
Andy Weir’s Best Seller ‘The Martian’ Gets a Classroom-Friendly Makeover - ilamont
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/business/andy-weirs-best-seller-the-martian-gets-a-classroom-friendly-makeover.html?_r=0
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mabbo
Having read the book something like five times now[0] I'm actually okay with
this.

The swearing and cursing does make it a better book, but removing that doesn't
remove the beauty of it. The film adaptation was okay without it (though it
lost some scenes I'd have loved it to have included, and I'm only somewhat
okay with Matt Damon in the lead role).

Kids with cool parents will buy them the better version, and they'll get to
show it off to their friends. Now it's not about who is reading the book, but
who's reading the cool version of it.

[0] I bought it as a KDP novel for $0.99, somewhere between it being a free
book online and it being picked up by a mainstream publisher. Every now and
then I want to re-read some small part of it, and accidentally re-read it all.
One of my favourite books, honestly.

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erbo
PG-13 movies are allowed two uses of the word "fuck." _The Martian_ had Matt
Damon use them fairly early on, first, when Watney yanks the piece of the
antenna out of himself ("FUCK!"), and second, when he makes up his mind to
survive ("Fuck you, Mars"). They allude to its use in many other places,
though, such as the memorable shot from _outside_ the Rover where you can
clearly see his lips saying "What the fuck? What the fuck?" Then there was
some "censored" text in the chat logs, a reference to Watney telling the
botanists to "have sex with themselves," and so forth.

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libeclipse
Wow I think we all need to step back and chill when it comes to swears. It's
actually a _really_ brilliant book in its current form, why would you change
it for kids for the sake of a few minor swear words that the kids probably
know better than you anyways.

~~~
frostirosti
It's hard playing moral arbiter. On the one hand, you want to make it
accessible to as many students as possible as well as teach them the core of
what you want. You could probably replace much of the cursing without changing
the underlying narrative.

But I also totally understand your point. Why is every marvel movie jam packed
with gratuitous violence. To the point where fighting is the entire point of
the narrative. Characters will die in fantastic ways but is still equally
traumatizing. But portraying love or swearing is too adult for children. Makes
no sense to me.

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libeclipse
Yeah, I see what you mean. But while the profanity probably could be removed,
I think it would really _take_ something from the character. The swears give
the story a real, raw feel somehow -- they really make you feel as if it's
actually happening.

He talks like the rest of us, not like a robot.

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bostonpete
There are plenty of people who don't really swear though. If Weir was cool
with the changes, he must've felt like the profanity wasn't crucial to the
story.

~~~
libeclipse
Well it could be argued that the author's intention is no more correct than
the audience's interpretation.

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scotty79
What's up with kids and swearing?

I remember from being a kid that the etiquette I quickly figured out was that
kids don't swear around adults and adults don't swear around kids. Where does
this come from? Are there any anthropological studies about this?

Kids around kids can swear as much as they like, same with adults around
adults, and they use exactly same swears, maybe adults with more awareness
where did the swearwords came from, since they have better understanding of
sex.

I swore much worse and much more as a kid than I do as an adult (I curbed my
swearing around high-school). I haven't met an adult that swore as much as we
did as kids.

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Uhhrrr
Swearing is artificially powerful language, and kids are especially prone to
abusing any shred of power they can get (because of fully justified insecurity
about how much power they have). So if you allow swearing it they'd just ruin
the artificial language power hierarchy for everybody.

Devil's advocate: maybe they should!

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PerryCox
It's good that kids will get to read this as part of their class, but America
as a country needs to relax when it comes to swearing. How much damage can
reading the word fuck do to someone who is 13-18 years old?

~~~
mudil
I believe that constant swearing is inappropriate. As a matter of fact, in
that book it decreased believability for me. An educated astronaut, faced with
a possible extinction, would want to leave a worthy testament/diary, and not
an expletive-riddled notes.

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dceddia
I felt the opposite actually. To me, the swearing made it more believable --
sure, the guy is leaving a diary, but for all he knows, nobody will ever find
it. Being stranded on Mars and facing one's own death seems like the _perfect_
occasion for swearing.

I thought the swearing in that book was very tastefully done. For me it added
a bit of lightness and humor to the whole thing. I'm actually pretty
disappointed that they cut so many of the swears from the movie.

~~~
libeclipse
This. The profanity, in my opinion, is really well used in the book. It gives
it a raw and authentic feel that you wouldn't otherwise get. You can really
see yourself there because he's talking like a human, not some politically
correct ideal of a person.

~~~
jat850
I think your point is fair, but there are also some humans (who are not just
politically correct ideals) who don't lace their speech or writing with
swears, even under duress or stressful conditions - they're still talking like
humans, too. It would be no less raw or authentic if the character was one of
these people.

To be clear, the character is a foul-mouthed variety of person. But if he
weren't, and the book were absent of swearing, it would not seem any less
authentic to me.

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27182818284
To be honest, I was actually distracted by the the swearing because it really
was unnecessary writing. Like there are places where as an editor I would have
told him to cut it too. --E.g., when he finds out what re-runs his crew member
has and immediately follows the sentence with some cursing. It just would have
been better with a lot of other literary devices.

Although some books will lose something if you subtract the harsher language,
this is not one of them.

~~~
bendykstra
It's not necessary in any real sense, but a foul-mouthed astronaut who doesn't
swear isn't a foul-mouthed astronaut. It's a trait that works well with the
character's irreverent attitude.

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irrational
It's simple. The teacher/school would have to get permission from parents.
Many parents would refuse to give permission. This would force the
teacher/school to provide alternative material. That becomes a pain when part
of the class is reading one thing and part is reading a different thing. Its
just easier to avoid the situation all together by either "sanitizing" the
book or using a different book.

By the way, thanks for the link. I just ordered a classroom version of the
book for my kids to read (yes, I would be one of those parents who wouldn't
give permission for their kids to read the original version.)

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nkrisc
Picking battles and all that. I don't think it's worth keeping this book out
of the hands of more kids for the sake of a few swear words. It's not exactly
Catcher in the Rye.

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nickhalfasleep
The important part of the book isn't the swearing, it's the science and
engineering. This isn't William S. Burroughs.

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psychometry
Do other English-speaking countries deal with this absurd demonization of
commonly-heard curse words?

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danpalmer
Yeah this wouldn't be allowed in UK schools because of the swearing. "Crap"
would be allowed, and "shit" might be in the context of a piece of literature
being reviewed in an English class, but in a science class there's no need for
it and it is considered inappropriate for children. For context, saying 'the
f-word' or equivalent in earshot of a teacher would usually result in
punishment.

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libeclipse
That's not true. I just went through secondary education in the UK and we've
studied pieces of literature with quite raw swears in them. It's not a massive
issue.

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danpalmer
As I said in my answer, literature study is the place where it would be
acceptable, but it wouldn't be appropriate in a science class where the point
is not analysing the language.

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adtac
Why? The inner monologue with all its swearing is what made the book what it
is. It's hilarious, witty AND you get to learn actual engineering.

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EdwardCoffin
This makes me think of Peter Watts' experiences regarding making one of _his_
books 'classroom-friendly' [1]. Briefly, a high-school teacher wanted to use
his _Blindsight_ in her English class, and got his reluctant permission to
produce a censored version. It never got off the ground, because there was
parental protest at teaching from a book that at one point had profanity in
it.

[1]
[http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6879](http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6879)

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tyingq
There have been several businesses that filter or skip over swearing and other
content in movies.

Somewhat interesting, all 3 started in Utah.

[https://www.vidangel.com/news/mission/](https://www.vidangel.com/news/mission/)

[https://try.clearplay.com/what-is-clearplay/](https://try.clearplay.com/what-
is-clearplay/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CleanFlicks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CleanFlicks)

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ubiyubix
Yeah. Let's water down the shit out of this. It's a fantastic book even
without the profanity and if this is required to get it into the classroom,
well, then so be it. The original language makes it even more attractive to
some younger readers though. "I'm pretty much fucked." as the very first
sentence? Cool, I'll keep on reading.

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CodeSheikh
Try going to any social media outlets like Instagram or Twitter or Snapchat
and suddenly swear words like "fuck" and "crap" will seem normal. These kids
have access to social media these days. Innocence was long gone with the
advent of open social media. Good luck modern parents.

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headcanon
Honestly, all the swearing is pretty good training for future jobs. In my
experience, engineers swear almost as much as financial analysts and sailors.
"It behaves fucky" is probably our most used technical term.

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dankohn1
My son read it in 3rd grade, after I helped him read the first chapter. It was
the first adult book he'd ever read. He was so excited to then be able to see
the movie.

I'm wildly supportive of the PG version of the book. There are a lot of
prudish parents out there, and public schools naturally have to be inclined
toward folks who complain the most.

It would be tragic to allow a few bad words to keep such an inspiring book
from millions of children who wouldn't see it otherwise.

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SCdF
If I buy The Martian in a year will I get the normal version of the safe for
our precious children version? If I buy it on Kindle will it magically update
in the future to protect my brain from the badness?

Or will there be an adult version and a child version?

IDK, I find this kind of thing really stupid and pointless[1], but then again
I don't have kids so I doubt my opinion matters on the subject to those that
do.

[1] Kids swear like trains when they're 10, or these days probably younger.

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dcre
All the people here saying "I don't get what the big deal with the swear words
is" are far more stupid than the teachers who went and got the changes made so
they could actually use the damn book in their classrooms.

When millions of people have some harmless feeling you think is irrational,
the thing to do is work around it, not whine about it on Hacker News.

~~~
aanm1988
No, the teachers are idiots who would censor literature "for the greater
good".

The people who have a problem with a kid (I'm guessing this would be 8th grade
plus?, so teenagers) reading a few swear words in a book need to get over it.

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dv_dt
So somebody just locked in a made-for-school monopoly on the 'safe' text, and
schools will now likely pay a premium. All to protect middle/high schools
students from swear words they can hear in the halls everyday.

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kpwagner
I hope we get a sanitized version of Django Unchained for my high school U.S.
history students. It really is a good story, but the constant use of the
N-word is a problem.

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leggomylibro
Yeah, just like Huckleberry Finn. Obviously those kinds of works need to go
through the censors before we can let children near them.

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douche
Kind of a travesty. It's nothing these kids wouldn't hear on the school bus
every day.

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Mindless2112
Kids need models of appropriate behavior. They don't need models of
inappropriate behavior -- they've already got it.

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aarpmcgee
I think it is important for people to occasionally remember that the concept
of what is "appropriate" is completely made up.

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nsxwolf
Well lets all walk around class naked and defecate in the trash cans then.

