Quote: Aaron @ March 29 2009, 2:37 PM BSTAs it should be!
Were they ever? I never had any problems finding them as a child. (Although I've not read many of them, to be fair.)
*raises hand*
I will never understand how anyone can feel anything other than pride.
This man's a nutter...Oi nutter!
Quote: Lee Henman @ March 31 2009, 1:13 AM BSTStrangely, I too have had ginger beer tonight. It's best with lashings of vodka I find. It's my new favourite tipple - a generous slug of voddie mixed with ginger beer and lots of ice. Mmmmm.
Ah yersss, vodka does liven it up a little!
Add some lime and you have a Mosciw Mule.
Quote: Jack Massey @ March 28 2009, 10:30 PM BSTAlso on the subject of this, look at the one Tintin comic you cannot purchase in childrens' sections 'Tintin in the Congo' as the black characters in that all look quite 'gollywoggy'. Yet I say again, Herge may have been in the wrong for such work and in some places it is unacceptable, but again he to was bought up in a different generation and let us to remember his creation of Tintin is one of the greatest works of the comic book world.
I also find it odd that you can't buy Tintin in the Congo but you can buy various Asterix books with very similar looking characters (most notably, one of the pirates they keep sinking).
And is this bag of chocolate peanuts found in Sardinia 2 years ago racist?
Quote: Afinkawan @ March 31 2009, 10:39 AM BSTI also find it odd that you can't buy Tintin in the Congo but you can buy various Asterix books with very similar looking characters (most notably, one of the pirates they keep sinking).
Are our lives really the worse for it not being acceptable to use the word gollywog? Or see it in books very often? Mine isn't.
You can now buy Tintin in the Congo and Tintin amongst the Soviets, seems everythings ironic these days.
I was reading PG Wodehouse today, 'Thank you, Jeeves' - a fairly recently published edition. Repeated use of the phrase "nigger" minstrels.
Part of me thinks it would be silly to ammend the text, Wodehouse no racist, escapist fantasy England - plus no-one who reads Wodehouse is likely not to take the use of the word as an endorsement.
Another part of me feels it would not affect the text by taking the word out and I doubt PG would dream of wanting to offend any potential reader.
Well we're still heading well away from the thread subject, aren't we? But more or less still on message with regards to others being offended on our behalf. So, in that vein, what about another childhood favourite, this time for boys - Biggles!
This from Wiki (I have to quote Wiki in case someone says: "Oh no he wasn't"):
"During the 1960s a perception of Biggles as unacceptably racially prejudiced led to the books being removed from libraries and recommended children's reading lists around the world. Although there is some justification for this attitude, it is probably simplistic, and may even smack of political correctness."
I do remember as a kid reading Biggles fighting opium smugglers in the far East with Biggles going on to describe some 'orientals' who were from the criminal fraternity, in a manner that would make Prince Phillip proud with approval.
Quote: Tim Walker @ March 31 2009, 9:44 PM BSTI was reading PG Wodehouse today, 'Thank you, Jeeves' - a fairlu recently published edition. Repeated use of the phrase "nigger" minstrels.
Part of me thinks it would be silly to ammend the text, Wodehouse no racist, escapist fantasy England - plus no-one who reads Wodehouse is likely not to take the use of the word as an endorsement.
Another part of me feels it would not affect the text by taking the word out and I doubt PG would dream of wanting to offend any potential reader.
Veering further off topic here with a futile defence of P.G. Wodehouse's use of the word nigger.
More people should read P.G. Wodehouse, the best humourous writer in the English language. 'Amend' the text? The word 'amend' connotes improvement, change for the better. 'Butcher' would be a more apt term for altering his books.
"it would not affect the text by taking the word out"? You mean it would not affect the narrative? So the offending term should simply be changed to 'minstrels'? This would render the subsequent bits where Bertie and Sir Roderick Glossop 'black up' to join the minstrel show rather puzzling.
<partly plagiarized bit from a Wodehouse site>Wodehouse's use of the word nigger (by Bertie Wooster only - Jeeves uses the word 'negro') is not intended as offensive invective. In those days (early 1930s) upper class British such as Bertie Wooster generally considered themselves superior to most other races regardless of colour.
Nigger was slang for negro and although the word could be used offensively, it was not employed malevolently by Bertie. He admires the 'negro minstrels' and wants to learn from them.
In one of Wodehouse's earlier magazine stories he writes about a British boxing hero in America being introduced to a black boxer: "Being British-born, he had none of the American's inherited dislike of the coloured". Reinforcing that Wodehouse is no racist.
Likewise in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn the eponymous protagonist loves Jim to the point of risking his life for him and calls him a nigger (because he does not view the term as offensive). Should Mark Twain's book be censored for that?
Look at The Dam Busters (the book and/or film), where Guy Gibson's black dog was called Nigger - as it was in real life. Should history be altered just because prudes decree that slang terms for various races are intolerably offensive racial epithets? The Japanese government claims accusations of war crimes are offensive to Japan, so it has censored history textbooks in schools to omit Japan's wartime atrocities.
Censoring what has happened or been written in the past is daft.
Er, stumbling blindly further off topic, Jeeves and Wooster starring Fry and Laurie was good, but nowhere near as much fun as reading Wodehouse or Biggles Combs His Hair.
Surely the language is as 'offensive' as the fact that a band of blacked up men is present? Its too easy to tinker with the past. Its not 'racist' in itself as no offence was intended- its the intent that causes the harm, not the words.
You can't just clumsily meddle with old work anyway- in that book the minstrel band is integral to the plot as Bertie & Roderick Glossop have to black up to escape. And they DO have to black up as they have to use boot polish as a plot device- they MUST use boot polish as it means they have to get butter from the kitchen to remove it (apparently its the best thing...).. and they need to enter the kitchen for plot purposes. You can't muck about with Wodehouse- everything is there for a reason.
Quote: Kenneth @ April 1 2009, 3:00 AM BSTVeering further off topic here with a futile defence of P.G. Wodehouse's use of the word nigger.
More people should read P.G. Wodehouse, the best humourous writer in the English language. 'Amend' the text? The word 'amend' connotes improvement, change for the better. 'Butcher' would be a more apt term for altering his books.
"it would not affect the text by taking the word out"? You mean it would not affect the narrative? So the offending term should simply be changed to 'minstrels'? This would render the subsequent bits where Bertie and Sir Roderick Glossop 'black up' to join the minstrel show rather puzzling.
<partly plagiarized bit from a Wodehouse site>Wodehouse's use of the word nigger (by Bertie Wooster only - Jeeves uses the word 'negro') is not intended as offensive invective. In those days (early 1930s) upper class British such as Bertie Wooster generally considered themselves superior to most other races regardless of colour.
Nigger was slang for negro and although the word could be used offensively, it was not employed malevolently by Bertie. He admires the 'negro minstrels' and wants to learn from them.
In one of Wodehouse's earlier magazine stories he writes about a British boxing hero in America being introduced to a black boxer: "Being British-born, he had none of the American's inherited dislike of the coloured". Reinforcing that Wodehouse is no racist.
Likewise in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn the eponymous protagonist loves Jim to the point of risking his life for him and calls him a nigger (because he does not view the term as offensive). Should Mark Twain's book be censored for that?
Look at The Dam Busters (the book and/or film), where Guy Gibson's black dog was called Nigger - as it was in real life. Should history be altered just because prudes decree that slang terms for various races are intolerably offensive racial epithets? The Japanese government claims accusations of war crimes are offensive to Japan, so it has censored history textbooks in schools to omit Japan's wartime atrocities.
Censoring what has happened or been written in the past is daft.
Er, stum
bling blindly further off topic, Jeeves and Wooster starring Fry and Laurie was good, but nowhere near as much fun as reading Wodehouse or Biggles Combs His Hair.
In saying that I feel it would probably OK to ammend the text, I simply mean removing the offensive 'N' word and replacing it with - probably - "negro" - which doesn't affect the narrative. Notably in the story, the more intelligent Jeeves uses the word "negro" instead of the 'N' word.
In the case of Huckleberry Finn, it is notable that the Huck is willing to save the life of a black man although he knows that in by doing so he is destined to go to hell. As PJ O'Rourke says this combination of principle and ignorance makes Huck one of the great Republican fictional heroes.
It is maddening that Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom's Cabin 2 of the most important antiracist books ever writter. And written as a repsonse to very real, serious violent racists (and powerful). Are treated as untouchable by the modern politically correct.
Good point. The same way as that Wodehouse was vilified as some kind of traitor/Nazi sympathiser due to his whimsical wartime broadcasts. As if a man who satirised Mosely by way of Spode could ever have had fascist tendencies.
Wodehouse was very naive with the Nazis; never comprehended how much offence he would cause. And the offence was extrapolated for propaganda purposes due to the extraordinary times. The pity was that he was later informed that the RAF had bombed his house in France as an act of spite. They never did, but he always believed they had. One of the reasons he never came back to England.
All off topic, sorry..
Quote: LIME5000 @ March 31 2009, 3:46 AM BST
This man's a nutter...Oi nutter!
...?
Quote: chipolata @ March 31 2009, 10:44 AM BSTAre our lives really the worse for it not being acceptable to use the word gollywog? Or see it in books very often?
Yes.
Quote: Kenneth @ April 1 2009, 3:00 AM BSTIn those days (early 1930s) upper class British such as Bertie Wooster generally considered themselves superior to most other races regardless of colour.
I think that they still do.