They will take words from the James Bond books to fit the current era

It happened before with Roald Dahl and now… with Ian Fleming. The James Bond books will be rewritten in their new April editions to “fit” for the current era.

What will they do? They will draw on potentially offensive allusions, such as the appeal to “black” which is used to refer to slaves.

The changes will be reflected precisely on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the appearance of the first book in the series, “Royal Casino”.

a risky decision

The decision to change some adjectives came after the novels had been read by a group of readers tasked with deciding, based on the sensibilities of the time, whether the depiction of any population group in a book could be uncomfortable.

The “specialists” have recommended that some racial descriptions of black people be replaced so that they are not racistas well as other shocking words or descriptions.

Also, in the US versions, the sex scenes have been softened up.

At the same time, a warning will be introduced to accompany the adventures of agent 007 which will remind us that “this book was written in an era in which terms and attitudes that could be considered offensive by modern readers were common”.

“Many updates have been made to this edition, keeping it as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set,” reads the notice, revealed by the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

The newspaper cites as an example of the changes a passage in which Bond is visiting a strip club in Harlem, New York. “Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at a water trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry,” read the original text, which was changed to “Bond could feel the voltage in the room.” . .

The word “Negro“, considered highly offensive towards blacks, so much so that even newspapers today when they mention it describe it only as “n word” (the word with “n”), it was practically eliminated and replaced by “black person” or “black man”.

There are recent precedents

At the end of last year, that same word had sparked controversy with another famous work: “Ten little blacks”, by the British writer Christine Agathawhich has since been renamed “And There Were None”.

Based on the argument that “words matter”, a few days ago the Puffin publishing house decided to remove from the books of Roald Dalauthor of works such as “Matilda” or “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, words such as “fat” and “ugly” with the alleged aim of making the works in question more inclusive and less offensive.

With the works of Bond it is expected to achieve the same result in the new versions that will be released next April, the 70th anniversary of the publication of Fleming’s first book, “Casino Royale”.

In many of the books, such as “Thunderball” (1961), “For Your Eyes Only” (1960) and “Goldfinger” (1959) the ethnic groups were suppressed. The changes to the American edition of “Live and Let Die” were authorized by Fleming himself, who died in 1964.

Ian Fleming Publications’ imprint told The Telegraph: ‘We reviewed the text of the original Bond books and decided the best we could do was to follow the author’s lead. We made changes to ‘Live and Let Die which he authorized. Following his approach, we looked at instances of various racial terms in the books and removed several words or replaced terms that are more accepted today but in keeping with the time in which the books were written.”

The James Bond films are one of the most successful franchises of all time, grossing €7.4 billion. Daniel Craigthe latest actor to play the British spy and to retire from the role after the 2021 film ‘No time to die’ will pass to black actress Lashana Lynch.

Source: Telam