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reddit455 t1_j93plce wrote

not sure I understand...

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you're suggesting that this

>destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.

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is equivalent to this?

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Augustus Gloop now ‘enormous’ instead of ‘fat’

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it's not false, the book is not rewritten, (a word is being replaced - with a synonym), Augustus is still a "big boy", is still named Agustus... and no dates have changed.

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are they vastly different than the version you remember?

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Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-to-remove-language-deemed-offensive

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In The Twits, Mrs Twit is no longer “ugly and beastly” but just “beastly”.

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In The Witches, a paragraph explaining that witches are bald beneath their wigs ends with the new line: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

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> but personally I can't ignore their similarity in light of the recent events

i don't put the Ministry of Truth in the same league as using a different word for fat.

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Dagwood_Sandwich t1_j9eos7g wrote

Read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”Its about how euphemistic language is used subtly to change historical narratives.

I don’t think this is exactly whats happening in publishing. Thats more capitalism run amok, the invisible hand of the market distorting art to sell children’s books. But still choice of words with specific connotations that have the same basic meaning can be used in subversive ways.

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