{"id":35,"date":"2006-07-26T15:34:53","date_gmt":"2006-07-26T15:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepulp.net\/PulpBlogs\/YellowedPerils_test\/?p=35"},"modified":"2006-07-26T15:34:53","modified_gmt":"2006-07-26T15:34:53","slug":"a-question-of-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/2006\/07\/26\/a-question-of-language\/","title":{"rendered":"A question of language"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been plowing through Doc Savage<\/em> novels recently, prepping for one of the highlights of the annual Arizona DocCon<\/a>, the trivia quiz. Among the stack were a couple of Doc<\/em> novels that struck me as containing blatantly offensive material.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Warning
Warning label on Lester Dent's Zeppelin Tales<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both instances were derogatory references to blacks. For instance, The Pirate\u2019s Ghost<\/em> had Doc going undercover as a black man. He shuffled along, spoke in heavy dialect and often rubbed a rabbit\u2019s foot for good luck. In Mad Mesa<\/em>, Ham and Monk disguise themselves as train porters who are described as being \u201cas black and shiny as Concord grapes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such references aren\u2019t common in Doc<\/em> stories, but they are there sometimes. I\u2019ve read nearly a dozen Doc<\/em> adventures in the past month and those two were the only instances that jumped out at me. Of course, many other pulp stories include derogatory references to a wide range of ethnic groups, such as Jews, Arabs, Irish, Italians, Chinese and Japanese.<\/p>\n

How should such offensive language or descriptions be handled in pulp reprints? In the case of the Bantam Doc<\/em> paperbacks, it was included with no comment. In the future, should it be included as is, included with an explanatory note or warning label, or edited out?<\/p>\n

Matthew Goodman at Heliograph Inc.<\/a> took a unique approach in the company\u2019s recently published book Lester Dent\u2019s Zeppelin Tales<\/em>. They created a content warning label (that\u2019s it to the left) for the cover, much like the Entertainment Software Rating Board puts on video games.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew the book would have content that would offend people,\u201d Goodman said in an e-mail. \u201cHeck, I added back in some offensive material that editors of the day cut out. I thought it made the book more interesting, but I wanted to make sure that people knew about it up front.\u201d<\/p>\n

(The stories in Zeppelin Tales<\/em> are as close to Dent\u2019s original manuscripts as they could get them, rather than based on the published versions of the stories.)<\/p>\n

In an appendix titled \u201cMagazine vs. Manuscript,\u201d Goodman addresses the offensive material:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve added them back because Dent clearly intended them to appear in the stories. What\u2019s really fascinating (and telling, I think) is that they\u2019re often used conversationally and descriptively, not as an attack on an individual\u2019s race or religion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In our e-mail conversation, Goodman offered an interesting twist to the common thought that what\u2019s offensive today, wasn\u2019t back in the 1930s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I try to say in Zeppelin Tales<\/em> is that much of what is offensive now was also offensive then, based on reading the manuscripts and editors\u2019 comments,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve had publishers and authors say that when modern authors write pulp it is A-OK to add in all sorts of slurs because they weren\u2019t offensive in the 1930s. From my research, that\u2019s just an excuse, and not even an accurate one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goodman writes in Zeppelin Tales\u2019<\/em> appendix that during the pulp era, editors frequently removed most of the offensive words from stories. And that Street and Smith Publications<\/a>, in particular, had a strict policy against defamatory and inappropriate language.<\/p>\n

As for warning labels, Goodman said, \u201cWhat I did was completely because I thought it was the right thing to do. I don\u2019t expect anyone to follow my example.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, with more new reprints introducing new readers to classic pulp fiction, how should offensive material be handled? I don\u2019t have a clear answer.<\/p>\n

\u2013 William<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been plowing through Doc Savage novels recently, prepping for one of the highlights of the annual Arizona DocCon, the trivia quiz. Among the stack were a couple of Doc novels that struck me as containing blatantly offensive material.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[4,11],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-pulps"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2qgXO-z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}