Memory-holing

Memory-holing speaks to a broader trend to cleanse history by erasing all that is now considered distasteful. Again, the BBC leads the charge. The comedy series Little Britain, popular in the early Noughties, has been removed from iPlayer, Netflix and Britbox "because times have changed". Although men impersonating women are widely lauded today, "blacking up" and impersonating another ethnicity is most decidedly not. Mad Men also falls foul of this injunction: recently released on Netflix in Australia and Canada, viewers have discovered that the episode in which Roger Stirling dons blackface has been carefully omitted.

In recent years we've seen old music, films and novels either quietly dropped or revised. The Pogues' Fairytale of New York Christmas anthem is routinely edited to delete what's considered to be a homophobic insult, while books by Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl have been rewritten with antisemitic tropes and racial slurs removed. At the same time, statues to long-dead historical figures, often slave traders and colonialists such as Bristol's Edward Colston, are taken down from public display, their legacy so tarnished it must be erased entirely.

Edward Colston  (1636-1721)
John Cassidy (1860-1939)
Photo Credit: Bristol Museum & Art Gallery [CC BY-NC]

The problem with this push to sanitise the past is not just that it allows us to forget; it deliberately misleads. When the historical record is erased or distorted, it becomes harder to grasp what is true and makes challenging injustice in the present more difficult. The fact is, viewers did once laugh at Little Britain. Racist language in popular fiction was once widespread.

Colonialists were once feted. Huw Edwards was held in high regard at the BBC. Memory-holing doesn't make these things untrue; it wipes the slate clean and tells us to look away. Erasing Edwards's record at the BBC allows the corporation to abdicate responsibility for its role in his success.

(Joanna Williams, The Times, 2024) 

Isn't this dangerous territory? Isn't erasing parts of books, films, TV, songs altering the historical record?  Once started where it will end? Who decides, "because times have changed", that certain events or people or their actions are to be altered or erased from the public domain?