While I’m on a roll with articles on recent bowdlerization, let’s take a look at R. L. Stine. I’d heard that his publisher had made changes to improve supposedly offensive passages in his Goosebumps series but assumed that he had made them himself or at least consented to them. According to Stine, he wasn’t even informed of the changes till after the fact.
Book contracts almost always let the publisher edit the book, and the language is vague on how much they can change. The publisher, Scholastic, was probably within its legal rights, especially since I haven’t seen Stine say otherwise. Past reissues have included minor changes in wording that didn’t affect the meaning. Still, making significant changes to a book by a living author after it’s been in print for a long time, without telling the author, is unusual and arrogant.
It’s hard to get worked up over the changes as such. Goosebumps is a mass-produced series of over 100 short books for kids around the age of twelve, which is when they tend to develop a liking for gross-out stories. I read one of them, How I Got My Shrunken Head, as research for this post. It took less than an hour, and I’m not a fast reader. Going by this book and a couple of plot summaries for others in the series, they’re just mildly scary. The protagonist in this one is threatened by red ants, quicksand, a tiger, and treacherous people. The eponymous shrunken head adds a dose of creepiness all through the story.
What’s the issue? A Scholastic representative said, “Scholastic reviewed the text to keep the language current and avoid imagery that could negatively impact a young person’s view of themselves today, with a particular focus on mental health.”
The New York Post says: “Numerous mentions of ‘crazy’ were cut, replaced with terms such as ‘silly’, ‘wild’, ‘scary’, ‘lost her mind’ and ‘stressed’. The term ‘a real nut’ is now ‘a real wild one’ and ‘nutcase’ is ‘weirdo,’ the outlet noted.”
If kids can’t deal with those concepts, how is their mental health going to survive shrunken heads, fierce animals, and murderous humans?
I’ve skimmed through parts of another book, Little Shop of Hamsters, which is part of the Goosebumps “Horrorland” series. It deals with a scheme to create aggressive fighting hamsters and thereby rule the world. On having it explained to him, the viewpoint character’s reaction is, “He’s CRAZY! He’s totally stark-raving NUTS!” I suppose the revised version would be something like “He’s silly! He’s totally stark-raving stressed!”
Some of the changes make more sense. ComicBook.com reports:
Notably, the reissue of 1998’s Bride of the Living Dummy changes the ventriloquist dummy from knocking a girl unconscious using a “love tap” to a magic spell instead while the 1996 book Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns changes the description of one character, Lee, from being like “the rappers on MTV videos” to “tall and good-looking, with brown skin, dark brown eyes and a great, warm smile. He sort of struts when he walks and acts real cool.”
It may be just as well not to make kids think they can safely knock someone out with a blow to the head. A reference to 1996 MTV videos won’t mean much to today’s young readers. It still would have been nice to inform the author.
This case is just a footnote compared to the changes to Dahl, Fleming, and Christie. The overall trend reflects a notion that readers, both children and adults, are unable to cope with certain words and concepts. In this view, there are things we have to hide behind a curtain and not talk about. In this not so brave, not so new world, the promoters of taboos try to limit what we can talk about, claiming we’ll be happier that way. Is that future of publishing? It would be depressing.