Make it Decent

Bowdlerize (verb) - edit by omitting or modifying parts considered
indelicate; "bowdlerize a novel" (The Online
Dictionary).

Poor Thomas Bowdler, he just wanted to give the people (read – women and children) of his time (read – the 19th century) some proper culture; and what could be more proper than William
Shakespeare? A lot of things apparently, because for all his high qualities Shakespeare's worker were a tad to risqué for the family audience of his time.
And so Mr. Bowdler set out to present "The Family Shakespeare" – a
modified version in which Ophelia drowns by accident instead of killing
herself, the prostitute is removed from Henry IV and Romeo and Julia go out for
a honeymoon in Vegas (one those might not be as true as the others).
And while it is easy to mock we must understand the good intention in the base of
it – Bowdler simply wanted to give Shakespeare to audiences who would not be
allowed to watch the original versions, and encouraged people to seek out
'real' Shakespeare after going through his work. What he got for his efforts
was a place in English language as a verb for censoring.
So what do you do with Moby Dick? It is a classic of American literature, a
representation of an important piece of history, the signature novel of
Nantucket and holds a very good value at the senior's game. So kids need to know it, but it also brutal, not-politically correct, has more homoerotic subtext than most modern day gay
literature ends with everybody dying, so they can't know all of it. For their
sake it must be Bowdlerized. This is the subject of -from all places-episode
12, season 4, of the American Sitcom Dave's World. The Show, a mostly
forgotten mid-1990's comedy, was based on the writings of American humorist Dave Barry. Despite his reputation as low-brow writer Barry is actually an English Lit major and a big fan of Moby Dick – so existence of the episode "Does the whale has to be white?"
is not as surprising as it seems.
In the episode Dave discovers that his son's yearly school play is based on Moby
Dick, the extremely ecstatic Dave grills his son for details and is shocked to
realize the play is called Moby – and that it ends with Ishmael making
friends with the whale. Dave leads the rest of the class ("Watery Grave!
Watery Grave!") in rebellion against the censorship and manages to
convince the teacher that you can't touch a classic. And so the School is happy
to announce a new play – Moby D. no words on the watery grave part but
we are assured there would be no friendship ending.
Despite the show's sappy compromise ending aiming for "we can get along"
massage, the actual massage we get from it is – "some things are not meant
for kids". Looking for Moby Dick in amazon.com shows more than 150 results
listed under "children's books" category – including a pop-up
version, a version 150 pages long and version 25 pages long (!!!). Can you actually call a 25 page version Moby Dick (a novel whose sub-title, mind you, was The Whale) "Moby Dick"? Or maybe Dave's World was right all along and all you need is a name edit to make the thing
less offensive: for ages 5 and up – Moby D, or the Shrimp – coming soon!