A placid Sunday afternoon and a new television version of Ten little blacks by Agatha Christie. Sorry, from Y there were none left, which is the official title in Spain since the edition published last year (Espasa). In Spain, because in the United States Christie herself asked to publish it as And then there were none, back in 1940, aware of the racist connotations of nigger in that country. She did not fail her fine sense of smell, we will not say criminal but well, about the controversial title; however, paperbacks in the United States renamed it between 1964 and 1986 as… Ten little Indians.
It was an adaptation of a traditional children’s song, in which the numbers change as the little Indians succumb, as in the novel, but it must not have been funny either, because in the end the title that we now have here also stuck. .
Everyone happy? No. Starting with this writer: as soon as the dead begin, that is, the television narrative, one of the protagonists introduces himself as a “specialist doctor in nervous diseases in women.” Here we are: hysterical, neurasthenic, those evils that have historically been attributed to the female sex. What was going to be an entertaining afternoon turns into one of fury. Don’t they realize that they can offend us women?
The line between what is really insulting, written with that intention, and what is now offensive to some is so fine that if it had to be taken into account, practically no ancient reading would pass the sieve. And neither do many contemporaries. Should we eliminate not the neurasthenia doctor, which is already taken care of by the murderer, but his specialty, to make him, for example, a dentist, now that a rewrite of the English versions of Christie’s is being announced to eliminate everything that is considered out of date and that includes from physical descriptions to gender, ethnicity, religion and a long etcetera? (It is ironic, the change in medical occupation, we clarify just in case).
Because as if it were a cruel mockery of the song that inspired Agatha Christie, the politically correct is directing its pointing finger towards different authors whose works are falling into sensitive rewriting one by one: Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, now also PG Wodehouse, whose Jeeves and Wooster have been branded as unacceptable by his editorial, as reported by The Telegraph, become a scourge of text revisions to adapt them to “current sensibility”.
The phenomenon began in the United States, and has spread geographically to places where these controversies are artificial, while in parallel the pressures of sensitive conservative readers have also grown.
The adaptation of books intended for children’s audiences comes from afar, it can be called (over)protection, (re)education… Conservatives censor and progressives do too, although the word woke is heard less and less. Another example: the announcement of the rewriting of Roald Dahl’s texts, eliminating words like fat and replacing it with huge, taking away tools so that in the future the little reader can face a reality that is not as idyllic as they want to show it. : “If we eliminate the conflict, we eliminate one of the functions of these readings,” says Sigrid Kraus, editorial consultant and editor at Salamandra of titles such as Harry Potter.
Widespread rejection and ridicule led British copyright holders to also keep original writing in parallel editions to those corrected by “sensitive readership committeesâ€, a job increasingly being carried out by specialist companies in Britain. And that it should always be noted on the cover, just as it is done to put that certain aspects can be outrageous today for certain groups. Otherwise, and as The Spectator warned, you end up reading what the editor wants you to read, and not what the author wanted. Or falsifying history, which is what it has been.
In the case of Dahl, but also in that of Christie, it is the owners of the rights who have the power to adapt them or not to the demands of, say, Netflix. Behind many of these adaptations is the will to continue exploiting these titles economically, and if there is something that is thought to bother the client, sorry, reader or viewer, it is removed. “It’s purely marketing, creating products from existing things, which is easier than writing something new,†explains Sigrid Kraus.
Large corporations are the ones behind many of these rereadings, but if they are suing it, it is because a state of opinion has been created about what can or cannot be said: when a classic like Huckleberry Finn is described as racist, it is not surprising. that it be published with 200 modifications to be able to continue selling it without protests from sensitized people. Another line of censorship comes from the ultra-conservatives, now well organized, in order not to rewrite, but to withdraw entire books.
From Espasa, they point out that “in the change of title of Diez negritos we owe ourselves to the express request of Christie’s heirs, who are the ones who hold the publication rights.” And that they have not been asked for any changes in the interior.
With respect to rewrites, Carlos Revés, director of the editorial area of ​​the Planeta group, believes that “something like this, emasculating any topic that might be annoying, is to infantilize the reader to a great degree, not giving them the opportunity to react to a dilemma, asking them a flat, easy path, without curves, without a doubt… in short, a book like anotherâ€. Sigrid Kraus adds that she considers it “a lack of respect” for the authors, for whom it also creates insecurity about what will happen to their legacy.
