We need to stop rewriting history
The desire to cleanse everything of potential offence kills creativity and disorients society.
Back in June, the creators of the hugely popular Stranger Things, Matt and Ross Duffer, caused a stir when they seemed to suggest they had retrospectively re-edited episodes of the show to fix plot holes spotted by fans. ‘We have George Lucas’d things… that people don’t know about’, they later claimed in Variety – referencing the Star Wars director’s habit of ‘improving’ editions of his films post-release. After much discussion, the writers of Stranger Things finally reassured fans that, ‘No scenes from previous seasons have ever been cut or re-edited. And they never will be.’
Clearly, you have to be a pretty devoted follower of a show to notice a tiny script error. And retrospectively changing a small detail in a fictional drama is hardly consequential. But the Stranger Things controversy raises interesting questions about the growing fashion for retrospective editing in response to audience reaction. In the old analogue world of vinyl albums and paper books, up-to-the-minute re-editing was, if not impossible, then certainly very difficult. When content is consumed digitally, it can be ‘updated’ as soon as the first criticism lands. Yet just because something can be done, that does not make it right.