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Originally Posted by BeccaPrice
Should Sherlock Holmes' cocaine use be edited out? should we give Holmes and Watson cell phones?
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The BBC did both of those things.
Part of why Sherlock's cocaine use is not often edited out, even during times when cocaine is considered vile to the point of demonic, is that it's described as a character flaw in the original. There's no impression that cocaine use makes Holmes a better person or a better detective.
It's not "things that are illegal or offensive today" that get targeted for removal, but "things that are illegal or offensive today, that are described as positive in the original." The dichotomy between "the story says this is a good thing, or at least not a bad thing," and "...but I know that this is actually a really awful thing" is enough to ruin the enjoyment of the story for a lot of people.
To a lesser extent, this is applied to archaic phrasings or "facts;" it's the same kind of mental whiplash: here's something the story says is ordinary and proper, but I-the-reader know this is outdated and inaccurate.
The ability to suspend awareness of modern life and enjoy the story in its own context is a matter of education--previous education; researching the details while reading the story generally means ruining the story itself--and current cultural context. While children are used to stories full of words and concepts they don't understand, at some point, it stops being "a story" and becomes "an educational opportunity," and they lose the ability to enjoy the characters' activities and the underlying themes because they're too busy learning the unspoken assumptions that readers were expected to have.
I'm in favor of informing readers that a work has been updated, condensed, edited in favor of a particular audience, expanded, or otherwise changed. I'm not in favor of saying all these things are morally wrong because they happen without the author's consent. Part of publishing under the system of copyright is the acceptance that, eventually, your works will be freely available to others, to do anything they want with them.