New in PJ Media:
Leftist publishers have recently taken it upon themselves to rewrite the works of Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, and Agatha Christie to bring them into line with contemporary woke sensibilities. The good news today is that the publishers of Gone With the Wind have not given us a similar bowdlerization of Margaret Mitchell’s much-beloved 1936 novel. You can still get a new copy of the real thing, but its publishers are decidedly nervous about offering it for sale in this enlightened era. They have attached a warning, just in case there is any sentient being in 2023 who doesn’t know what he or she or xe is getting with Gone With the Wind and needs cushioning for the shock of encountering people with thoughts that are decidedly unwoke.
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,” as the old adage goes, and that’s the whole point. Reading a book from another time is like traveling to a strange land without having to suffer some endless flight and end up in a dodgy hotel with mosquito netting around the bed; it introduces you to a place where people don’t think, or speak, or act the same way that we do. For contemporary Leftists, that will never do. Everyone must always behave as if they were twenty-first-century Leftists. Otherwise, you see, people might be “harmed,” which apparently means that they will think unapproved thoughts.
Pan Macmillan, the publishers of Gone With the Wind, have done all they can to forestall that possibility. In their new edition of the epic novel of the Old South, they have included a warning that the novel “includes problematic elements including the romanticisation of a shocking era in our history and the horrors of slavery.” The possibility that some people might want to read the book precisely because it offers a perspective on these matters that differs sharply from our own, so as to compare and contrast, doesn’t enter into the pointy little Leftist heads of Pan Macmillan’s editors, none of whom will ever write anything that even comes close to approaching the drama, majesty, insight or wisdom of Gone With the Wind, which transcend considerations of slavery and race.
That would be impossible, as far as Pan Macmillan is concerned. The warning continues by stating that “the novel includes the representation of unacceptable practices, racist and stereotypical depictions, and troubling themes, characterisation, language, and imagery.” Imagine the dry, desiccated, dreary, doctrinaire world these Leftist editors live in, in which no one dares even to contemplate engaging in “unacceptable practices.” They apparently do not realize that people engaging in “unacceptable practices” is what makes all the great fiction of the world, going back to Penelope’s suitors defying Telemachos not long before Odysseus finally makes it home (read The Odyssey, kids).
There is more. Read the rest here.
Yogi says
My favourite movie !, WTF. They did to forbid this movie ! Outrageous…
Keith O says
The rate these clowns are going they will ban a blank sheet of paper because it’s white and that will offend someone, somewhere, perhaps, just maybe, if they are sensitive enough.
Brigitte from Germany says
“Gone with the wind “, is for ever my favorite movie.
The title in German is; “Vom Winde verweht.”
And here is the song;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EESHIpo4Lgk
Barbara says
I have books written by Mark Twain pre stupidity era. The dialogue is written in the pronunciation of the time. I read a politically correct printed book and it lost all of the nuances of the time.
Reading bigotry into Twain’s stories you rare really, really stretching, to discredit author.
sukabumi jojo says
Dear Mr. Spencer,
Your remarks concerning the Odyssey are correct, but can equally be made concerning the Iliad, which poem is also chock full of ‘unacceptable practices’, such as enslaving (and in effect raping) the captured girls Chriseis and Briseis, pulling corpses (correction: a corpse: that of Hector) around a city behind your charriot.
One of my professors always said that people are not at all interested in the good and righteous stuff. Nobody reads the Paradiso of Dante anymore. That’s boring. They stick to the Inferno, and rightly so. Plus the bad is a better teacher than the good.
Kind regards,
Sukabumi JoJo
OLD GUY says
Oh I’am offended, you have to change history. Rules offend me ,we should have only the rules that I like.
I’am offended and don’t like to work so everyone else should support me. Just because I didn’t pay attention or study in school I shouldn’t have to start out at the bottom, I’am CEO material. And by the way don’t forget my GENDER changes daily so be aware of your verbs or is it pronouns.
Where are my happy pills, I think I’ll just sleep in today.