Eduardo Sacheri on the changes of James Bond and Roald Dahl: “We cannot make the past be what it was not and say what it did not say”

There Politically correct seems to have come to the literary world to stay there. In recent days, the announcement of the rewriting of fundamental works for popular culture such as the novels of james bond or the children’s stories of Roald Dahl it sparked fierce debate around the world or, more than a debate, a series of complaints, since (almost) nobody seems to agree.

With the end of remove “potentially offensive” languageas well as all kinds of racial, sexual, physical and gender references, the publishers decided to modify the books to adapt them to the “modern reader”, which adds to the new way of adapting the iconic characters to the diversity needs demanded by the new generations. But what do the authors think?

“These rewrites that try to forcep adapt ways of thinking, categorizing, feeling and speaking from the past to what seems right today strike me as wrong. seems useless to mesaid the Argentinian author Eduardo Sacheri in dialogue with GlobeLiveMedia Lisons.

“It’s an act extremely authoritarian. We have the right to think what we want of all the past. Now, to rewrite them? I do not think so. The past cannot defend itself against us. We can take all the distance we want from this past. Now do the past to be what was not and to say what was not said it looks like an act clumsy, bossy and impoverishing of our culture,” he added.

Like Sacheri, other authors (as well as countless readers) have spoken out against the decision of the publishers who hold the rights to these works. Argentinian writer and journalist Jorge Fernandez Diazin dialogue with GlobeLiveMedia Lisonshe argued: “It seems that the publishers wanted to stimulate interest in certain books that are not selling as much: they warn that they will be rewritten, there is a worldwide controversy, then they offer both versions and have a perfect marketing campaign”.

And he added: “Beyond that, it seems to me alarming they begin to manipulate books, a process that can lead to modifying any work of art to adapt it to the present. A true artistic aberration and also common sense.

In turn, the writer, journalist and member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), Arturo Perez Reverte, came out to express his anger on his social networks: “More hypocritical Anglo-Saxon garbage than we Europeans will make our own, as usual. Thank you to the demagogues, to the opportunists who make it their business and to the idiots who applaud them, the 21st century is the century of stupidity. Congratulations”.

Likewise, a few days ago the Argentinian writer Mercedes Giuffre had commented on his Twitter account, about the “censorship” of Roald Dahl: “I will hurry to buy the last copies of R. Dahl before the censorship takes effect (It’s censorship, things by name). I will not read doctored versions. when it happens cancellation delirium, we will retrieve the originals from personal libraries”. This time he wrote: “Now they’re rewriting the James Bond ones. AHA. they’re touching it for Conan Doyle and I break everything.

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