The tension is electric.
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I wonder what the woke publishers would do with a JG Ballard!
What happens when established authors start dropping the publishers who are pushing the sensitivity readers?
Judging by Brandon Sanderson’s huge self-publishing success last year, I wonder if we’ll see more self-publishing happen and more authors setting up their own niche publishing houses. Certainly authors such as Lawrence Block and Walter John Williams seem happy to self-publish via Amazon.
Surely a sober trans woman of colour, Nick?
But it would seem it is OK for him to continue killing villains without trial.
No, of course he will have his “licence to kill” revoked and replaced with a permit to carry an unloaded water pistol as a deterrent.
What happened to “Copyright”? Or look why not just have Jane Bond, a black lesbian in a wheelchair who might be a spy but we are not really sure. Lets call it “Doctor Maybe”
I’m collecting DVDs of unwoke classic films which the Wokesters would love to ban …
Amongst others, I’ve recently picked up Gone With The Wind; Casablanca and a rare copy of Disney’s now banned Song of the South, which contains a couple of animated Brer Rabbit stories.
As for books, the original unadulterated versions are generally available in second-hand bookshops and charity shops which is where I now mostly buy my books. If that means the publishing companies lose sales it’s their fault, not mine. Go woke ….. go broke.
For me the James Bond franchise died with the last Daniel Craig film when they killed Bond. Goodness knows what they’ll become…new films are likely to be sanitised and full of diversity, inclusion and equality (DIE). So we’ll end up with remakes along the lines of:
Dr Non-binary
Thunderbush
On Their Majesty’s Secret Service
Live And Let D.I.E.
Them With The Golden Gun
The Spy Who Loved Men
Licence To Kiss
The Woke Is Not Enough
“Some of the changes are for racial language that, while I am a free speech absolutist who would leave everything in, might not be the hill to die on.”
I think you’ve got to choose to die on that first hill or you will be fighting on the back foot and eventually be defeated. “Racial language” is one of the places we started (also “anti-racism” and “racial equality”) and look where we are now.
What this brings into focus is that the Woke are just talentless, living out some charade where they have some literary relevance. They don’t. Not one of them could write anything that would hold a candle to Flemming or Dahl, so they butt in where they aren’t wanted with their ‘corrections’. My challenge to the woke, is write something, something good that will superceed the literature that you seek to destroy. Then we will happily let it go into the mists of time. All you are leaving us with is the husk of good literature, the Diet Coke of good literature. We dont want you to show us what not to do. Any fool can do that. We want you to show us how to do it better..
Indeed. But they don’t want free and open debate and competition, only to suppress what they don’t like. Too many white people in films? The answer is make your own films with your own people. But no, they want everyone’s films to focus on things and people that they are interested in, with the right quotas of groups they feel should be (over) represented.
Is Bond allowed? Slavery, bonds, bondage…
‘While we’re here, does he have to be a spy? Doesn’t seem a particularly honest occupation.
In an ideal world Bond would be a sober woman of colour who runs a successful tech startup”
Ha-ha, excellent stuff!
Anyway ‘sensitivity readers’ (wonderfully Orwellian title) better watch out that they don’t become the targets of BLM etc for removing their referenced excuses to froth furiously about the long dead attitudes of long dead people – then extropolate them onto the living.
This is all just Taliban statue destroying and Nazi book-burning in a slightly different form.
Utter, inexcusable vandalism of the work of others for bigoted and totalitarian ideological purposes
Historical artefacts if all kinds should of course be left fully intact and those looking at them allowed to make their own minds up about any moral issues raised.
The Free Speech Union needs to campaign about this. There can be a simple revision to copyright law. If a rights holder in the 70 years post mortem period decides to rewrite a book, the revised book needs to state that it is abridged and ‘Retold by’ on the cover and the uncut text has to go into the public domain immediately, so anyone can publish it.
That avoids the issue of a rights holder misrepresenting an author’s work.
Agree with all of that, excellent ideas.
Obviously book sales are shit so they’re hoping the threat of a re-write will have the Roald Dahl effect.
Maybe soon only books and media that push the ‘woke progressive; ideology will be allowed?
It’s creeping towards that.