(no subject)
Sep. 12th, 2011 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skull_bearerThere was an article in the Guardian about Roald Dahl today, apparently it's been 50 years since his first children's book, James and the Giant Peach, was published. It also seemed to be a moment for everyone to start bashing him, which bewildered me.
I grew up, like just about every British kid my age, with Roald Dahl. His stories were dark, twisted and clever. In many ways they have more in common with fairy tales and fables than, say, the Babysitter's Club. Larger than life characters, winning through trickery over brute strength, vicious, filthy, monsterous bad guys (dear lord were they awesome). Dahl had a knack of getting into the minds of kids and playing to how we saw the world: huge, confusing, and filled with people we'd love to see get their just deserts.
So yeah, I am really not impartial about these books. I loved them as a kid, I love them as an adult. It helps that Dahl's handful of notes on writing in a collection of his short stories (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, if you want to know) provided the blueprint of how to write when I started. (Funny story, one of them was 'You have to be able to make a scene come alive to the reader, this is a knack, either you have it or you don't'. The day I got back a piece of writing with the comment 'you really made this come alive' I was chuffed like you couldn't believe). So anyway, when the Guardian started bashing him I was more than a little miffed.
Now, I never knew Roald Dahl. He died when I was five. He might have been nice, he might have been horrible, many people said he was very difficult. I have no idea. I'm talking about his books, and I've read enough of them to get an idea of what to expect. So here are the refutations:
Anti-Semitic: Again, I have no idea how Dahl was in his real life. All I know is that Harry Potter has more anti-semitic imagery than any of Roald Dahl's books. The only time I ever remember him mentioning Jewish people at all was in his autobiography Going Solo, where at one point when he was in the RAF in WW2, he runs across a refugee German Jewish community in the Middle East (I forget where). They chat, Dahl is puzzled at what German Jews are doing here (he'd been in East Africa for the last five or so years and hadn't heard that, in his words 'the biggest mass murder in the history of the world was taking place in Germany at that moment'), they chat about about the need for a Jewish homeland, Dahl doesn't quite get it but okay, he takes off, and that's the end of it. If they guy was anti-semitic, he never let it taint his writing. Don't let it put off you buying these books for your kids, if he was anti-semitic, you won't find any of it in them
Racist: Maybe racist by omission? I don't remember any people of colour in his books, or any sterotypes either. I heard the oompa loompas were originally black but in my book they were white, so he clearly had no trouble in going back and fixing uncomfortable implications. Otherwise... the giants in the BFG might have some black sterotypes? But they're described with purplish skin, so that's a stretch.
Again, the only mention of race I get in his books is in Going Solo, when he's in East Africa, and talks about the black servants he met. He doesn't come down in any way for or against colonialisation, except maybe for a bit where he complains about the British authorities refusing to let black people learn English. To be honest, even now (considering this was written by someone born in 1920 something) I can't find much objectable about how he wrote about the black people he met. He treated them as people, talked about their tribes and backgrounds, and avoided any sterotypes. At one point when WW2 broke out he was drafted into the army and put in charge of a squad of native soldiers. He had no troublt in admitting he had no idea what he was doing and passed on command to the black sargeant, who did.
Okay, he was in a colonised country and the racism was obviously there... I don't know. Again, you really have to stretch.
Misogynistic: Okay, here I have to take a stand. Misogynistic? Are we talking about the same guy? The guy who wrote Matilda? And the BFG? And the Witches (most epic grandmother ever)? No. Just Big NO. Sorry, no go, not having it. As a kid, he was one of the few writers who had female protagonists in stories that weren't about boys and school and lipstick. They were clever, they were brave, they could do everything the boys did. Some, like Matilda and the Grandmother in the Witches, were good, while others; like the Witches themselves and the ever fantastic Trunchbull, were evil. Some of them weren't even human, like Miss Spider. While there are only a few good adult women in his books, there are only a few good adult men as well. His trope was Adults are Useless (or evil). Again, I don't know what his real life politics were but that would need some serious disconnect.
So yeah, rant-rant-rantedy-rant. Leave my childhood alone.
I grew up, like just about every British kid my age, with Roald Dahl. His stories were dark, twisted and clever. In many ways they have more in common with fairy tales and fables than, say, the Babysitter's Club. Larger than life characters, winning through trickery over brute strength, vicious, filthy, monsterous bad guys (dear lord were they awesome). Dahl had a knack of getting into the minds of kids and playing to how we saw the world: huge, confusing, and filled with people we'd love to see get their just deserts.
So yeah, I am really not impartial about these books. I loved them as a kid, I love them as an adult. It helps that Dahl's handful of notes on writing in a collection of his short stories (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, if you want to know) provided the blueprint of how to write when I started. (Funny story, one of them was 'You have to be able to make a scene come alive to the reader, this is a knack, either you have it or you don't'. The day I got back a piece of writing with the comment 'you really made this come alive' I was chuffed like you couldn't believe). So anyway, when the Guardian started bashing him I was more than a little miffed.
Now, I never knew Roald Dahl. He died when I was five. He might have been nice, he might have been horrible, many people said he was very difficult. I have no idea. I'm talking about his books, and I've read enough of them to get an idea of what to expect. So here are the refutations:
Anti-Semitic: Again, I have no idea how Dahl was in his real life. All I know is that Harry Potter has more anti-semitic imagery than any of Roald Dahl's books. The only time I ever remember him mentioning Jewish people at all was in his autobiography Going Solo, where at one point when he was in the RAF in WW2, he runs across a refugee German Jewish community in the Middle East (I forget where). They chat, Dahl is puzzled at what German Jews are doing here (he'd been in East Africa for the last five or so years and hadn't heard that, in his words 'the biggest mass murder in the history of the world was taking place in Germany at that moment'), they chat about about the need for a Jewish homeland, Dahl doesn't quite get it but okay, he takes off, and that's the end of it. If they guy was anti-semitic, he never let it taint his writing. Don't let it put off you buying these books for your kids, if he was anti-semitic, you won't find any of it in them
Racist: Maybe racist by omission? I don't remember any people of colour in his books, or any sterotypes either. I heard the oompa loompas were originally black but in my book they were white, so he clearly had no trouble in going back and fixing uncomfortable implications. Otherwise... the giants in the BFG might have some black sterotypes? But they're described with purplish skin, so that's a stretch.
Again, the only mention of race I get in his books is in Going Solo, when he's in East Africa, and talks about the black servants he met. He doesn't come down in any way for or against colonialisation, except maybe for a bit where he complains about the British authorities refusing to let black people learn English. To be honest, even now (considering this was written by someone born in 1920 something) I can't find much objectable about how he wrote about the black people he met. He treated them as people, talked about their tribes and backgrounds, and avoided any sterotypes. At one point when WW2 broke out he was drafted into the army and put in charge of a squad of native soldiers. He had no troublt in admitting he had no idea what he was doing and passed on command to the black sargeant, who did.
Okay, he was in a colonised country and the racism was obviously there... I don't know. Again, you really have to stretch.
Misogynistic: Okay, here I have to take a stand. Misogynistic? Are we talking about the same guy? The guy who wrote Matilda? And the BFG? And the Witches (most epic grandmother ever)? No. Just Big NO. Sorry, no go, not having it. As a kid, he was one of the few writers who had female protagonists in stories that weren't about boys and school and lipstick. They were clever, they were brave, they could do everything the boys did. Some, like Matilda and the Grandmother in the Witches, were good, while others; like the Witches themselves and the ever fantastic Trunchbull, were evil. Some of them weren't even human, like Miss Spider. While there are only a few good adult women in his books, there are only a few good adult men as well. His trope was Adults are Useless (or evil). Again, I don't know what his real life politics were but that would need some serious disconnect.
So yeah, rant-rant-rantedy-rant. Leave my childhood alone.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-13 05:14 am (UTC)There are very few children's books I'd still read and enjoy. All of his are on that list.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-13 07:28 am (UTC)S C R A M
(what's the antisemitic imagery in Harry Potter, or were you using that as an example of something that isn't antisemitic?)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-13 12:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-13 03:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-13 08:43 pm (UTC)