Speaker 1: Before we start. One production note. In this episode, we
Speaker 1: again have quotes from Roll Dall. Rather than just have
Speaker 1: me read them in my terrible British accent, we decided
Speaker 1: to bring them to life, so we use an actor's
Speaker 1: performance and some custom software to create a Doll like voice. Okay,
Speaker 1: onto the episode, Roll Dall says, comfortably at home giving
Speaker 1: which should be a casual, breezy phone interview to a
Speaker 1: popular magazine called The New Statesman. It's nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: Doll is at this point, without question, the most famous
Speaker 1: and most successful children's author of all time. The BFG
Speaker 1: came out just last year and was a phenomenon. The
Speaker 1: Witches is about to be published. A critical acclaim on
Speaker 1: the phone with Dall is Michael Koran, a young theater critic.
Speaker 1: Koran is just out of college. He's not an experienced
Speaker 1: journalist or some sort of master interrogator. This isn't some
Speaker 1: kind of brilliant gotcha moment, but Doll is in one
Speaker 1: of his dark moods. Koran asked about a book review
Speaker 1: that Dall recently wrote. The book centered on the very
Speaker 1: thorny topic of the Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The previous year.
Speaker 1: Doll decides he doesn't just want to talk about the
Speaker 1: book or his review of it. He wants to widen things.
Speaker 1: He wants to talk about the Holocaust, you know, the
Speaker 1: generational tragedy where six million Jewish men, women and children
Speaker 1: were systematically exterminated. It might be the most softball topic
Speaker 1: in all of journalism. Anyone in their right mind recognizes
Speaker 1: the immense scale of the horror and expresses a firm
Speaker 1: desire for it never to be forgotten and to never
Speaker 1: happen again. Instead, here's what Roald Dahl says to the
Speaker 1: young journalist. There is a trait in the Jewish character
Speaker 1: that does provoke animosity. Maybe it's a kind of lack
Speaker 1: of generosity towards non Jews. I mean, there's always a
Speaker 1: reason why anti anything crops up anywhere. And then he
Speaker 1: goes on to say, even a stinker like Hitler didn't
Speaker 1: just pick on them for no reason. Ugh, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is what we've been waiting for, folks. Here we go
Speaker 1: in my hard podcast, Imagine Entertainment and Parallax. I'm Aaron Tracy,
Speaker 1: and this is the Secret world of Roald Dahl. Episode seven. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're worried, we're about to waste a whole lot
Speaker 1: of time dissecting one unrepresentative quote that didn't really reflect
Speaker 1: who Doll was or what he believed in. Don't be
Speaker 1: the quote I just read wasn't a one off comment.
Speaker 1: There's extensive evidence of Doll's bigotry. Dall biographer Jeremy Treglone
Speaker 1: records a bunch of problematic stuff that Dahl said and
Speaker 1: did throughout his life. At a social club, for instance,
Speaker 1: Doll's daughter Tessa remembers her father complained about the number
Speaker 1: of Jews who were members. He got drunk one night
Speaker 1: and stood up to make a speech. Diners at nearby
Speaker 1: tables told him to shut up. Doll was thrown out
Speaker 1: and his club membership was revoked, says Treglone. Dall's editor,
Speaker 1: the legendary Robert Gottlieb, who worked with so many brilliant writers,
Speaker 1: from Nora Ephron to Tony Morrison to Robert Carrow. He
Speaker 1: believes that dolls prejudice against Jews grew worse after he
Speaker 1: and Dahl had a falling out. Now a little context.
Speaker 1: Career wise, Doll was on top, having already published most
Speaker 1: of his iconic children's books. But in his personal life,
Speaker 1: Dall was a bit of a mess. He had divorced
Speaker 1: Patricia Neil after thirty years of marriage. He was in
Speaker 1: constant physical pain from back surgery stemming from that crash
Speaker 1: in the desert decades earlier. And while he's having all
Speaker 1: this career success, he's very insecure about people thinking he
Speaker 1: can only write for kids. So when he's offered the
Speaker 1: chance to review a book about Israel in a literary journal,
Speaker 1: he sees it as a rare opportunity to write for adults,
Speaker 1: and he's going to make the most of it. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned, the review comes out in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: It's not excusing Dall to say that certain prejudices were
Speaker 1: more common in mainstream culture back then. Just look at
Speaker 1: our movies of the era. Some of the biggest films
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty three to nineteen eighty four were Sixteen Candles,
Speaker 1: the John Hughes classic featuring Long Duck Dung, The Chinese Exchange,
Speaker 1: student Trading Places, The Edding If You Break Out, which
Speaker 1: includes blackface along with a bunch of class based stereotypes,
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones, and The Temple of Doom, where Indian characters
Speaker 1: are depicted as either noble mystics or bloodthirsty savages. And
Speaker 1: on TV three's Company is The Big Show, which is
Speaker 1: basically one long gay panic joke. Now a confession, I
Speaker 1: still love some of those movies, and that's part of
Speaker 1: why this is so complicated. I can still laugh at
Speaker 1: a lot of the jokes in trading places and just
Speaker 1: ignore the offensive ones. But I know I'm in a
Speaker 1: privileged position to be able to do that, and of
Speaker 1: course not everybody wants to do that. So back to
Speaker 1: that book review, it's just as problematic as the interview
Speaker 1: he gives about it. It's for the journal Literary Review.
Speaker 1: The book tells the story of the recent Israeli siege
Speaker 1: of Baybery, but in his review, Dog goes beyond the
Speaker 1: contents of the book. He takes the opportunity to write
Speaker 1: a passionate denunciation of the entire Israeli Palestinian conflict, which
Speaker 1: he brought ends into an attack on Israel and Jewish
Speaker 1: people everywhere. And yes, this has a of contemporary relevance.
Speaker 1: The same stuff is happening all over again today. Here's
Speaker 1: the beginning of Dolls book review.
Speaker 2: In June nineteen forty one, I happened to be in
Speaker 2: of all places, Palestine, flying with the Arif against the Bishi,
Speaker 2: French and the Nazis. Hitler happened to be in Germany,
Speaker 2: and the gas chambers were being built, and the mass
Speaker 2: slaughter of the Jews was beginning. Our hearts bled for
Speaker 2: the Jewish men, women and children, and we hated the Germans.
Speaker 1: Okay, so far dolls throwing in some of his own
Speaker 1: biography to relate to the contents of the buck, and
Speaker 1: then he continues.
Speaker 2: Exactly forty one years later, in June nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: the Israeli forces were streaming northwards out of what used
Speaker 2: to be Palestine into Lebanon, and the mass slaughter of
Speaker 2: the inhabitants began. Our hearts bled for the Lebanese and
Speaker 2: Palestinian men, women and children, and we all started hating
Speaker 2: the Israelis.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he's connecting what he saw as a pilot
Speaker 1: in the war with what he sees now, but then
Speaker 1: ramps up to this referring to the Jewish people.
Speaker 2: Never before in the history of Man has a race
Speaker 2: of people switched so rapidly from being much pitted victims
Speaker 2: to barbarous murderers. Never before has a race of people
Speaker 2: generated so much sympathy around the world, and then, in
Speaker 2: the space of a lifetime, succeeded in turning that sympathy
Speaker 2: into hatred and revulsion. It is as though a group
Speaker 2: of much loved nuns in charge of an orphanage had
Speaker 2: suddenly turned around and started murdering all the children.
Speaker 1: He continues, It is.
Speaker 2: Like the good old Hitler and Himler times all over again.
Speaker 1: Wow, there's a lot there, like calling a whole race
Speaker 1: of people, namely the Jews, barbarous murderers because he opposes
Speaker 1: the actions of a handful of people in the Israeli government. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm just not enough of an expert in these issues
Speaker 1: to do this conversation justice, So I want to bring
Speaker 1: in someone who is Yeah, you're Rosenberg has dedicated his
Speaker 1: professional life to study and thinking about this stuff in
Speaker 1: a really brilliant way. Yayir is a writer for The Atlantic.
Speaker 1: He's also written for The Washington Posts, The New York Times,
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal, you name it. He speaks around
Speaker 1: the world on the topic of anti Semitism and I
Speaker 1: love this. He's credited with coining the sarcastic Internet term
Speaker 1: Gerbel's gap, which is the amount of time between a
Speaker 1: negative event transpiring in the world and someone finding a
Speaker 1: way to blame it on the Jews. I'm going to
Speaker 1: ask Gayer to help provide context for various things Dall said.
Speaker 1: First up, I asked Gayer why blaming all Jews for
Speaker 1: the actions of the Israeli leadership is thought to be antisemitic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a general human tendency here and a
Speaker 3: particular anti Jewish one. Generally speaking, a lot of prejudice
Speaker 3: takes the form of people looking at a minority group
Speaker 3: and saying, anybody in this minority community that does anything
Speaker 3: or says anything reflects on the entire group and every
Speaker 3: person in it, such that if you're a member of minority,
Speaker 3: you're collectively culpable for what anyone else and that minority
Speaker 3: may say or do anywhere, no matter where they are,
Speaker 3: and no matter your connection or lack there off to
Speaker 3: those people. And that's not unique to Jews, right, that's
Speaker 3: textbook racism, textbook bigotry. Think the spike in anti Muslim
Speaker 3: hate crimes after nine to eleven, which was people taking
Speaker 3: out anger at a specific group of fundamentalist terrorists on
Speaker 3: everyday Americans who happened to have some identifying characteristic that
Speaker 3: they associated with them. And so that is the general
Speaker 3: human tendency towards prejudice. That's an old, old thing that
Speaker 3: many of us have experienced or seen. And then there's
Speaker 3: this specifically Jewish version of it where you see people
Speaker 3: saying that, yeah, old Jews are to blame for anything
Speaker 3: else any other Jew did in my perception, but you
Speaker 3: have to think of Rode Doll in this particular context.
Speaker 3: He was raised on a continent that for centuries persecuted, abused, expelled,
Speaker 3: and murdered Jews over allegations of what other Jews thousands
Speaker 3: of miles away did in the Middle East, namely they
Speaker 3: allegedly killed Jesus, and that was seen to justify centuries
Speaker 3: of anti Semitism on the European continent. Roade Doll grows
Speaker 3: up in that place, right, that sort of way of
Speaker 3: thinking about Jews, and you know, is part of what
Speaker 3: pays the way for the Holocaust and the ideas of
Speaker 3: the Nazis spread. It's not particularly new. It does get
Speaker 3: secularized later on, where the Jews in Europe and the
Speaker 3: United States and elsewhere get attacked over whatever Jews thousands
Speaker 3: of miles away in the Middle East may have done,
Speaker 3: and that somebody is angry about. It's not exactly different,
Speaker 3: it's just the name's changed. And so in that way,
Speaker 3: Dallas reflecting a general human tendency towards prejudice, and he's
Speaker 3: also reflecting a very age old story that people tell
Speaker 3: about Jews. And I think actually he's not particularly unique
Speaker 3: in this respect. As you can see, this is a
Speaker 3: very common way of thinking about minorities as mendacious monoliths.
Speaker 3: What is unique is us asking the question and saying,
Speaker 3: maybe we shouldn't do that. We're the exception. He's actually
Speaker 3: the rule.
Speaker 1: Interesting, and I mean we see this a lot today. Obviously,
Speaker 1: what's going on in Israel and Gaza right now is
Speaker 1: you know, on the front page every day, and people
Speaker 1: are doing it again. People are blaming Jews in America,
Speaker 1: Jews all over the world with what the Israeli government
Speaker 1: is doing right now to the Palestinians.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very similar dynamic. If Rodal was alive today,
Speaker 3: he would be doing the same thing. He'd be blurring
Speaker 3: these lines between actions committed by an Israeli government and
Speaker 3: a specific place in time for specific people with all
Speaker 3: Jews around the world, rather than treating everybody as individuals
Speaker 3: and judging them based on those characteristics. It's disheartening and
Speaker 3: obviously it's wrong, but it's just something that's always been
Speaker 3: with us as human beings. It's a sort of a
Speaker 3: shortcut we use for thinking about minority groups that we
Speaker 3: don't know well. Rather than trying to get to know
Speaker 3: them and to understand them in their complexity and diversity,
Speaker 3: we often try to reduce them to stereotypes, and in
Speaker 3: some cases that means negative stereotypes or the worst thing
Speaker 3: that anyone has ever said or done in that group.
Speaker 3: There is a parallel to this, because it's a very
Speaker 3: old thing. Ever since Israel has existed, there have been
Speaker 3: people who have been angry about this or that Israeli
Speaker 3: policies that have taken that out on proximate Jews. And
Speaker 3: before Israel existed, whatever Jews in the Middle East did
Speaker 3: was also taken out on any nearby approximate Jews, no
Speaker 3: matter what connection they had to what happened in that place.
Speaker 1: Dahl also makes reference to quote those powerful American Jewish bankers,
Speaker 1: any asserts that the United States government is quote a
Speaker 1: literally dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions over there.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about those anti Semitic trips.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: There are two kinds of anti semitism, generally speaking. One
Speaker 3: is the personal prejudice. This is the kind of bigotry
Speaker 3: that most of us are familiar with, which is, I
Speaker 3: don't like that person because they're different, they're too Jewish,
Speaker 3: they're too Muslim, they're too black. And that's a social
Speaker 3: prejudice and it's very harmful to the people targeted by it.
Speaker 3: There's also a different kind of antisemitism that's the conspiratorial
Speaker 3: expression of anti semitism, and this one posits that Jews
Speaker 3: are a sinister string pulling cabal that is behind all
Speaker 3: the world's social and economic problems. It's a theory about
Speaker 3: how the entire world works, and it all traces back
Speaker 3: to Jews. And if you see something going wrong, there's
Speaker 3: definitely a Jew behind it, right, you perceive that there's
Speaker 3: an invisible hand, it belongs to an invisible Jew, and
Speaker 3: so Rodal here is expressing that he did it. That
Speaker 3: my understanding is in other contexts as well, not just
Speaker 3: saying Jews controlled the banks, not just saying they controlled
Speaker 3: the government. He also said they controlled the media. You know,
Speaker 3: Jews are zero point two percent of the human population, right,
Speaker 3: if you were to think about this logically, even if
Speaker 3: they punched one hundred percent above their weight, they would
Speaker 3: zero point four percent of the power. It's just not
Speaker 3: how the world actually works in reality. Of course, Jews
Speaker 3: have been persecuted and exterminated for much of their existence
Speaker 3: because they're a tiny group that doesn't really have this
Speaker 3: kind of power influence. And Jews themselves are extremely diverse
Speaker 3: and fractious and disagree with each other, and there are
Speaker 3: many different sects and different beliefs, and they'll argue with
Speaker 3: each other. And anyone who's ever spent time in a
Speaker 3: Jewish community or with Jews are around shabatar passover a
Speaker 3: table knows right that Jews can't set the therm? Is
Speaker 3: that let alone? How do you know, I don't know,
Speaker 3: control Western civilization. But again, this is sort of a
Speaker 3: very long standing stereotypical way of thinking about Jews, and
Speaker 3: you know, Dollas reflecting it. In the case of Jewish
Speaker 3: bankers and others controlling the government, you might wonder, how
Speaker 3: did two out of every three European Jews get killed
Speaker 3: on the Holocaust. If this incredible Jewish conspiracy was there
Speaker 3: running the show, it seems extremely bad at its job.
Speaker 3: And similarly speaking, there's so many when the state of
Speaker 3: Israel was found that in nineteen forty eight, America put
Speaker 3: it under an arms embargo is very strange thing to
Speaker 3: do if the Jews control of the government. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of examples of this in history. Lots of Jewish
Speaker 3: activists did lobby Franklin Dollan or Roosevelt to try to
Speaker 3: bomb the railway tracks to Auschwitz, the death camp where
Speaker 3: some many Jews were being killed, and he didn't do it.
Speaker 3: Lots of Jewish activists tried to get the United States
Speaker 3: and other countries to lift their immigrant quotas to allow
Speaker 3: more Jewish refugees to flee the Holocaust. They didn't do it.
Speaker 3: There are so many examples of this, it's kind of perverse.
Speaker 3: The anti Semitic world view is kind of an inversion
Speaker 3: of the reality. It posits that this tiny group of
Speaker 3: Jews determines the fate of all the non Jews were
Speaker 3: in fact, logically speaking right, the large non Jewish majority
Speaker 3: of the world desides what the world is going to
Speaker 3: be like for a lot of different minorities, not just Jews.
Speaker 1: Here's another one, and this is when I'm certainly less
Speaker 1: familiar with than the other troops. Talking about Jewish victims
Speaker 1: of the Holocaust, Dahl said, quote, if you and I
Speaker 1: were in a line moving towards what we knew were
Speaker 1: gas chambers, I'd rather have a go at taking one
Speaker 1: of the guards with me. But they, meaning the Jews,
Speaker 1: were always submissive. What is that about?
Speaker 3: So this is more complicated than simply some of antisemitic idea.
Speaker 3: It's actually a critique that many people have leveled against
Speaker 3: Jewish victims of the Hana Claust, which is a hard
Speaker 3: thing to do, to critique victims of the Holocaust, but
Speaker 3: it's been done. And some of those people who leveled
Speaker 3: that critique, ironically, were people that Dahl hated. Scientists, some
Speaker 3: Zionists said that the problem of the Jews of Europe
Speaker 3: is that they didn't defend themselves and that they weren't
Speaker 3: strong enough, and so that they need a state and
Speaker 3: an army so things like this can never happen again.
Speaker 3: And the irony is that road Dall was criticizing these
Speaker 3: Jewish victims of the Holo claust in the same way
Speaker 3: as some of the founders of the State of Israel
Speaker 3: criticized their Jewish warbears, and yet he doesn't support anything
Speaker 3: that Israel does militarily. And Dahl says that Jews were
Speaker 3: too weak and pathetic and they went like lambs to
Speaker 3: their slaughter and they didn't fight back. But then when
Speaker 3: Jews go along and say, you know what, we're going
Speaker 3: to found a state and have an army, and then
Speaker 3: we're going to fight back when we perceive ourselves to
Speaker 3: be threatened, well then he says they're incredibly evil, bloodthirsty
Speaker 3: and militaristic heads world. Dall wins tails the Jews lose.
Speaker 3: And this is a very common way that bigots relate
Speaker 3: to the minorities they don't like. Basically, there's nothing they
Speaker 3: can do that is right, and they're attacked for absolutely
Speaker 3: contradictory things. No matter what they do and no matter
Speaker 3: how they change, they're always subject to the same prejudice,
Speaker 3: because where prejudice comes from prejudging, you've already prejudged the community,
Speaker 3: and then you come up and backfill the justifications afterwards.
Speaker 1: To go back to this specific instance, for just a Yeacond,
Speaker 1: just because it's really something I don't know about. There's
Speaker 1: an idea among people that the Jews during the Holocaust
Speaker 1: should have wrestled their Nazi guards to the ground. More,
Speaker 1: they should have gotten together and wrestled them. What is it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, so I think so exactly So this is
Speaker 3: good because you give me a chance to say something
Speaker 3: I should have said. The outset, which is, I think
Speaker 3: it's an unfair critique, whether leveled by Zionists or level
Speaker 3: by Rod Doll, the anti Zionist. I think the idea
Speaker 3: that the Jews could have somehow overturned or bought back
Speaker 3: in any really effective capacity against this Nazi empire is
Speaker 3: not a reasonable critique. That being said, the other thing
Speaker 3: to note is that plenty of Jews did. The critique
Speaker 3: is wrong because plenty of Jews did attempt to file back.
Speaker 3: The reason we know it wouldn't work is because they
Speaker 3: failed or they weren't successful in saving so many of
Speaker 3: the Jews. You have the War Sot Ghetto Uprising, perhaps
Speaker 3: the most famous example of resistance to the Nazis, but
Speaker 3: it did ultimately fail. You similarly had plenty of Jews
Speaker 3: who joined the various resistance movements in different European countries
Speaker 3: against the Nazis and helped fight back and also helped
Speaker 3: spirit Jews and others away to safety. All of these
Speaker 3: things actually did happen, and they did make a difference,
Speaker 3: but they weren't the same thing as defeating the Nazis.
Speaker 3: It wasn't something that the Jews, in their tiny numerical
Speaker 3: rounding era in the human population ever could have possibly done.
Speaker 3: So it's good that you circled back because I do
Speaker 3: think you actually kind of at the foreground by saying
Speaker 3: I think personally right, the critique is wrong, it's historically wrong,
Speaker 3: and it's morally inadequate. At the same time, it is
Speaker 3: very revealing about Doll that he can make this critique
Speaker 3: and that at the same time attack Jews for being,
Speaker 3: you know, so pathetic and so inept and so weak,
Speaker 3: and then when they act strong and they're militaristic, then
Speaker 3: they're evil for being bloodthirsty and villainous. Did he ever
Speaker 3: spell out what he actually thinks Jews were allowed to
Speaker 3: do and what they should be or you know, is
Speaker 3: it no matter what they do, they can ever please Rodal.
Speaker 1: That was Iier Rosenberg, staff writer at The Atlantic and
Speaker 1: author of the newsletter Deep Stuttle. I also want to
Speaker 1: mention that while Dahl died without apologizing for his antisemitic comments,
Speaker 1: years after his death, the Doll family did issue a
Speaker 1: formal apology. It was around the same time that Netflix
Speaker 1: purchased his whole catalog. Here's the statement in its entirety,
Speaker 1: which you can also see at rolldall dot com slash apology.
Speaker 1: The Doll Family and the Roll Doll Story Company deeply
Speaker 1: apologized for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by Roll
Speaker 1: Dall's antisemitic statements. Those prejudice remarks are incomprehensible to us
Speaker 1: and stand in mark contrast to the man we knew
Speaker 1: and to the values at the heart of Rolldahl's stories,
Speaker 1: which have positively impacted young people for generations. We hope that,
Speaker 1: just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst,
Speaker 1: role Dahal can help remind us of the lasting impact
Speaker 1: of words. So what are we supposed to do about this?
Speaker 1: Do we accept that apology from his family? Do we
Speaker 1: chalk it all up to it being a different area,
Speaker 1: or do we stop reading Doll, stop giving his books
Speaker 1: to our children. One thing that makes it especially complicated
Speaker 1: for me is that Doll's personal prejudices didn't really make
Speaker 1: it into his books as far as I can tell.
Speaker 1: Some critics say they see antisemitic tropes in The Wishes.
Speaker 1: It's possible, but I don't know if I agree. And
Speaker 1: if we can't definitively locate those problematic views in his
Speaker 1: writing and he's no longer profiting off the sales of
Speaker 1: his books, does it still make sense to stop reading them.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by this question. I'm someone who constantly does
Speaker 1: the mental gymnastics that's required of all of us when
Speaker 1: we consume art from previous generations. I'll just say it,
Speaker 1: all right, some of my favorite writers and favorite filmmakers
Speaker 1: have done awful things. I don't want to have them
Speaker 1: over for dinner. But I still read the novels, still
Speaker 1: worship the movies. And of course it's not always even
Speaker 1: previous generations. The writer Alice Monroe, who died not long ago,
Speaker 1: was revealed to have stayed with her second husband after
Speaker 1: learning that he'd sexually abused her daughter With Roald Dahl,
Speaker 1: I think the issue was even more complicated by the
Speaker 1: fact that we encourage our kids to consume him. I
Speaker 1: would never allow a babysitter with clear, open prejudices to
Speaker 1: be around my kids in real life. Why should authors
Speaker 1: and filmmakers be any different. Maybe because we think we
Speaker 1: have more control over how they're presented to the kids,
Speaker 1: Like we can offer a warning and we know it's
Speaker 1: in there and what's not in there. We know nothing
Speaker 1: crazy is going to be said off the cuff, the
Speaker 1: way it might be if a bigoted old grandmother or
Speaker 1: somebody was left alone with them. Also, forcibly taking away
Speaker 1: books and movies feels like a slippery slope. It feels
Speaker 1: a little bit like censorship, and I hate the idea
Speaker 1: of that. I firmly believe that experiencing art is essential
Speaker 1: to being human, and that art has the capacity to
Speaker 1: do great things, even if it's created by crappy people.
Speaker 1: And I'm absolutely including children's books in that definition of art.
Speaker 1: All kinds of art can affect positive change, often even
Speaker 1: more than protest movements or marches or elections can. Just
Speaker 1: look at how Americans started becoming more tolerant of gay
Speaker 1: families thanks to a silly Network sitcom, Will and Grace
Speaker 1: for your information, Will Walter was the love of my life.
Speaker 1: You said that about each Backstreet Boy at one time
Speaker 1: or another. I also totally buy the argument that America
Speaker 1: was only able to finally elect a black president because
Speaker 1: they saw a prosperous, lovable, familiar black family on TV
Speaker 1: every week in the nineteen eighties, namely the Cosbys.
Speaker 3: It's good great Nessinaraty gave us some fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can be pretty fascinating at times. We're on
Speaker 1: away to theasm. Now are you going inside? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, I would just like to say that the condition
Speaker 3: of certain rooms in this house do not necessarily reflect
Speaker 3: the views of management.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and yes, the idea that Cosby is responsible
Speaker 1: for anything good at this point is hard to believe,
Speaker 1: But of course there are tons of other examples of
Speaker 1: popular art creating positive change in the world. I was
Speaker 1: commissioned by A and E a few years ago to
Speaker 1: rate a four part limited TV series about how Breakfast
Speaker 1: at Tiffany's jumpstart the feminist movement an Tiffany's manage that
Speaker 1: really positive outcome, while also containing one of cinema's most
Speaker 1: egregious examples of Antiesian stereotyping, namely Mickey Rooney's performance as
Speaker 1: Holly's upstairs neighbor. The racism in Tiffany Is is so egregious
Speaker 1: that it feels like you can use it as a
Speaker 1: teaching moment if you watch it with your kids. The
Speaker 1: much scarier thing to me is when the bigotry is
Speaker 1: more subtle, which brings us back to dull. I can't
Speaker 1: help thinking about it. Very scary, maybe very pertinent metaphor
Speaker 1: suggested by Dall himself in maybe his greatest book, In
Speaker 1: The BFG, he writes that his hero has the ability
Speaker 1: to influence children's thoughts by delivering specific dreams to them
Speaker 1: while they sleep. In the story, it's an act of
Speaker 1: kindness by a sweet, loving creature. But what if the
Speaker 1: guy delivering those dreams and influencing children's thoughts wasn't so
Speaker 1: sweet and wasn't so loving? What then, to get a
Speaker 1: better understanding of this really important issue, I want to
Speaker 1: talk to a few people, people who are really thoughtful
Speaker 1: about this stuff.
Speaker 4: I did read him growing up, and I enjoyed his books.
Speaker 1: That's the voice of a great rock Sane Gay. She's
Speaker 1: a best selling writer and critic. She's written novels, short stories,
Speaker 1: and even a Marvel comic. Your smartest, most engaged friend,
Speaker 1: has definitely forwarded you one of her essays at some point.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to talk to Roxane about all of this.
Speaker 1: She has really strong, clear feelings on the subject. What
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about is, you know,
Speaker 1: Dahl also said some very antisemitic things, and I struggle
Speaker 1: with whether or not I can read his work, and
Speaker 1: sort of even more importantly for me, I guess can
Speaker 1: I give his books to my little kids to read?
Speaker 1: Which leads to kind of a larger question about whether
Speaker 1: we can ever separate an artist's private beliefs from their
Speaker 1: public art. So I think you've written really wisely about
Speaker 1: this topic, and I was hoping you could just talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about your own experiences grappling with that question.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, it's a question I think about quite
Speaker 4: a lot, and certainly as a feminist, it's a question
Speaker 4: I've asked about a lot, and I, for one, don't
Speaker 4: believe you can separate the art from the artist, nor
Speaker 4: do I think you should. I think that we are
Speaker 4: who we are and that influences the art that we
Speaker 4: put into the world in some way.
Speaker 1: Now, Roald Dahl.
Speaker 4: Wrote some amazing books like James and the Giant Peach
Speaker 4: Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. He's a consummate storyteller, and
Speaker 4: certainly generations of children have fallen in love with his work.
Speaker 4: So the legacy is there, But there's also the legacy
Speaker 4: of virulent anti Semitism. And the reality is that there
Speaker 4: are plenty of children's authors out there who have written
Speaker 4: very good books who also are not anti Semites. And
Speaker 4: so when people sort of wring their hands about this,
Speaker 4: I get a little frustrated because this is not the
Speaker 4: only game in town, And what really people want is
Speaker 4: like a morality hall pass, because oh, he's a genius,
Speaker 4: like so are a lots of other people, and so like,
Speaker 4: read what you want, truly enjoy what you want, but
Speaker 4: accept responsibility for the fact that you are willing to
Speaker 4: overlook some truly bad behavior for your enjoyment or for
Speaker 4: someone else's enjoyment.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. When Nate Parker's Birth
Speaker 1: of a Nation was going to be released in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: you wrote a really great piece of The New York
Speaker 1: Times about just what we're talking about, not being able
Speaker 1: to separate past accusations against Parker for sexual assault from
Speaker 1: his movie. Reading the piece, I mean, tell me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, but it felt a little bit like one
Speaker 1: of the things that troubled you most about that situation
Speaker 1: was how he handled it. He sort of made the
Speaker 1: apology all about himself. With Roald Dahl, it's tricky, right
Speaker 1: because he's not around to defend himself anymore or apologize
Speaker 1: for that matter. And I'm not saying he would apologize.
Speaker 1: In fact, he probably wouldn't. But who knows does that
Speaker 1: play in for you in terms of long dead artists,
Speaker 1: Like do you have trouble reading a ground Poe knowing
Speaker 1: that he married his thirteen year old cousin, or Ts
Speaker 1: Eliott or Norman Mahler or more recently Alice. What does
Speaker 1: it do for you when it's sort of someone who
Speaker 1: is not around to defend themselves or not defend themselves.
Speaker 4: I mean, that doesn't even factor for me. I think
Speaker 4: that it would be great if these people could apologize,
Speaker 4: but I doubt that most of them would be apologetic,
Speaker 4: because most of them would not think that they had
Speaker 4: done anything wrong, or they would be like, yeah, I
Speaker 4: said it, and I believe it, and so what It
Speaker 4: just doesn't even factor. And I have no problem not
Speaker 4: reading these people. I just don't because there's so much
Speaker 4: amazing literature out there. And I know, for example, a
Speaker 4: lot of people feel a true sense of loss over
Speaker 4: Alice Munroe. But every time I think about, oh, you know,
Speaker 4: her incredible short stories, I have far more empathy for
Speaker 4: her daughter, who she was willing to sacrifice because of
Speaker 4: her own weakness. I'm a human being. I can understand
Speaker 4: sort of that she you know, why she made that
Speaker 4: choice of choosing her husband despite the harm that he
Speaker 4: was doing to her child. But it's not okay, And
Speaker 4: I'm not speaking for anyone else. I'm only making these
Speaker 4: decisions for me. And you know, a lot of times
Speaker 4: people really overestimate the power of writers in terms of like, oh,
Speaker 4: what do you mean, I can't enjoy this thing? I
Speaker 4: want to enjoy, Like do what you want. But what
Speaker 4: you want is for me to say it's fine, And
Speaker 4: I can't say that because I don't think it is.
Speaker 4: But I also, who cares what I think? What do
Speaker 4: you think? So I don't struggle with these things in
Speaker 4: that I just tend to value the dignity and the
Speaker 4: lives of these people's victims far more than the people
Speaker 4: who have made such egregious mistakes themselves, and the counter
Speaker 4: argument often is that we're all human and we all
Speaker 4: make mistakes, and that is absolutely true. We are all flawed,
Speaker 4: and I include myself in that. But I also know
Speaker 4: that I'm never going to be an anti semi. I'm
Speaker 4: never going to be transphobic. I know who I am.
Speaker 4: There are some mistakes most of us don't make. I'm
Speaker 4: never going to commit sexual violence. So I think that
Speaker 4: we have to also remember that these are things are
Speaker 4: a matter of scale, and that we can't compare our
Speaker 4: normal human foibles and flaws with people who are criminals
Speaker 4: and bigots.
Speaker 1: I think that makes a ton of sense. When I
Speaker 1: buy a Mel Gibson movie, or rent a Roman Planski movie,
Speaker 1: or buy a Kanye West song, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: giving them money, right, And that bothers me. It sounds
Speaker 1: like for you, it's not as much about whether or
Speaker 1: not we're sort of enriching them or helping them. It's
Speaker 1: more just you have trouble enjoying it, right, Is that right?
Speaker 4: I have trouble looking past, you know, Like, for example,
Speaker 4: I used to really enjoy Kanye West's music before we
Speaker 4: found out who Kanye really is. I just can't enjoy
Speaker 4: it anymore, because every time I start to be like, oh, yes,
Speaker 4: listen to that beat drop because he is brilliant, and
Speaker 4: I acknowledge that he's also truly a horrible person. So
Speaker 4: I just can't. And that's just the way I'm made up.
Speaker 4: I don't even think about the enrichment thing. I think
Speaker 4: people really overvalue their dollars. Like Kanye Rich is already
Speaker 4: wealthy by his music. Down't buy his music. It's not
Speaker 4: really changing his bottom line. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 4: we should consume his music. I don't think we should
Speaker 4: enrich him or fatten his coffers. But I do think
Speaker 4: that for me, it's just something I can't do, and
Speaker 4: I don't not even can't. I of course I could,
Speaker 4: I don't want to. I can no longer enjoy The
Speaker 4: Cosby Show. And I loved that show. I loved it
Speaker 4: because we weren't really allowed to watch TV growing up,
Speaker 4: and that was one of two things we were allowed
Speaker 4: to watch, was that in Little House on the Prairie.
Speaker 4: You know, it's sad and I definitely lament, you know
Speaker 4: the loss.
Speaker 1: Do you think a writer's personal views always, or their
Speaker 1: prejudices or their outlooks or their viewpoints always find a
Speaker 1: way into the work, and if they don't, does that
Speaker 1: change the calculus at all.
Speaker 4: I don't think that a writer's views always infuse themselves
Speaker 4: into the work. I do think that there are some
Speaker 4: writers and other artists who are very capable of hiding
Speaker 4: their true selves. But it's rare. It's rare. I do
Speaker 4: actually think that's what makes Rodall such a tough one.
Speaker 4: For the most part, you really would not know his
Speaker 4: beliefs if you didn't know about them, if you didn't
Speaker 4: go and look up information about the artists. Certainly, it's
Speaker 4: not something I ever knew about until recently, like in
Speaker 4: the past decade. It's challenging, and I think that what
Speaker 4: a lot of people need to believe is that genius
Speaker 4: and genius art matters more than the crimes of the
Speaker 4: genius artists and the toxic beliefs of the genius artist.
Speaker 4: We hear that quite a lot with Woody Allen, with
Speaker 4: Roman Polanski, especially with like the whole slew of anti Semites,
Speaker 4: and I firmly understand that for some people that is
Speaker 4: just the case, and it is, you know, I just disagree.
Speaker 4: I think that you can't separate it Now when people
Speaker 4: just say, like, yes, he's an anti semi and he
Speaker 4: made amazing work, that's more honest that you acknowledge it
Speaker 4: and you're going to consume the work regardless because you
Speaker 4: feel like it offers more than the damage done by
Speaker 4: whatever the toxicity or the crime is. And I think
Speaker 4: that more people believe that than not. Unfortunately, but I'm
Speaker 4: sure you're talking to Claire Debtorer.
Speaker 1: Yeah we are, actually, Yeah.
Speaker 4: She wrote an amazing book about this that I thought
Speaker 4: was really really well done, where she grapples with these questions,
Speaker 4: and when people are at least willing to grapple with
Speaker 4: the questions, I find that more interesting than actually sitting
Speaker 4: around worrying about these horrible people, because again, that's more
Speaker 4: honest that yes, some people are ambivalent about this, or
Speaker 4: some people really struggle, some people don't know how to
Speaker 4: sacrifice these works of art for the sake of the
Speaker 4: greater good. And you know, I do think it's at
Speaker 4: least important to have those conversations. And a book like Monsters,
Speaker 4: which Claire Debtor wrote, was I think our interesting entrance
Speaker 4: into the dialogue about this.
Speaker 1: A huge thanks to Roxanne, and I totally agree with
Speaker 1: what she said at the end there about who to
Speaker 1: speak to next? First thing, if you wouldn't mind introduce yourself.
Speaker 4: I'm Claire Leader. I'm the author of Monsters of Fans Dilemma.
Speaker 1: Here my conversation with Claire in our next episode. She
Speaker 1: feels really differently than Roxanne about all this. We'll also
Speaker 1: get into the nitty gritty of an explosive controversy regarding
Speaker 1: Doll's work thirty two years after his death that seemed
Speaker 1: to get the entire world talking about him again. The
Speaker 1: Secret World of Roald Dahn is produced by Imagine Audio
Speaker 1: and Parallax Studios for iHeart Podcasts. Created and written by
Speaker 1: me Aaron tracyduced by Matt Schrader, post production by wind
Speaker 1: Hill Studios, with editing, scoring, and sound design by Mark
Speaker 1: Henry Phillips. Editing by Ryan Seaton, Music by a PM.
Speaker 1: Executive producers Nathan Cloke, Karl Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard,
Speaker 1: and Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark
Speaker 1: Henry Phillips and Eleven Laps. If you enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 1: be sure to rate and review The Secret World of
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Speaker 1: Copyright twenty twenty six. Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia and Parallax