Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

OSJ

Recommended Posts

Okay folks, here's an interesting question, and I'm interested in where people stand on this issue. Personally, I don't think there are any right or wrong answers, merely opinions, and y'all know me well enough to know that I'm going to do whatever I please and damn the torpedoes anyway. ? 

Here's the deal: for years a friend of mine and I have been working on getting a complete set of the definitive weird tales of Jean Ray into print. He's been doing the heavy lifting with the actual translating since my French pretty much sucks. I've been setting things up with a publisher for the limited edition of a "Best of". Jean Ray, for uninitiated, was essentially the Belgian master of the weird tale (wish Roman still posted, so as a native Belgian, he could chime in!). Anyway, other than two rather slender and now expensive books, the vast majority of his work has never appeared in English. Thanks to Scott, that's about to change. 

However, as he prepared the definitive translations, he made an unpleasant discovery, Jean Ray was virulently anti-Semitic, the stuff had been edited out of the two collections that I spoke of, but he was as bad if not worse than Lovecraft. The texts are littered with references to "hook-nosed Jews, grasping money-lenders", and that sort of shit. The question is: Does one edit out the offensive stuff and preserve the reputation as a person of a guy that clearly doesn't deserve it, or do we publish the true unexpurgated texts and let the chips fall where they may? 

As I said, there are no absolute right or wrong answers, just answers. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is there any indication that Ray grew to regret his stance, that he evolved as a person? If yes, I say edit it out, that's what the original artist probably would want. If no, and you insist on continuing the project, keep it in. It's his words, history will judge him accordingly.

But, worse than Lovecraft? Jeeze Louise!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm all for 'Leave in the bad behaviour but with a preface or something to explain/contextualize it'.

Not because I love the folks who titter about how THEIR Nancy Drew books are the "Non-PC versions" (ie. racist) but because cleaning up the legacy of racist creators also acts as a sort of de facto sanitized editing of the history of the medium. It's important to discuss and develop on the problems of past creators to help build better fiction and discourse within the genre now. 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good deal. It appears from BZ's post that my old friend Jess Nevins and I are in full agreement. Hiding Jean Ray's nastiness only serves to whitewash his horrible opinions. FWIW: Jean Ray may have been a hell of a writer, but he was by all accounts a pretty shitty person (aside from the bigotry), he spent time in prison for swindling people and that sort of thing. As with Lovecraft, I think it perfectly fine to laud him as a great influence on weird fiction, while saying "fuck him" as a person. 

@mystman, Jean Ray had ample opportunities during his life to relent and he apparently chose not to. For a man who lived through WWII to hold those views is beyond horrifying. He needs to be outed for what he was.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm for all keeping history as is. Never hide who the person truly was. Modifying the written word of any era because of the sensibilities of the time is just lying about what the person was really like. Let people judge for themselves if they want to read it or not. As stated, just put in stuff noting the contents and how bad they are.

Or an another horrible option. Three versions! Put it out as is, edited for profit, er, content and for no reason a version in Hebrew. That would go well.

  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, OSJ said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

@mystman, Jean Ray had ample opportunities during his life to relent and he apparently chose not to. For a man who lived through WWII to hold those views is beyond horrifying. He needs to be outed for what he was.

Agreed then. Show the man for what he was.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only time that I've ever changed a word was in a Mark Hansom novel from the 1940s where a character used the n-word and it was obvious to me that he had the wrong character use it. One character was an elderly, assholish British clubman who would likely have used the term, Hansom slipped up and had one of his heroes use it, where the character used other much more acceptable terms throughout the book. I figured it was a F U and changed it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm with the crowd. A good foreward about the context, about not whitewashing, about how abhorrent you, the publishers find his views, about how his stories are nonetheless important to the history of the genre, etc

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Update: Shared your thoughts with my buddy, Scott Nicolay who is preparing the volume. Seems that most of the nasty stuff is concentrated in one of the six collections, Whiskey Tales, in case anyone plans on buying the set of books. Scott is like my younger brother and for the most part we are in lockstep on most moral and political issues, so the introduction will be very informative as to the author's influence and fucking savage as far as the author as a person. Jean Ray lived until 1964 and never publicly repudiated his views, so fuck him as a person. 

That said, I can't wait to read his collected weird tales, and hope that someday, someone translates his over 100 "Harry Dickson" detective stories, many of which turn out to be supernatural in nature. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have you read Houellebecq’s book on Lovecraft? I think he handles Lovecraft’s racism really well, I. e. He doesn’t compartmentalize Lovecraft’s racism but explains how it’s actually part-and-parcel of his fiction and worldview. “Contextualizing” Ray’s racism, if done wrong, serves the purpose of forgiving it as a historical given.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's one where an edit might be worth considering.  The movie HIS GIRL FRIDAY is one of the funniest and best movies ever made.  The main "serious" plot line is about a little guy who shot a cop and seemingly is clearly out of his mind, but the political machinery and the press narrative wants him to hang because, well, that's what's best for business.

But I never noticed there is one terrible line right near the beginning when Carey Grant is laying out the events to Rosalind Russell and she's like

"Why does the Mayor care one way or another?"

"Because it was a colored cop. and the colored vote is very strong here."

Now the word colored in a movie from 1940 is probably not going to shock anyone, but the idea that we are supposed to see this guy as a victim is because...get this...a white guy shot a BLACK COP and the mean blacks want him to pay for it and it's NOT FAIR!!!! is the kind of thing that just stops the movie dead today and renders the whole damn thing problematic.

But here's the other thing. It is never mentioned again and never plays any part in the plot. When they meet the guy, he's mainly "crazy" because he's been brainwashed by soap box commies spouting revolution and he's...well, just dumb.

But, man, does it take the wind out of the sails of an otherwise absolutely canonic comedy.  And one snip of about 120 frames maybe a second or so of footage....and it's perfectly fine.

What say you?  Does anyone need HIS GIRL FRIDAY to stand as a historical testament to the stupidity of the past? Or can we edit history on something like this and literally change the movie into something that you can show your friends without cringing or having to explain why you like it anyway?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well here's one where I think we get to take the medium and behaviors of the creative team into consideration. For those who don't know, His Girl Friday was a butchered version of the Broadway play The Front Page  and butchering a play in order to have a shorter running time in the theater usually gets the stink-eye from me, but in this case the creative forces driving this rig were Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, and Charles MacArthur, and Hecht and MacArthur wrote the original play, with Hecht ghosting much of the screenplay which Lederer is credited with.  Hecht was one of those guys who as long as you left him alone and paid him on time, didn't give two fucks about credits or awards. He was always highly in demand as was the director, Howard Hawks. Also, to say that the film had an all-star cast would be an understatement.  So, you've got a brilliant director, brilliant writers who saw fit to cut  about half an hour to forty-five minutes from source material that THEY WROTE ORIGINALLY. Yeah, I kind of doubt that a short throw-away scene like that being chopped would have bothered Ben Hecht, hell, he'd probably thank you for pointing out something else that could be cut without  damaging the integrity of the film, after all, it's supposed to be a comedy (and it is a damn fine one at that), and chattering on about a shooting is hardly germane  to making folks laugh.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Control said:

Have you read Houellebecq’s book on Lovecraft? I think he handles Lovecraft’s racism really well, I. e. He doesn’t compartmentalize Lovecraft’s racism but explains how it’s actually part-and-parcel of his fiction and worldview. “Contextualizing” Ray’s racism, if done wrong, serves the purpose of forgiving it as a historical given.

There is absolutely no compartmentalizing of Lovecraft's racism that makes any sense whatsoever, when you consider that most of his fiction dwells on the terrifying premise that there are beings different from us that will get you if you don't watch out! 

I'm quite sure that Lovecraft would have run like a scared rabbit if a Latino greeted him with "Buenos dias, senor!" 

No worries about my pal Scott doing anything to contextualizing Jean Ray's bigotry, my only worry is that he'll savage him so badly that the publisher 

won't want to do the remaining six books!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nor am I, generally speaking. However in this case they chopped everything that they could and as has been pointed out, this short scene could easily have been excised and no one would have cared one way or another. WB and Disney produced some horrible shit as did comix icon Will Eisner, who does not get a pass from me for "Ebony White" anymore than WB gets a pass for Bugs Bunny shoving a pair of plates under his lips and then prancing around with the very tribesmen who had been hunting him. What's really appalling is that this sort of shit was being shoveled to viewers in the early 1960s just before Sunday night prime time  kicked in. I remember it well as it was fried chicken and TV night.  WB Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies was on from six to seven, followed by Wikd Kingdon and in turn by Bonanza. Seems to me that the Ed Sullivan show was also on Sunday night. but whether it competed with Bonanza or followed it on the same channel I can't recall.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, piranesi said:

Here's one where an edit might be worth considering.  The movie HIS GIRL FRIDAY is one of the funniest and best movies ever made.  The main "serious" plot line is about a little guy who shot a cop and seemingly is clearly out of his mind, but the political machinery and the press narrative wants him to hang because, well, that's what's best for business.

But I never noticed there is one terrible line right near the beginning when Carey Grant is laying out the events to Rosalind Russell and she's like

"Why does the Mayor care one way or another?"

"Because it was a colored cop. and the colored vote is very strong here."

Now the word colored in a movie from 1940 is probably not going to shock anyone, but the idea that we are supposed to see this guy as a victim is because...get this...a white guy shot a BLACK COP and the mean blacks want him to pay for it and it's NOT FAIR!!!! is the kind of thing that just stops the movie dead today and renders the whole damn thing problematic.

But here's the other thing. It is never mentioned again and never plays any part in the plot. When they meet the guy, he's mainly "crazy" because he's been brainwashed by soap box commies spouting revolution and he's...well, just dumb.

But, man, does it take the wind out of the sails of an otherwise absolutely canonic comedy.  And one snip of about 120 frames maybe a second or so of footage....and it's perfectly fine.

What say you?  Does anyone need HIS GIRL FRIDAY to stand as a historical testament to the stupidity of the past? Or can we edit history on something like this and literally change the movie into something that you can show your friends without cringing or having to explain why you like it anyway?

His Girl Friday has been on my to-watch list for 20 years without me ever actually doing it, but man.  That puts the choices the C+ remake Switching Channels (which had a phenomenal cast and an ass-on-toast script) made on that subplot so much more interesting and understandable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I concur with Zeidler.  Discuss the bad behavior in a Preface One chapter because that deserves to be addressed, and then distill / review the work in Preface Two or and Afterword chapter.

Let readers come to their own conclusions about their feelings for the author vs. the work.

I would definitely punch Lovecraft in the liver if I ever traveled through time and met the guy, but I still grudgingly respect the impact his stories have had on one of my favorite genres of literature.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...