Actor Tom Hanks will star in Wes Anderson’s latest film, Asteroid City. Matt Winkelmeyer/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/Getty Images via AFP
In an interview with the BBC, the American actor denounces the ripolinization of literary classics. And proclaims: “Let me decide what offends me and what doesn’t offend me !”
In full promotion of his very first novel The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, Tom Hanks protests against the rewriting of classics with content deemed offensive. The American actor affirms that making politically correct an old work is part of an infantilizing logic.
In an interview with the BBC, the actor said he was “that we are all great people. Let’s have faith in our sharpness and intelligence instead of letting someone decide what might or might not offend us“.
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In 2020, The ten little niggers by Agatha Christie has also been reworked and renamed because it was considered negrophobic. Across the Channel, Roald Dahl’s novels have been rewritten. The author’s heirs have appealed to “including readers» («inclusivity checkers”) to revise the novelist’s work.
Tom Hanks is formal: “Let me decide what offends me and what doesn’t offend me.” And to continue that he would not read “no book, in any register, that would be labeled ‘Abridged for Modern Sensitivities’.”
The American actor published a novel on the set of a multimillion-dollar superhero film on May 9. He discusses the changes that have taken place in the United States since the Second World War. On the big screen, Tom Hanks co-stars with Scarlett Johannson in Wes Anderson’s next film, Asteroid City which will be presented at the Cannes Film Festival on May 23 before a scheduled release in theaters in France on June 21.
