Piggy pedagogy

Piggy pedagogy

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Media today 127

Reading: Kathryn Lasky, Die Legende der Wächter 1. Die Entführung, loc. 88-227 (kindle edition). ListeningRoald Dahl, Charlie und die Schokoladenfabrik, 1.30 - 1:39. ViewingEs war einmal das Leben, "Das Herz" (26 min.).

In the original Dahl book, the gluttonous boy Augustus Gloop finds himself in a situation where he may get turned into fudge. 




In the German translation (published 1969), fudge is rendered as Negerküsse, "negro kisses." This term is generally avoided in German-speaking countries today (here and here), and German publishers are starting to edit this and other such terms out of children's books. This has caused an outcry in sectors of the culture. A couple of years ago, the German literary critic Dennis Scheck put on blackface (with white gloves, to boot) and went on TV to protest what he calls censorship. It was a thoroughly painful and embarrassing spectacle from an otherwise great critic.

Personally, I'm just fine with what the publishers are doing. I don't really want my child to be hearing words like this at his age, before he is really able to grasp their social resonance. I don't think this or any of the other stories in question stands or falls aesthetically with the presence or absence of such terms, which are just that—terms, not episodes or content that cannot be changed without tampering with the story as such. 

However, I do think edited versions should be characterized as such, and it would also be a good idea to have a short foreward describing the edits.

As for how I dealt with the word Negerküsse in this particular case: Last time we listened to the story, about a year ago, I didn't say anything, but made a note to myself to do so the next time. Which I did. We listened to the section, then I pulled over to the side of the road and explained what the word means and why; that most people no longer use this word and should not, because it is very hurtful; that the translator used it because she was writing a long time ago, before Germans really knew or thought much about how hurtful it could be; and that the world is now a different place than it was back then. 

I took the same strategy with Otfried Preußler's Die kleine Hexe (which was one of the controversial books in the German debate in 2013).  

Total audio 2015: 30.43
Total video 2015: 50.23
Age 5.6.30

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