Is Selectively Altering Great Works of Literature Really So Bad?

The other day, publishing house NewSouth announced that there would be a new version of Huck Finn which would excise all mentions of the terms “nigger” and “injun,” substituting less offensive words in their stead.

Mary Elizabeth Williams over at Salon (via Malik) has a really measured and thoughtful response to the issue:

So why shouldn’t New South produce a slurless version of the book? Publishers abridge classic works to suit the reading and maturity levels of different audiences all the time. And if a youngster can thrill to the adventures of the boy Huck and runaway slave Jim without the upsetting presence of unrepeatable words, is that a bad thing?

…The unease that many contemporary readers feel when facing Twain’s characters is natural and appropriate. It’s certainly something to be keenly attuned to, especially when introducing the book to children. I have a tough time imagining my kids sharing the experience of reading the words “Jim had an uncommon level head, for a nigger” with their fellow students in school, let alone saying them out loud in their classrooms. I sure as hell wouldn’t envy the teacher whose job it was to steer the discussion afterward. And it’s not as if Twain’s original version is going away. New South is simply giving educators and other readers the option of enjoying Twain’s work without tripping over a derogatory term, especially one coming from its hero.

Meanwhile, Benedicte Page at the Guardian has written up a good overview of the response to the decision. Check out Sarah Churchwell’s reaction:

[T]he idea of changing the language in the novel in order to boost its popularity is still viewed with bafflement in many quarters. Dr Sarah Churchwell, senior lecturer in US literature and culture at the University of East Anglia, said the development made her “incandescent” with anger. “The fault lies with the teaching, not the book. You can’t say ‘I’ll change Dickens so it is compatible with my teaching method’. Twain’s books are not just literary documents but historical documents, and that word is totemic because it encodes all of the violence of slavery. The point of the book is that Huckleberry Finn starts out racist in a racist society, and stops being racist and leaves that society. These changes mean the book ceases to show the moral development of his character. They have no merit and are misleading to readers. The whole point of literature is to expose us to different ideas and different eras, and they won’t always be nice and benign. It’s dumbing down.”

Education and curriculum development are challenging and complex issues. That being said, if you’re going to teach one of the great works of literature, why not teach it in its unfettered form? And why not address the historical context of these racially loaded terms WHEN you’re teaching it? Why else do we have an educational system, if not to address issues that students will encounter in their lives and for the rest of their lives?

Williams herself acknowledges the transformative power that creative teachers can have on the minds of children, when she describes a classroom activity in which her daughter learned, first-hand, the division inflicted on regular citizens during the Jim Crow era.

The problem is that many teachers don’t have the wherewithal to address the issue with subtlety, illumination and/or grace. And many students may not have the desire or maturity to learn the history of words like “nigger” and interpret occurrences of the term in their proper context. Williams continues, eloquently:

It’s a tough task to invite readers to think. It’s far more difficult than handing someone a book, worry-free, and saying, enjoy yourself some Norton Juster! It requires exhausting amounts of work, deep wells of compassion, and an open acknowledgment that our acceptance of a work and its author’s intent will be considerably affected by our own race, religion, gender and sexual identity.

But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we should accept censorship as a solution. Or that intellectual laziness should be catered to. The problem here lies not with the term’s appearance in the book, or even with NewSouth’s decision to “whitewash” it. It’s with a society that will accept laziness on the part of its Educators (with a capital “e”), whether they are teachers in schools or parents at home.

[UPDATE: Now The New York Times wants a turn:

We are horrified, and we think most readers, textual purists or not, will be horrified too. The trouble isn’t merely adulterating Twain’s text. It’s also adulterating social, economic and linguistic history. Substituting the word “slave” makes it sound as though all the offense lies in the “n-word” and has nothing to do with the institution of slavery. Worse, it suggests that understanding the truth of the past corrupts modern readers, when, in fact, this new edition is busy corrupting the past.

Strong words, and sharp wordplay. But maybe both are warranted.]

The Fog of Sarah Palin

Two trains of thought have collided recently in my brain: the unrelenting growth of Sarah Palin’s power and influence, and Errol Morris’ chilling documentary on Robert McNamara, entitled The Fog of War. I had to view the film recently for research for my day job, and it’s currently available for free in its entirety (but in crappy quality) at Google Video:

The film begins with the following pronouncement from McNamara:

Any military commander who is honest with himself, or with those he’s speaking to, will admit that he has made mistakes in the application of military power. He’s killed people unnecessarily — his own troops or other troops — through mistakes, through errors of judgment. A hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand. But, he hasn’t destroyed nations.

And the conventional wisdom is don’t make the same mistake twice, learn from your mistakes. And we all do. Maybe we make the same mistake three times, but hopefully not four or five. They’ll be no learning period with nuclear weapons. You make one mistake and you’re going to destroy nations.

McNamara goes on to say that the way in which nuclear power has been arranged in our world is insanity:

The major lesson of the Cuban missile crisis is this: the indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations. Is it right and proper that today there are 7500 strategic offensive nuclear warheads, of which 2500 are on 15 minute alert, to be launched by the decision of one human being?

What does this have to do with Palin? The woman garners more and more headlines by the day and people just can’t get enough of her. But in the past few months, Republicans – undoubtedly sensing imminent disaster if she receives the nomination – have started to go on the record against her presidential aspirations. Salon has a good rundown of this phenomenon, but I think former Bush speechwriter David Frum puts it best:

Imagine you’re at the circus. On the ground is a poodle performing a stunt. Above the clown’s head, dangling from a thin wire, is a piano. The piano is teetering, tottering, looking as if at any moment it might slip, crash to earth, and crush the dog. Impossible not to watch, right? And that’s the Palin show, only this time with the party of Lincoln as the little dog, and Sarah Palin as the piano.

Speaking of Frum, he’s what got this comparison started in the rickety machine that is my brain, with a tweet he made in response to Palin a few months ago (via Andrew Sullivan):

Forget about any police force: don’t give Sarah Palin the ability to destroy nations! This is the reality we will face if this woman is elected president. At present, she is one of maybe 2-3 people in the Republican party that seems at all positioned to take the nomination. Is it sad that that’s what came to mind while I was watching the movie?

Positive Trends in Digital Photography

Gordon Haff discusses what’s going well in the world of digital photography. Example (and thank goodness for this): the megapixel wars are basically over. Haff elaborates:

For a time, camera makers vigorously proclaimed how their camera sensors had more megapixels than the competition. This made some sense in the early days of digital photography when cameras really didn’t have enough sensor sites to deliver the resolution needed for making even modest-sized prints at high quality. However, for most purposes, more pixels don’t much improve image quality past a certain point and crowding more pixels into a given area means that individual pixels have to be smaller…

It was noteworthy therefore when, in late 2009, Canon revealed that its new Canon Powershot G11 model would actually have a lower megapixel count than its predecessor. This event played a big part in reducing the emphasis placed on megapixels. (At least in cameras; the megapixels war rages on with mobile phones.) And this, in turn, is one of the factors that has allowed for cameras with fast and low-noise sensors that can take quality pictures in very little light.

“The smartphone is the most lethal weapon you can get inside a prison.”

The NYTimes, on the prevalence of smartphones in prisons (which are technically not allowed):

A counterfeiter at a Georgia state prison ticks off the remaining days of his three-year sentence on his Facebook page. He has 91 digital “friends.” Like many of his fellow inmates, he plays the online games FarmVille and Street Wars. He does it all on a Samsung smartphone, which he says he bought from a guard. And he used the same phone to help organize a short strike among inmates at several Georgia prisons last month. Technology is changing life inside prisons across the country at the same rapid-fire pace it is changing life outside. A smartphone hidden under a mattress is the modern-day file inside a cake.

NewSouth Is Removing The N-Word from Upcoming Edition of “Huckleberry Finn”

From Publisher’s Weekly, the following speaks for itself:

[F]or decades, [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn] has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation’s most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word: “nigger.”

Twain himself defined a “classic” as “a book which people praise and don’t read.” Rather than see Twain’s most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the “n” word (as well as the “in” word, “Injun”) by replacing it with the word “slave.”

“This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind,” said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he’s spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. “Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.”

Because it’s more important to censor classic literature to protect our children from potentially harmful content, rather than to teach them historical context. Idiocracy: It’s already here.

(via @scottmendelson)

Kevin Smith Did Not Get Paid Very Much for ‘Cop Out’

Another day, another series of tweets by Kevin Smith that are barely comprehensible in Twitter stream form. Let’s aggregate them, shall we? The following are an amalgamation of messages sent from Smith’s Twitter account on January 1st and January 2nd, 2011:

All this RedState chatter is just me getting my work done ahead of time, so I can go play hockey. Because as much as I love RedState (and it’s supplanted CLERKS II as my favorite), that HIT SOMEBODY script is what I like to think of as my thesis paper. It’s me putting everything I’ve learned to work & trying to make a film that sums up the last 20 years of my life – which far exceeded not only my expectations, but my wildest dreams as well. HIT SOMEBODY is graduation day for me, and in my head, I’m just starting the fall semester of my senior year, so to speak (or Grade 12 for you Canadians). RedState is just beginning for you but that adventure is winding down for me. You’re just now getting to see what we’ve spent three years putting together. So while some cats may wanna talk about it, I’m already onto the next conversation entirely. I’ve finally gotten my filmmaking to the pace I’ve always wanted to make ’em: finish one, start the next. The Clint Eastwood way. Y’know how much press Clint Eastwood does? Not much. Y’know why? He figured out what I’m only just know learning, nearly 20 years into my career: he’d rather make new movies than do press for movies he’s done making. Clint Eastwood has the work ethic of a hockey player, man. I admire the shit out of that: he finishes one, starts the next. He doesn’t dine out on one flick for a year or two; he makes flicks with all the frequency with which a teen girl texts. Loves ’em & leaves ’em. I’m 40 yrs old; I’ve been a professional filmmaker for nearly two decades. And after years of being told to stop fetishizing my work – “Enough with the Jay & Bob bullshit already…” – I’ve taken their advice: I’m not dwelling on the flicks I make. Now that I’ve got 20 years of experience on the job under my belt, I’m giving my movies the Little Red Corvette treatment: love ’em & leave ’em fast. #TrojansSomeOfEmUsed This is not a novel approach in the least. Spielberg doesn’t do shit tons of public speaking, let alone press. Robert Altman also swung from flick to flick like Tarzan, without doing much press, letting his massive cast take the lead. That’s all I’m doing here. And I’m not saying I’m as good as the aforementioned filmmakers; they are legends. But, again: I’ve got two decades experience under my belt, one more flick to make, and less years in front of me than there are behind me now. I’ve spent all that time making flicks the way I wanted to, not the way I was supposed to, and thus far, it’s served me well. I’ve gotta play my game – especially if this is my last season, so the speak.

Please enjoy the fuck out of RedState. I’ll be right there with you, all the way up to theatrical release. After that, my head’s in a different – Via @Terefkal “You’re no Clint Eastwood.” My point exactly. So if Clint moves from film-to-film without doing much press, then what kinda arrogant sonovabitch must I be to do so much press? Clint makes movie after movie & he’s an Academy Award winner. If I’m gonna try to better myself at my profession, I might as well choose a beyond-reach role model, right? So I’m’a try to work like Clint Eastwood from now on: make better movies, and make ’em one right after the other. And do minimal takes. And not listen to anybody. Clint Eastwood said recently that even at his age, with all the awards/box office/epic win, people still try to caution him against doing this or that, or advise him. He said the way to do the job is to not listen to anybody else & just do what he feels. I wanna be more like Clint. Might even get a monkey…

Via @sorryimlate “Clint Eastwood is the Wayne Gretzky of filmmaking” No – Clint’s the Gordie Howe of Filmmaking, playing in 5 decades.

Via @Eddy32191 “David Fincher does almost zero press for his films” See? And he’s a master. So I’ll never be Fincher good, but I can try to be. And he’s a guy who’s like “Fuck all this talking about the job, I wanna DO the job.” Maybe less I’m doing press, more I’m making flicks, the better I’d be at my job. Like Fincher. A little more I learn my lenses, a little less I learn what an asshole I am from bloggers & such.

Via @doubleplusgeoff “you’d do a lot for your credibility if you’d just come right out & say that CopOut was a ‘gettin paid’ movie” I wish I could. But I actually took an 84% pay cut to make #CopOut – because I wanted to work with BruceWillis. Lots of us did. Tracy got paid more than me, but not much. I also gave BACK half my already-way-less salary to get the film green-lit: there was a budget crunch to get to the $35million the studio wanted, so Marc Platt & I each gave up half our salaries IN ADDITION to the big dip in our quotes we’d agreed to. When all was said & done, we came in way under budget. Final cost: $32mil – $3mil less than we were allotted. Contractually, WB didn’t have to give me the money I gave up until they were in the black, but since we came in under budget, they cut me a check for the re-investment I’d made BEFORE the flick hit theaters. And even then, I still made 80% less than I did on my previous flick. I made MORE as the director of DOGMA in 1998 than I did as the director of COP OUT in 2009/2010. So please: enough with the “you musta got PAID” bullshit. I didn’t. Both my agent & my lawyer were like “Don’t do this. You can get paid more making a Kevin Smith movie.” But I knew if I wanted to make RedState, I had to make CopOut. There were things I needed to learn, and I learned them – while making a financially responsible buddy cop homage for a major studio, from a script I didn’t write. I’m sorry you didn’t like CopOut; feel free to skip RedState if you feel betrayed in some way. But to suggest I did #CopOut for the money is ludicrous – as it was the least I’ve been paid to direct a film since 1998 – 11 years prior. CopOut may not fit into your KevinSmith narrative, but I know where my story goes – and it was the keystone to everything that RedState is.

We don’t live in STAR WARS, kid. Motivations aren’t always as simple & clear as “The Empire is bad! Save the galaxy!” You may not understand why I do what I do, and that must frustrate you. But in a couple years, it’s all gonna make sense. And by the time it does, you won’t care anymore anyway. But at least I’ll have the record of this exchange; that and it’s one more question I won’t have to answer again. So thanks.

Some of my favorite trailers of 2010

Our resident trailer expert, Christopher Stipp, has already written up a great “Top 10 Trailers of 2010” post over at /Film, but I thought I should share a few of my own. Here they are in no particular order:


Inception – Somehow they manage to cram in the most important exposition into this thing while still making time f-BRRRRRRRAAAAAAHM.

TRON: Legacy – I must’ve watched this trailer one or two dozen times. Ahh, to go back to a time when this movie had the possibility of being good….

Red State – Say what you will about the controversy over Smith’s latest film, but this trailer is minimalist and masterful.

Battle: Los Angeles – I was speechless after watching this thing. Fantastic use of music and olde style photographic imagery.

True Grit – Gorgeous. And the Coen brothers really know how to use choral music in their films (see: O Brother for further examples).

The Social Network – Obviously.

The Tree of Life – I judge trailers by how well they sear a piece of music into my soul. By this standard, Tree of Life wins top honors for its use of Smetana’s Vltava.

Transformers: The Dark of the Moon – The movie has a good chance of sucking horribly, but only Michael Bay can retcon the moon landing and make it so compelling, you forget for a moment that what you’re watching is ridiculous.