Wokeism of the day *Revised Mod Note in OP and threadbanned users*

We're one step away from burning them now. Disgraceful.

Maybe I missed it in the article but it didn't actually say what he did to get charged with sexual assault on the American tourist. I thought the mining a sex act related to former colleague and she filed a sexual harassment complaint. Or did I completely misread the whole article?

You do realise that Matilda was published in 1988? Charlie and The Chocolate Factory was published in 1964, James and the Giant Peach in 1962.

The BFG is his his best ever seller and that was published in 1982, six years before Matilda. Some reach to say nobody would have heard of him only for his editor rewriting one of his last ever books. In fact, I'd say it's a nonsensical claim.

Dahl was successful for many many years before Matilda was released.

Your exact words: "We wouldn’t be discussing Dahl specifically today because he’d be as likely to have been heard of as the many millions of authors of children’s books who we’ve never heard of"

Now, you are saying that in 40 years nobody would have heard of him bar the 'ultra woke'. Which is it?

Also on that link you posted it does indeed claim that Matilda might be the best seller of 'the last few years' (a very vague claim with zero numbers/citations to back it up).

On the same page it states that he has sold over a quarter of a billion books, James and the Giant Peach' sold 12 million, Charlie and the Choc factory 13 million, the BFG 37 million copies. Matilda has sold 17 million. With those numbers I'm sure a few will still know who is is in 40 years time.

And can you show me any figures for book sales pre and post movie releases? Not sure I believe that claim that 'interest in the books was driven by movies and musicals' either.

If Netflix hadn’t bought the rights to his works and are intending to bring them to a whole new audience, we wouldn’t have heard of him 40 years from now. There’s no contradiction there? He was obviously never happy about adaptations of his works, and he’s probably doing 9,000RPM in his grave over the deal with Netflix which he never would have approved of, but same as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - he hated it, but he knew it generated interest in his books. He hated it because it was a complete departure from his original vision, which had to be toned down in order for it to be able to be published.

It doesn’t just claim to be his best seller of the last few years, it’s sold more than all his previous works combined. He wouldn’t have approved of the adaptations either, but it’s because of the adaptations that new audiences were introduced to his books which weren’t as dark as he had originally envisioned, which would never have seen the light of day because they wouldn’t have been published. No, I can’t show you pre- and post- adaptation sales, but that’s generally how these things work - a book which was previously published gets adapted into a musical or a film and is brought to a wider audience, as Netflix are intending to do with Dahl’s work. They pretty much bought the rights for peanuts compared to the revenue they will generate from bringing Dahl’s work to a wider audience, more than could ever have been achieved by book sales alone.

It explicitly states on the link you provided that Matilda has sold 17 million copies and that he has sold 250 million books in total. Something isn't adding up.

Anyway I'll leave it there, don't want to derail the thread any further and get it closed again.

Forgive me, I thought it was obvious. It states that in the last few years, Matilda has sold more than his previous works combined - in the last few years Matilda has sold better than his other books, because Matilda is more popular than his other books with more people introduced to it because of the musical and film adaptations, which got them into the book Matilda, and when they read Matilda, they were interested to read his other books. Sort of like the way Amazon recommends books based on your previous orders.

Another good example is The Witcher - originally a series of books which many people won’t have heard of before the video game adaptation, and the Netflix series which brought them to an even wider audience, generating interest in the video games and books.

Aye, probably for the best 👍

I don't know about Great British Railways, but I definitely wouldn't watch Coast these days

removed because double post

No side should be dehumanised tbf. I specifically mentioned the combination of “orc” and “mordor”. But I wouldn’t want to derail the thread, just thought that this sounded quite familiar to things I had noticed.

Murray is deliberately misrepresenting what RICU observed, in that these are “required reading” lists posted by people who have already been identified as right-wing extremists. It’s material that these extremists have decided other people need to read, or view, or whatever. Some of the entries on these lists ARE bizarre, but the right-wing extremists who share them obviously see some value in them.

I wouldn’t wipe my arse with Murray’s ‘Strange Death of Europe’ for example, but I can see how someone would be radicalised by it. I’ve never had any exposure to Lord Of the Rings apart from a copy given to me by a friend 20 years ago which I’ve never read, but it’s about as plausible as being radicalised by anything else - perception informs reality.

Meanwhile, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare were placed on a list of "key texts" for white supremacists.

A report by the programme's Research Information and Communications Unit (RICU) said that extremists posted "reading lists" on online chat boards.

The document shared a list of these "important texts" under pictures of Nigel Farage and 1930s British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley.

Works from BBC's 1990s political thriller House of Cards to classic film The Dambusters to John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy made the rankings.

https://www.thesun.ie/news/10245732/great-british-railway-journeys-prevent-far-right/amp/

The whole reason it came about is because of the report Murray refers to by William Shawcross is pretty scathing of Prevent’s failure to focus on Islamic radicalism, something which RICU was set up to do, and Murray is getting his knickers in a twist and calling for ‘sackings by the score’ because they’ve expanded their remit to include other forms of extremist radicalism. Only reason Murray is kissing Shawcross’s arse is because Shawcross agrees with his opinions about the threat of Islamic radicalism in Western Europe. Murray’s act is basically a bad parody of woke ideology.

I’d safely say none of these right-wing extremists have actually ever read any Shakespeare, it’s on the list simply so they appear more cultured than they actually are. There’s a better chance they actually do have a copy of Harry Potter tucked inside their copy of Othello that they’re pretending to read! 😂

SPOILERS man, ffs!

:pac:

Vegan good is very hit-and-miss to be fair. Had some excellent plant-based burgers in Sweden that you honestly wouldn't know weren't meat.

That said, I've had the 'bacon' too.... ugh...

Anyway, I'll just leave this here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di55DEnNkUs