It is difficult not to take a look at our environment and our reality and not be tempted to sigh and say “we live in dark times”. But of the many open fronts, today we will focus on the dystopian practice of modifying audiovisual or literary works created in the past to adjust them to the current sensitivities.
Perhaps one of the most surprising examples of this trend applied to the cinematographic medium is that perpetrated by Steven Spielberg on his own ‘ET The Extra-Terrestrial’. In it, the King Midas of Hollywood decided digitally modify the shots in which FBI agents point their guns at children protagonists to replace them with walkie-talkies.
erasing the past
Well, as he confessed during his masterclass at the Time 100 Summit event, the filmmaker regrets making the decisionand recommends that no one follow his example in this regard.
“It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it. ‘ET’ is a product of its time. No film should be reviewed based on the views we have now, either voluntarily or because we are forced to look through they.
‘ET’ was a movie where I was sensitive to federal agents approaching children with visible firearms, and I thought I might trade them for walkie-talkies… Years went by and I changed my own opinions. I should never have touched the files of my own work, and I don’t recommend anyone do so. All of our movies are kind of a sign of where we were when we made them, where the world was, and what the world was getting when we brought those stories out. So I’m really sorry I did that.”
The moderator of the talk did not hesitate to put on the table cases like that of Roald Dahl, whose work has recently been modified to omit content that might be considered sensitive by current readers. Spielberg did not hesitate to joke about it to, later, close his reflection with a tremendously accurate phrase.
“Nobody should try to take chocolate away from Willy Wonka! Never! To me, it’s sacred. It’s our history. It’s our cultural heritage. I don’t believe in that kind of censorship.”
Whether we like it or not, in a society in constant evolution —I would like to think that for the better—, cases like those of Dahl, Agatha Christie or the Warner Bros. They are a perfect record of our history, they remind us of where we come from and make us reflect on where we want to go..
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