The Return of Bowdler

In 1807, Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) published The Family Shakespeare.  This was an edited version of Shakespeare's works that removed materials thought to be unsuitable for children.  For example, in Hamlet, Ophelia's suicide is instead painted as an accidental drowning and "Heavens!" is substituted where the original had used "God!"  It is a kinder and gentler Shakespeare.  This type of revision came to be called by his name: Bowdlerize.

Today, the works of Roald Dahl are being rewritten to make them more suitable to children of today.  The word 'fat' must be removed lest someone get shamed.  The word 'ugly' has to go as well.  And let's not even get started on "crazy."  Certainly, we can rewrite it, make it better than it was before.  His old-fashioned and politically-incorrect prose can be updated to the woke standards of today.  You'll hardly even notice.  Winston Smith is hard at work in the Ministry of Literature, revamping the inappropriate compositions of yesteryear into a modern masterpiece.

This zeal for changing the past has been gaining speed.  At first, it was a fad in the entertainment industry to revive popular TV shows and movies, only to undermine them.  In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker was now a pathetic looser and the purple-haired shrew is a great heroine.  In Enola Holmes, young Enola proves to be smarter than her brother, Sherlock.  In the new incarnations of Star Trek, James Kirk is a blundering oaf and Spock is a beta male to his girlfriend, Uhura.  In the TV versions of Star Trek, it turns out that Spock had a smarter and more capable sister, Michael Burnham.  Scooby Doo is absent from the revival that is titled Velma; in this version, Velma is Indian (i.e., ancestors from India), Shaggy is black, Daphne is half-Asian, and Fred is a pathetic straight white male.  In Masters of the Universe, He-Man is killed right out the gate.  Gee, that's like killing off James Bond in a Bond film.  Oh, yeah, that happened too.  In England, movies and TV are colonizing the past to make it more acceptable to modern audiences.  Winston Churchill was portrayed as black on stage.  In Mary Queen of Scots, there were black soldiers and black nobles throughout England and Scotland in the 14th century.  Anne Boleyn was a black woman.  The most recent Great Expectations is multicultural though still set in 19th century.  Kenneth Branaugh's two appearances as Hercule Poirot have changed the racial makeup and attitudes of the 1930s.  The latest version of Doctor Who, we discover that the real first doctor was not William Hartnell, but a black woman.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is here.  The past is being rewritten, just not in quite the way George Orwell predicted.