The actor who played the original Augustus Gloop in the film adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has hit out at the decision to remove “offensive” words and phrases in the Roald Dahl book. Book publisher Puffin made the decision to make hundreds of changes to Dahl’s books by removing words like “fat” and phrases like “a hippopotamus …enormous … like a fat pig.” The phrases were used to describe Augustus Gloop – a character in the popular children’s book.
Michael Bollner, who starred in the original 1971 film when he was 12, defended the original text of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The German star, 64, said: “The story is actually very good – it shows you bad things and bad behaviours, like that kids should not watch TV and should not eat too much.
“All these are good things, I think, so why stop children knowing about this?”
Brits across the country seem to agree with the German actor, as revealed when news of the rewrites took social media by storm over the weekend, reports Daily Star.
One social media user said that children would never learn that words can be offensive if they’re removed from books: “If you keep removing and changing every single word as it might be offensive like ‘ugly’ and ‘fat’ then children will never learn how to cope with any kind of hurtful comment in life and will cry and moan at any slight inconvenience”.
Another said that children might end up ill-equipped to handle the real world if “offensive” language is taken from them at a young age: “Trouble is when the kids grow up there gonna totally freak out on how brutal real life is – despair at all these snowflakes”.
Puffin’s controversial decision has sparked a debate in the UK, with overseas publishers not keen on following suit.
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The French publisher of Roald Dahl’s books said that it would not be making any changes to the late author’s books.
Gallimard said on Tuesday the original texts would “remain intact” after the UK publisher Puffin hired sensitivity readers to remove language deemed inappropriate.
“This rewriting only affects Great Britain. We have never modified Roald Dahl’s writings and we have no plans to do so today,” a spokesperson for the publisher’s children’s department said.
