This post isn't going to be long at all, but I wanted to say it anyway. I'm pretty sure everyone knows by now; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is the target of yet another case of censorship. The 'n' word, considered as a very offensive slang term, is to be replaced by the word, 'slave.' Since when did the word 'slave' become less offensive anyway? They don't even have the same meaning.People argue that it's just 1-2 words that have been changed -- they would ask, "So what?" I just think, whether it's one word or an entire chapter, it's still going to make a huge difference to the reading experience. Why mess with something that's perfectly fine the way it is? I say, let the readers today read how it was read yesterday. Classics should not be altered to match contemporary ideology, and Literature should never feel the need to adjust itself for anybody.
Thoughts?
This burns my britches. If we start altering the classics, where will it stop? Grrrrr
ReplyDeleteBooks document history. You can't erase history. You can't change history. Why pretend it didn't happen? People are just ignorant. Even though you may not like it, you can't deny that this sort of thing happened. It may not be pretty, but it's true. If we try and censor that, it doesn't make the truth any less real.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I said about it when I posted on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteThis strikes me as censorship. Plain and simple. Sanitizing writing from another era doesn't change the fact that those words represent how people thought during that time period. If we don't read about and understand the thoughts and actions of other times...and learn from and change the ones we find offensive--rat...her than just blotting them out as if they never happened--then we aren't learning anything. Heaven forbid that we be made "uncomfortable" over anything we read. I find that when I'm most "uncomfortable" I am doing the most thinking. I can't believe an English professor is behind this. What other classics does he think needs "cleansing"???
I agree with everything!!!
ReplyDelete