Don't wave "political correctness" at me, mate. That's bollocks and
you know it. It isn't an excuse for the cultural war that the
religious right is pursuing. The banning of HP (and a number of other
works of classical literature), or it's attempts at being banned, are
a matter of record.
As for the US editions:
"Fearing that American readers would not associate the word
"philosopher" with a magical theme (as a Philosopher's Stone is
alchemy-related), Scholastic insisted that the book be given the title
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the American market."
Although I can see why you conflate the two to make some minor point.
Oh, I forgot. Tarring someone with PC, even by soi distant
association, lets you get away with all kinds of crap.
Rent was way out of date on the AIDs subject by the time it got
played: the UK govt had been bombarding it's citizenry with adverts
about AIDs since the late 80s, countless films and dramas have been
made this side of the water for a long time.
The book *La Dame aux Camellias* by Alexandre Dumas, fils, became a
play which was quite successful at the time, 1852. Maybe the French
were more tolerant of their consumptives. TB was *the* fashionable
disease of the 19th Century, so much so that to look consumptive,
women wore face-powder made of lead. It caused lead-poisoning.
Roger
On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 7:49 PM, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Roger Day wrote:
>>
>> American bannings are two a penny: their school libraries have
>> committees which are battle-grounds for the inclusion/exclusion of
>> books. Harry Potter is a notorious example of this - the poor, deluded
>> fundies trying to stave off the influence of the heathen (WTF?). There
>> are lists on line of books that have been banned in the US. Are there
>> any for the UK?
>>
>> Roger
>>
>
> Fundamentalism, as tasty an explanation as there is for banning and textual
> doctoring, isn't the whole story. The explanation I've heard as to why
> there are separate American and British editions of the Harry Potter books
> is that American children are not educated in the vocabulary of their own
> language, or how to use it to read and think critically. In other words,
> *boobus Americanus* lives on and on, and not just in politics.
>
> There is also politically-based discomfort. The fundies get all exercised
> over depictions of fucking or over what they take to be Satanism in
> Rowling's books. The ever-so-tolerant left on the other hand will become
> exercised at whatever it defines as a stereotype from the fundy right. I
> was once taken to task (I *know* I've said this before but it is a reminder
> to me of why I am not enamored with anyone's politics) by an editor for
> using the word "Jewess" in a poem. "Would you use the word 'Negress'?" he
> challenged. Answer: yes, if it fit the time period. The same as the
> offensive word "Jewess" was in a poem set in Poland in 1655. Besides,
> "female of the Hebraic persuasion" didn't scan--not that anyone of mine did
> or does.
>
> There is also the discomfort of the sword passing by the ear. Expand the
> definition of "ban" a bit. Look at what happened to opera before the
> influence of EuroTrash with its declared end to stodgy period literalism.
>
> Verdi suffered from this to a greater extent than some other composers
> because he was willing to take significant risks when he selected libretti.
> *La Traviata* (March 1853) bombed at its first performance not from
> political causes (because it satirized a King (Francis I) or depicted
> full-out murderous rage in a Lutheran pastor married to an adulteress
> (*Stiffelio*)) but because it was in modern dress and depicted current
> events: based on *La Dame aux Camellias*, it was a contemporary drama in
> which a lady of the demimonde was shown dying of consumption. It's 1853 and
> who was safe from TB back then? Nobody. It was the Great White Plague, it
> killed randomly and across class lines. You want to go to a theater and see
> people in your kind of clothing dying of a nasty disease? That could be you
> next month. "I go to the theater to be entertained."
>
> At the same time (and there is a contradiction here), you also don't want to
> see a soprano built like the Potala portraying a consumptive. So Verdi,
> smart enough theater animal to spot the error, shifted the sets to the 17th
> century and got himself a soprano who looked at least frail, if not like
> Teresa Stratas (the most convincing consumptive I ever saw if only because
> she was frail-looking, and had the disease when she was a child in Toronto).
>
> *Traviata* triumphs in its new *mise en scene*, and it is still triumphing.
>
> Flash forward. Before *Rent* could you imagine, say during the 1980s, an
> opera or musical in which the principal characters were involved with people
> who had AIDS? From the great 19th century killer to the late 20th century
> killer. Right, fundies wrote that AIDS was God's judgment on those
> unnatural homos doing unnatural homo things and that therefore displeased
> Jesus Christ or Hashem. I mean, the condemnation is right in the
> Scriptures, so it *must* be right.... Imagine a "EuroTrash" production
> where Violetta Valery or *Boheme's* Mimi was dying of AIDS. People would
> have walked out. Everyone in the New York or San Francisco opera audiences
> of the 80s knew at least one person who had AIDS--it was an unbearable topic
> to see onstage. I didn't see *Rent* so I have no idea what audience reaction
> was--I gather people got rather upset but kept attending.
>
> How many people are willing to go to the theater or to the opera and see
> life around them? And we can censor ourselves in what amounts to projective
> or prior restraint censorship, maybe the worst kind: "I can't write this
> because someone will be upset with me and it won't get produced anyway so
> why bother?"
>
> I suppose anyone can be a poor deluded censor. It depends what you find
> objectionable.
>
> K
>
> --
> Ken Wolman http://bestiaire.typepad.com
> http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
> -------------------
> "Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen,
> eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long." -- Walker Evans
>
--
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