Redacting, diluting in the Retelling. Miss Meadows and the Gals, and More.

Equivocation, and the weapon of those who have an agenda: The redaction pen.

When matters get complicated, ignore some things. Cross it out. Pretend it was never there. Redact. Obscure or remove. See ://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/redact.

Look at Uncle Remus. And Miss Meadows and the Gals.

Are there parts of the Uncle Remus Tales and Stories that could possibly offend. Just look at all these branches. And even if so, why impose a literary pruning just because someone's worldview later is different from what was life's components before. Is not variety and spontaneity to be valued over forced shapes; and much can be presented as history, the period. To add to understanding.

"This means that??" You decide.

Uncle Remus. Read Uncle Remus' tales closely. A starting point could be our translations, done for recreational purposes and not scholarly, at see Uncle Remus Tales - Translations. Focusing on each image as the story proceeds leads to areas just under the surface that speak loudly, but only once noticed.

Here, look at the tale, Brer Rabbit Grossly Deceives Brer Fox - at Translation and notes: "Brer Rabbit Grossly Deceives Brer Fox". There are several images - described in footnotes at that site, here as translated -

• The Arabian Nights -"One evening when the little boy, whose nights with Uncle Remus were as entertaining as those Arabian ones of blessed memory...." That opens the story. This site, at //www.al-bab.com/arab/literature/nights.htm, says that some parts of the 1001 Nights are not suitable for children because of X content, and points out the reaction of later cultures - redaction, and change of the original to meet later sensibilities.
  
• A little song-ditty about "Ole Milly H'ar Wat you doin' dar, Settin' in de corner Smokin' yo' cigyar?"
• Miss Meadows and the gals - who was she? asks the little boy. Oh, don't ask me, says Remus. She and the gals were just in the story as it was given to me. Note that Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox pay them visits; and Miss Meadows and the gals have parties.
• When Brer Rabbit manipulates Brer Fox into letting him ride Brer Fox to Miss Meadows's party, he first adjusts the stirrup, and the action continues. Then, what you doin' now, asks Brer Fox who can't see because he has on a blind bridle. Brer Rabbit: "Pullin' down my pants, Brer Fox," says he.
  
• Tell me more, says the little boy when the story winds down. Wouldn't do, says Uncle Remus, to "give out too much cuff for to cut one pair pants."

Put them together. The thought process can go like this, if you like: All deniable. The mind-pictures grow slowly. Remus: it was the narrator speaking about the 1001 Nights, but if we add adult imagery from the Arabian Nights, that sets the stage in the very first sentences, to "Ole Molly" who comes soon after, then a whole other angle emerges more strongly for Miss Meadows and the gals, and Brer Rabbit doing what he does while riding Brer Fox, and the last allusion to the cuffs. Let your mind wander. What stage was set. What happened next. What is being told here about the community, its residence, the culture.

This post suggests that there is a value to talking around ideas, and the original equivocations should stand without forcing anything further. The non-frontal approach. Let those with ears hear, and eyes see, etc. When done skillfully, a story can speak on many levels, and all is eminently deniable if somebody else sees it differently, because of the splendid equivocation in the first place. The value is also that the idea can get across without being lopped off immediately. Equivocation at its finest. Equivocation = safety, until discovered or interpreted by a Lopper.

Redactions. The lopping off. Happens all the time. Later generations of the earliest versions of fairy tales and fantasy tales often zap out explicit or violent acts incompatible with a current culture's ideas of what is proper. That kills the history and the original culture, but is done anyway if a perceived anathema is revealed - see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema. Equivocation and its rainbow and layers of meaning - room for all. Admit anyone's interpretation - that's what it's for. Why not let the discussion, the era, the untrimmed tale waft on.

We know the Walt Disney approach - make money off everything in sight and shape the culture. Prune out all that does not fit the desired message, which may well be far removed from the actual. See post 10/22/07 here. Joy of Equivocating - Uncle Remus, Toxic Disney.

The real community here. Uncle Remus. Later vaudeville and other caricatures of former slaves show them as persons to be ridiculed. See ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface. Uncle Remus here, an individual clearly respected for and trusted in his role at Aunt Sally's, is instead a full, real person. Remus may even know the "Arabian ones of blessed memory;" they are part of a large oral tradition of stories, seeping around the globe.

Here is the irony. We do not. Who can get back to those original texts for us, long redacted by later retentive cultures interested in imposing agendas. What did you know, Uncle Remus? More than we. What if we want to put some parts back in?

Aunt Sally and the rest of the whitewashed culture in post-reconstruction South further whitewashing their culture. Who here is deceived about the depth of the humanity of Uncle Remus.

Who wears the blind bridle after all? Aunt Sally.

The little boy. He's fine. He picks up enough about the adult world and his community as he can handle at the time, no need to deny, no need to lie or elaborately steer away, just let it pass, equivocate the issue away, and he asks no questions at all about what Brer Rabbit is doing, or why Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox go visitin'.

Now to look up if later collections in the children's section have Brer Rabbit just adjusting stirrups on the way to Miss Meadows's.

Redaction and today's readers. Should children or adults be steered away from Uncle Remus because there are these kinds of references once in a while, to life as it was in that era, and who the people were, and the roles? Should that sentence about Brer Rabbit and the pants be redacted out. Why? This is a period piece - a slice of life in the post-reconstruction South. History, culture.

Redaction gets difficult. Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" appears to be banned in some places for supposedly presenting racial stereotypes. Read closer. Jim there as a character shows himself to Huck and others as no part of that stereotype. The individual rises above.

At some point here, we will have to deal with the n word if we go into the plantation stories - on what grounds does anyone redact, edit material out, see ://www.thefreedictionary.com/redactions.

Is not redaction itself then a lie. Do we really think kids don't know, and if our parents and grandparents could handle Uncle Remus as is, why not now. Put in the context, but is that enough to meet the needs of the redactors.

Here are the Uncle Remus Tales if the equivocation, ambiguity, and the multiple unfathomable truths they convey, are subjected further to the Loppers - the redactors, Walt Disney and his impositions, adders and changers.

Is this what also happened to the original messages of the religious greats, the classical thinkers, the Founders, after attacked and coopted by "institutions."

We love the wild trees, the understories of stories. However, there is a danger that pointing something out in them will guide the Loppers, who then will seek to redact. Like a bad movie. The tightrope. Discussion of meanings in that light can endanger the integrity of the story, or even shape how later readers interpret it.

Text Redactors. Text Changers. Text Adders. Run, tales, run.

No answer. But we have an awareness and concern for any "interpreting" possibilities. Some fear of the consequence of exploration here, so far offset by the joy of exploring equivocating.