I've got another puzzle for you
Oct. 17th, 2009 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matthewdalySo yesterday, I found myself acquainted with this 1973 "flamewar" between Eleanor Cameron and Roald Dahl over the utter lack of literary merit of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which ultimately led to a revision. And, not an hour later, I was excavating a dark corner of my house when I came upon a crate filled with childrens books, including Cameron's The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, and a first edition of Dahl's most famous work. So, in case anyone was confused about whose side to take, let me summarize my findings.
Cameron rules, Dahl drools.
"So I shipped them all over here, every man, woman, and child in the Oompa-Loompa tribe. It was easy. I smuggled them over in large packing cases with holes in them, and they all got here safely. They are wonderful workers. They all speak English now. The love dancing and music. They are always making up songs. [...] They still wear the same kind of clothes they wore in the jungle. They insist upon that, The man, as you can see for yourselves across the river, wear only deerskins. The women wear leaves, and the children wear nothing at all."
Funny, but I don't recall Johnny Depp and Deep Roy acting out that part of the story. Fortunately, my visualization is aided by a lovely Joseph Schindelman line drawing of not-at-all-large wooden crates with eyeholes and legholes drilled into them so that they looked in places like rectilinear insects capering around to amuse me. DAMN IT, this is why I wasn't horrified when I was taught about transatlantic slave ships. I appreciate whimsy, but this is whitewash.
I used to think that Roald Dahl was a moralist of our age, but that was before I read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and The Witches. After that, it was hard to escape the conclusion that Dahl is a petty man who works out his frustrations on fictional characters created to have flaws that ordinary people in civilized society would have the strength to tolerate. There are folks who argue that the 2005 movie was better than 1971 movie because it was more faithful to the book; in truth, that is not a small part of the reason that it was inferior. David Seltzer deserves an enormous amount of praise for the insight and courage to make a movie that was ultimately much less troublesome than the source. Including, I might add, a magnificent bastard who is more likely to quote Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde than rattle off four consecutive simple sentences.
Cameron rules, Dahl drools.
"So I shipped them all over here, every man, woman, and child in the Oompa-Loompa tribe. It was easy. I smuggled them over in large packing cases with holes in them, and they all got here safely. They are wonderful workers. They all speak English now. The love dancing and music. They are always making up songs. [...] They still wear the same kind of clothes they wore in the jungle. They insist upon that, The man, as you can see for yourselves across the river, wear only deerskins. The women wear leaves, and the children wear nothing at all."
Funny, but I don't recall Johnny Depp and Deep Roy acting out that part of the story. Fortunately, my visualization is aided by a lovely Joseph Schindelman line drawing of not-at-all-large wooden crates with eyeholes and legholes drilled into them so that they looked in places like rectilinear insects capering around to amuse me. DAMN IT, this is why I wasn't horrified when I was taught about transatlantic slave ships. I appreciate whimsy, but this is whitewash.
I used to think that Roald Dahl was a moralist of our age, but that was before I read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and The Witches. After that, it was hard to escape the conclusion that Dahl is a petty man who works out his frustrations on fictional characters created to have flaws that ordinary people in civilized society would have the strength to tolerate. There are folks who argue that the 2005 movie was better than 1971 movie because it was more faithful to the book; in truth, that is not a small part of the reason that it was inferior. David Seltzer deserves an enormous amount of praise for the insight and courage to make a movie that was ultimately much less troublesome than the source. Including, I might add, a magnificent bastard who is more likely to quote Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde than rattle off four consecutive simple sentences.
