We're Really Hucked Now

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_newsroom/20110104/en_yblog_newsroom/huck-finn-gets-some-changes

A book published is getting ready to publish a version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with a few choice worded edited. The N Word will be replaced with "Slave" and "Injin", while not specified, I'm guessing with Indian.

Frankly, this really does bother me. I'm not going to claim to be some great Twain follower but I've enjoyed everything of his that I've read and even visited the cave in Missouri that's a key part of the story. I don't think we do kids any favors by hiding that people spoke differently back then because people then had very different views on race than we do. Plus, that the PC police have nothing better to do than this also bugs me.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Removing the n-word from a novel written by a Confederate veteran doesn't bother me that much. Within one level it's fair to state that *most* white people then did have different views on race than we do, but it's not fair to delude ourselves into seeing it as universal (Grant, Garrison, Stevens after all were as WASP as anyone else at that time) or universally lauded then (it never was). There is a certain point where "they thought differently" becomes less about teaching about those views and more an excuse of them.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Excuse? People from 200 years ago don't need an excuse for thinking differently than we do. We're all products of out time.

I know I wouldn't want people 200 years from now looking down on me for not hold views on social issues identical to them.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I don't follow this logic at all.

Either we study art and literature as artifacts of and insights into their times, or we set them aside as no longer useful or germaine to our understanding of the human condition.

Taking a work of literature, redacting its language and then keeping the original author's name and reputation attached to it is hackery.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

It's revisionism -- why change the story back THEN because it
doesnt conform to our ideals today?

Part of the language IS the message that is being conveyed.
Noone is excusing a story from 100+ years ago....but changing
the story for *todays* language seems to take away from the story itself.

[mijopo.livejournal.com]

So your argument is that it's okay to remove "nigger" in Huckleberry Finn because leaving it in "deludes" us into thinking that everyone then was racist? Do you think that reading Stephen King novels will lead people to believe that everyone believes in supernatural occurrences. (and perhaps that would be a good argument for redacting all references to the supernatural in Stephen King novels.)

I don't think the argument for removing it hangs on whether or not its historically accurate, it has to do with the advisability of revising a work of literature into something other than the author intended it.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Thing is Huck Finn isn't a textbook it is a novel set in a specific timeframe and a specific location. If a contemporary writer wrote a story set in that same timeframe and that same location I would expect he have the characters act and behave exactly as Huck Finn did because that is really how people talked back then. Even those who were not racists (as Huck himself was not a racist felt there was no problem viewing blacks as lower class citizens or referring to them as niggers.

Furthermore you assume the the presence of such ideas in a book automatically equates to acceptance of and tolerance for them and it is pretty clear from the events of the book that Twain intended for the reader to at least question his belied that blacks were lower class citzens and was not in any way reinforcing that belief.

Finally even if the work is promoting beliefs and views that we find horrible today redacting them to prevent students from being exposed to them is just an excuse to bury your head in the sand and pretend that such ideas do not exist. It shows a complete lack of moral character in refusing to engage the idea head on and show just how morally repugnant it is. In fact trying to hide it under the rug so to say can be a stealth way of supporting it because it denies the opportunity to have an open discussion allowing it to rather fester secretly until one day no one can remember why it is a bad thing any longer.

[404.livejournal.com]

As a historian, I'd figure you would be appalled by this, but I'm sure you will pull some historical narrative outta your pipe to justify your position.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Still, it seems odd (not to mention counter-productive) to be airbrushing the racism out of a story that is very much about racism.

[lordtwinkie.livejournal.com]

too bad they are censoring a novel that attack & ridiculed slavery and racism.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Pathetic and idiotic.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

+1.

[speciesofspaces.livejournal.com]

No doubt I'm in the minority on this, but I am not at all bothered by this. The excised word has, in the last 50 years particularly, come to stand for violence, struggle, unfairness, inequity, and oppression of a different type and kind than it did as written. The word is so offensive today as to be distracting and a spectacle unto itself. I don't think the substitution detracts from the story at all. I do think this is an important book, and I am all for facilitating discourse among schoolchildren about race, slavery, history and oppression, and I believe this word swap will help achieve those goals. Of course its only one edition, the original is out there and will always be, while this new edition will be an oddity.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

As long as they publish it as "The Abridged Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Joe Blow, it might be OK. To alter someone's work and assign his name to it without permission is highly unethical.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think this is primarily for a schoolroom edition for kids, and it's not like we cannot still readily get Twain at his unexpurgated best.

[omnot.livejournal.com]

In the current day, many of us look at the Victorian addition of fig leaves to cover the genitals depicted in nudes of the renaissance period as somewhere between desecration and prudish folly.

The approaches of different times and places to things which reflect the reality and aesthetic of the times in which they were created is of itself a reflection of the culture which sees them as unacceptably crass and shocking.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

I might have a different view on this if we weren't talking about a novel that's not mandatory reading in public schools across the country, where black kids are forced to read and hear that word over and over and over like a drumbeat. As it stands, this is ONE version of this novel that's going to omit these racial slurs, out of all the countless versions of it that will still be in print with all its original language intact, so your entitled white pearl-clutching over "the PC police" somehow descending en masse to snatch all the unedited copies of the novel out of your hands is as utterly divorced from any semblance of reality as it is arrogantly insensitive.

Absolutely, and not that, but they do this

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

while, no less, hearing an inveterate racist and Jew-hater whose only good side was opposing imperialism claimed with a straight face to be someone like William Lloyd Garrison when he absolutely was *not.* Those lies are equally as pernicious as the other.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Up next we can change Don Ameche's line in Trading Places to "Black guy". No need to show he's a closeted racist. He's rich and white so we already know that...

When it comes to artistic expression and history, play the ball as it lands.

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

It's usually blanked out in broadcast versions.

Can't have kids hearing something on TV they usually only hear on their iPods. :P

[oportet.livejournal.com]

I'm not black, so I can't say for sure what would bother me and what wouldn't bother me if I was.

I can guess though - and my guess is being called a slave would bother me more than being called a nigger.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

On the street - yes. It would make me uncomfortable.

In a classroom environment that is conducted well by the teacher - no.


How do I know this? Well...I'm black *and* we read these books in my classrooms both in high school and in college.

And guess what -- the brutalness of the language made the point much more than the teacher having to wave their hands and describe it...

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

Is it the same company that edits out all the "bad" parts from movies? :D

Are they going to rewrite rap lyrics next?

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

They should! Some of them are really outrageous! For shame!

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

Liberals invoking censorship? Nah.... That would be so out of character!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Indeed. If it ain't keepin' tits from the young-uns it ain't censorship, it jest librul squeamishness.

[medea34.livejournal.com]

this offends me. it's revisionist and it's stupid. acceptable words change over time - we should not be editing the language used by authors (or the images used by artists). you discuss that when reading such books in a classroom setting. ditto for outdated/offensive concepts. good grief.

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

We translate literature for new audiences all the time. This is no different than reading a Bible in English.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Translation from one language to another is distinctly different than altering text within a given language.

Been there, done that.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

There are many famous cases of revising literature to suit the political winds of the moment. There was a time when scribes would be told to add or omit a line here or there when copying religious texts in order to rationalize the favored view of the divine. There are also more insidious corruptions of meaning when words are deliberately modified so that future generations miscomprehend the originally intended meaning. One of my favorite examples of attempts to revise literature was the Nazi project to airbrush out Nietzsche's remarks against anti-Semitism. Today, we also witness the sinister use of textual misinterpretation to try to turn the founding padres into a bunch of Know-nothing shit kickers.

As for Clemens, his own wife had him edit his language to use euphemisms instead of cuss words. Perhaps, instead of "nigger," they could simple use "breh." I have no objections to cleaning up language for special editions that are intended for less mature minds.

Re: Been there, done that.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Someone else changing his words is different than Twain toning it down to please his wife. There it was a choice he made of his own free will.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Am I the only one who's read the books and realized how very anti-slavery and egalitarian they are??

Has anyone read beyond the word "nigger" and put the whole thing in context?? Good Lord, Pudd'nhead Wilson would probably be ceremoniously burned, if anyone remembered what Pudd'nhead Wilson was about.

Mel Brooks has said that Blazing Saddles could not be made today. The script would never be approved. What a pathetic excuse we have made of tolerance when the result is that only the most anodyne pabulum can pass the bar of political correctness.

[dukexmachismo.livejournal.com]

Am I the only one who's read the books and realized how very anti-slavery and egalitarian they are??

You're not the ONLY one, but you're part of a teeny majority that gets irony and subtlety. Maybe instead of editing out the "N" word, they could just add remedial footnotes* thusly:

* when Huck says that nobody was hurt, but that a "n*gg*r" was killed, Clemens might have been trying to demonstrate the endemic and unconscious nature of racism in that time and place. Or perhaps not. Fuck him; he's a dead white guy.

[lordtwinkie.livejournal.com]

has none of you read Huck Finn, from reading a lot of comments it sounds like it. Mark Twain was attacking the Slavery and Racism vehemently, for fucks sake Mark Twain was skewering racist southern traditions while creating a great and noble character in the runaway slave Jim,

damn some of you are ignorant.

[lordtwinkie.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that they are taking out the word nigger because of the continuing wimpinization of Americans, we are becoming a society of wusses who are easily offended by everything and believe strongly in our "right" not to be offended and thusly speech and be censored if anyone is some how offended by it.

i say damn those people because i don't want my child growning up unable to handle the real world because everyone is so damn worried about offending someones feelings fuck em.

this whole nigger and injun debacle makes as much damn sense as Han shooting first.